Benchmark · Revenue basis
Subscription or service: which number are you comparing?
Short answer: the two buckets publish similar-looking monthly numbers but they measure different money — a subscription median of $2,933 against $2,287 for managed service. Neither is profit, and comparing them without the economic basis is the mistake this page exists to prevent.
- Benchmark snapshot · 2026-10-30
- 851 products
- 435 report MRR
- The aggregates here are a monthly rebuild of the counted population; live product cards, the board and the MCP carry a newer date of their own. Both clocks are on Method.
Subscription products
461
433 report MRR
Managed service
29
18 report MRR
One-time sales
78
no recurring plan
The short answer
- 01
Subscription is the majority bucket: 461 of 738 published products, and 433 of them report MRR. Managed service is 29, one-time sales 78, platform fee 49.
- 02
Medians: subscription $2,933, managed service $2,287, one-time $245. The 30-day amount medians are $3,755, $2,994 and $1,789.
- 03
The gap is a composition effect as much as a business-model effect: subscription has 400+ rows and a long tail of small products; the service buckets have tens of rows and a few large agencies. Read the denominator before reading the median.
- 04
Top of the range: 107 subscription products clear $10k MRR, against 5 managed-service products and 0 one-time products.
Why the numbers are not the same kind of money
| Pricing model | What the amount is | Comparable with |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | Charges for continued access on a repeating cycle | Other subscription rows |
| Managed service | Charges for work delivered: project, retainer, done-for-you | Other service rows, and only with a basis label |
| One-time sales | A single purchase; no recurring plan | Nothing recurring — it is a different event |
| Platform fee | Money processed for sellers; part may be pass-through | Only same-basis rows; check includesPassThrough |
The label in this table is the pricing model. The economic basis (what the money is) is a separate field and is printed on every report and board row.
All pricing models, one table
| Pricing model | Products | Report MRR | Median MRR | Top 10% | ≥ $1k | ≥ $10k | Median 30d amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subscription | 461 | 433 | $2,933 | $28,484 | 368 | 107 | $3,755 |
| Managed service | 29 | 18 | $2,287 | $20,612 | 14 | 5 | $2,994 |
| One-time sales | 78 | 32 | $245 | $1,276 | 5 | 0 | $1,789 |
| Platform fee | 49 | 24 | $3,234 | $27,033 | 17 | 7 | $9,341 |
| Usage-based | 64 | 55 | $1,387 | $9,034 | 37 | 5 | $3,034 |
| Freemium | 24 | 19 | $8,321 | $51,398 | 14 | 8 | $8,980 |
| Hybrid | 12 | 11 | $6,260 | $17,857 | 11 | 3 | $6,021 |
As of 2026-11-11. "Report MRR" is the denominator behind every median in that row. The pricing-model label says how the product charges; it is not evidence that the amount is recurring.
Sample bias, stated
- 01
Self-selection: this is a library of products that chose to publish a revenue figure. A service agency that bills quietly does not appear.
- 02
Survivorship: products that did not last long enough to report are underrepresented, so medians skew up.
- 03
Classification: the pricing-model label is assigned by us from the product’s pricing page, not by the provider. It says how the product charges, not how the money was recognised.
- 04
Small buckets: the service buckets are tens of rows, so a single large row moves the median. That is why the report-MRR denominator is printed next to every number.
Managed-service products, by MRR
- 1
Marketing
$34,750
30d $60,750
- 2
Marketing
$22,624
30d $24,226
- 3
Marketing
$19,750
30d $18,910
- 4
AI
$17,682
30d $972,299
- 5
Marketing
$11,240
30d $12,919
- 6
Sales
$5,180
30d $5,609
- 7
SaaS
$4,386
30d $4,312
- 8
$4,000
30d $5,532
- 9
Recruiting & HR
$2,300
30d $28,382
- 10
Sales
$2,273
30d $3,844
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Method
851 products in our library that publish revenue through a payment provider, crawled 2026-10-30. 435 of them report a non-zero MRR; medians and percentiles are computed on that subset only. Missing values are never treated as zero. This is the population that chooses to publish revenue — not the whole market.
Full method and limitsWhat this page cannot answer: whether one model is better for you. That depends on your costs, contract length, sales cycle and retention — none of which are in this dataset. It answers only what the published rows look like.
