Quick Answer: ProfitWell (now embedded in Paddle) is free and sufficient for early-stage SaaS teams tracking core MRR metrics. Baremetrics starts at $75/month and delivers richer cohort analysis, Trial Insights, and a dedicated dunning product (Recover). If you are on Paddle, ProfitWell is a natural fit. If you need deeper analytics and churn tooling independent of your billing processor, Baremetrics wins.
Key Takeaways
| Factor | ProfitWell | Baremetrics |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free | ~$75/month |
| Best for | Paddle users, bootstrapped SaaS | Stripe-native SaaS, growth stage |
| Dunning | Paddle Retain (Paddle-only) | Recover add-on ($129/mo) |
| Trial Insights | Limited | Yes (dedicated feature) |
| Multi-processor support | Yes but deprioritized | Yes, actively maintained |
| Segmentation depth | Moderate | High |
| Benchmarking | Yes (34K+ company dataset) | Yes |
| Financial planning | No | No (Forecast+ add-on) |
What Is ProfitWell?
ProfitWell was founded in 2012 as a standalone SaaS metrics platform. In 2022, Paddle — the merchant-of-record billing platform — acquired ProfitWell and integrated it directly into the Paddle ecosystem. Today, ProfitWell Metrics is available free to all Paddle Billing customers and also remains accessible (with some limitations) to teams on Stripe, Braintree, and Chargebee.
The core value proposition of ProfitWell is zero-cost MRR tracking. You connect your billing data and immediately see MRR growth, churn rate, ARPU, LTV, and revenue movement broken down by plan, geography, and cohort. The tool is particularly well-regarded for its benchmarking database, which compares your metrics against over 34,000 subscription companies.
Since the Paddle acquisition, ProfitWell has received deeper integration with Paddle Billing features — including the Retain product for failed payment recovery. Teams using Stripe or other processors still get the metrics dashboard but should expect slower feature development relative to Paddle-native users.
What Is Baremetrics?
Baremetrics launched in 2013 and built its reputation as the go-to subscription analytics tool for Stripe-native SaaS founders. Unlike ProfitWell, Baremetrics has always been a paid product, and it has invested that revenue into building a broader feature set around subscription analytics, customer management, dunning, and financial forecasting.
The platform connects to Stripe, Paddle, Braintree, App Store, Google Play, and Recurly. It tracks all standard SaaS metrics — MRR, ARR, churn, LTV, ARPU, new MRR, expansion MRR — and adds features like Trial Insights (conversion rate from trial to paid), customer-level drill-down, and Cancellation Insights (structured exit surveys).
Baremetrics also offers Recover, a dedicated payment recovery (dunning) product that retries failed charges and sends customizable email sequences to recover failed subscription revenue. The combination of analytics, customer context, and dunning makes Baremetrics a more complete toolkit for teams that want a single subscription management layer.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Category | ProfitWell | Baremetrics |
|---|---|---|
| Core MRR metrics | Full suite, free | Full suite, paid |
| Churn analysis | Basic cohort view | Deep cohort + reason analysis |
| Trial conversion tracking | Limited | Trial Insights (dedicated) |
| Failed payment recovery | Retain (Paddle-only) | Recover add-on |
| Cancellation surveys | No | Cancellation Insights add-on |
| Customer-level data | Basic | Deep customer profiles |
| Segmentation | Plan, geography, custom fields | Plan, geography, custom attributes |
| Forecasting | No | Forecast+ add-on |
| Benchmarking | Yes (34K+ companies) | Yes (anonymized peer data) |
| API access | Yes | Yes |
Pricing Comparison
ProfitWell Pricing
ProfitWell Metrics is free. There are no tiered plans for the core metrics functionality. Paddle customers get access automatically. Non-Paddle customers can connect via API at no charge but may encounter limitations on support and feature access over time.
If you use Paddle Billing, you pay transaction fees to Paddle (typically 5% + payment processing) and get ProfitWell Metrics included. The Retain product for dunning is part of Paddle's broader billing platform.
Baremetrics Pricing
Baremetrics operates on MRR-based pricing with several tiers:
- Launch: Approximately $75/month — core metrics, up to a defined MRR threshold
- Grow: Scales with MRR, roughly $199-$399/month range
- Scale: Up to approximately $1,152/month for high-MRR businesses
- Recover add-on: $129/month for dunning and failed payment recovery
- Cancellation Insights add-on: $129/month
- Forecast+ add-on: Financial forecasting capabilities
Baremetrics also offers a startup program that gives eligible early-stage companies free or discounted access to the full feature set.
Key Feature Comparison
Metrics Coverage
Both platforms cover the core SaaS metrics stack comprehensively: Monthly Recurring Revenue, Annual Recurring Revenue, churn rate (gross and net), expansion MRR, contraction MRR, Average Revenue Per User, and Customer Lifetime Value. There is no meaningful gap in the base metrics layer.
Where they diverge is in depth of analysis. Baremetrics offers more granular cohort reporting — you can slice churn by acquisition cohort, plan type, and custom customer attributes. ProfitWell provides cohort views but with less drill-down flexibility for non-Paddle users.
Trial Insights
This is one of Baremetrics' clearest differentiators. Trial Insights tracks every trial in your pipeline, showing conversion rate by plan, trial length, source, and customer attributes. For SaaS businesses where trial conversion is a primary growth lever, this visibility matters significantly.
ProfitWell does not have a comparable standalone Trial Insights product for non-Paddle users. Paddle Billing users get trial tracking within the broader Paddle dashboard, but it is not as analytically rich as Baremetrics' dedicated feature.
Dunning and Recovery
Baremetrics Recover handles failed payment recovery with automatic retry logic, customizable email sequences, and reporting on recovered revenue. At $129/month, it targets the revenue leak from involuntary churn — typically 20-40% of total churn for subscription businesses.
ProfitWell historically offered Retain as a standalone dunning product. Post-acquisition, Retain functionality has been absorbed into Paddle Billing's native capabilities. Teams on Stripe using ProfitWell would need a separate dunning tool (Churnkey, Stunning, or similar).
Data Connectivity
ProfitWell connects to Stripe, Paddle, Braintree, Chargebee, Recurly, and several other processors. Since the Paddle acquisition, new integrations have been Paddle-centric. Existing third-party integrations are maintained but receive less active development.
Baremetrics connects to Stripe, Paddle, Braintree, Apple App Store, Google Play Store, and Recurly. It also integrates with Slack (metric alerts), HubSpot (customer enrichment), Intercom (customer context), and Google Sheets (export). The integration set is actively maintained across processors.
Neither platform connects to accounting software (QuickBooks, Xero), CRM pipeline data, or ad spend — meaning both operate exclusively in the subscription revenue layer without broader financial or operational context.
Ease of Use and Setup
ProfitWell is exceptionally fast to set up. If you are on Paddle Billing, metrics appear automatically within minutes. For Stripe users, the connection takes under five minutes via OAuth. The interface is clean and the learning curve is minimal — core metrics are visible immediately without configuration.
Baremetrics setup is similarly fast for Stripe users. The initial dashboard populates with historical data once the connection is authorized. Where Baremetrics requires more configuration is in custom attributes — if you want to segment customers by cohort properties stored in your billing system, you need to map those fields. The setup is well-documented and takes 15-30 minutes for a complete configuration.
Best Use Cases
Choose ProfitWell If:
- You use Paddle Billing as your primary payment processor
- You are pre-revenue or under $10K MRR and budget is a constraint
- You need core MRR tracking without dunning or trial analytics
- You value benchmarking against a large subscription company dataset
- You are a solo founder who wants metrics without managing another paid tool
Choose Baremetrics If:
- You use Stripe and want the deepest native Stripe analytics available
- You need Trial Insights to optimize trial-to-paid conversion
- Involuntary churn from failed payments is a meaningful problem (Recover)
- You want customer-level context tied to subscription metrics
- You are at $50K+ MRR and need segmentation depth for strategic decisions
- You want Cancellation Insights to understand why customers leave
The Operating Intelligence Alternative: Fairview
Both ProfitWell and Baremetrics answer one question: how is your subscription revenue performing? That is a critical question, but it is only part of the picture that operators and founders need.
Fairview is an Operating Intelligence Platform that connects your SaaS billing metrics (Stripe, subscription data) with your financial data (QuickBooks, Xero) and pipeline data (HubSpot) to surface the operating picture — margin by segment, NRR trends, pipeline health, and weekly priorities.
Where ProfitWell and Baremetrics stop at revenue metrics, Fairview answers:
- Which customer segments are actually profitable after cost of service?
- Where is margin leaking relative to revenue growth?
- What should the team focus on this week to improve operating performance?
Fairview is not a replacement for either tool — it is the layer above them that ties subscription metrics to financial reality.
Pricing: Starter $149/mo · Growth $349/mo · Scale $699/mo
Learn more about Fairview →Alternatives to Consider
- ChartMogul: Free up to $10K MRR (Launch plan), stronger multi-processor support and segmentation depth — the strongest neutral alternative
- Stripe Dashboard: Built-in metrics for Stripe users at no extra cost, but limited analytics depth
- Recurly Analytics: Native analytics for Recurly billing users
- Maxio (formerly Chargify + SaaSOptics): Combined billing and metrics for B2B SaaS
- Paddle Analytics: If you are fully committed to the Paddle ecosystem
Final Verdict
ProfitWell wins on price. If you use Paddle or you are in the earliest stages of building a SaaS business, ProfitWell delivers solid MRR visibility at zero cost. The benchmarking database is a genuine differentiator. The trade-off is that it is becoming a Paddle-first product.
Baremetrics wins on depth. For Stripe-native SaaS teams that need Trial Insights, structured churn analysis, customer-level context, and failed payment recovery in a single platform, Baremetrics is worth the $75-$199/month entry price. At scale, the analytics quality justifies the cost.
The real question is not which subscription metrics tool to choose — it is whether subscription metrics alone are sufficient for the decisions you need to make. If you need margin, pipeline health, and operating recommendations alongside MRR tracking, you need an additional intelligence layer.
See the Full Operating Picture
Fairview connects your subscription metrics, financial data, and pipeline into one operating intelligence layer — so you always know what is making money and what to do next.
Try Fairview Free