---
title: What is Cohort analysis?
url: https://markin.ai/glossary/cohort-analysis
category: Retention and churn
---

# Cohort analysis

> Cohort analysis groups customers by a shared starting characteristic, usually acquisition month, and follows each group over time. It separates changes in customer quality from changes in company performance, which blended metrics permanently confuse.

## Why it matters for ARPU

Blended ARPU can rise while every individual cohort worsens. Cohorts are the minimum rigour required before claiming a growth programme worked.

## Related terms

- [Retention curve](https://markin.ai/glossary/retention-curve), A retention curve plots the share of a cohort still active against time since acquisition.
- [ARPU](https://markin.ai/glossary/arpu), ARPU, average revenue per user, is total revenue in a period divided by the average number of active users in that period.
- [Net revenue retention](https://markin.ai/glossary/net-revenue-retention), Net revenue retention measures revenue from an existing cohort at the end of a period against its revenue at the start, including upgrades, downgrades and churn, but excluding new customers.
- [Incrementality](https://markin.ai/glossary/incrementality), Incrementality is the portion of an outcome that would not have happened without the action.

## Go deeper

- [ARPU benchmarks by industry](https://markin.ai/blog/arpu-benchmarks-by-industry-2026), Cohort-adjusted comparisons.
- [Amplitude comparison](https://markin.ai/compare/markin-and-amplitude), Analysis alongside decisioning.

Source: https://markin.ai/glossary/cohort-analysis