How many statuses does a Lemon Squeezy subscription have?

Seven: on_trial, active, paused, past_due, unpaid, cancelled and expired. Which ones you count depends on whether you are asking who is paying, who has access, or how big the committed book is.

Does Lemon Squeezy count trials as active subscribers?

Yes, in its own dashboard figure. Filtering the API on filter[status]=active excludes trials and therefore returns fewer rows than the dashboard shows. Neither is wrong, they answer different questions.

Is a cancelled Lemon Squeezy subscription still paying?

Until ends_at, yes. Somebody who cancels an annual plan today is cancelled and paid up for another eleven months. The count of cancelled subscriptions with a future ends_at is revenue you are going to lose, visible months ahead.

Why do my Lemon Squeezy subscriber count and MRR disagree?

Because the active subscriber figure includes trials and MRR does not. The gap between the two is how many people are still deciding.

How to count active Lemon Squeezy subscriptions

Q: What does past_due mean in Lemon Squeezy?

A payment failed and dunning is retrying. Most recover, so counting past_due as churn means counting the loss twice, once now and once when the subscription actually goes unpaid. Track it separately as the churn you can fix.

What counts as an active Lemon Squeezy subscription?

It depends what you are counting for, and Lemon Squeezy's own answer is not the only reasonable one.

A subscription has one of seven statuses.

Status	Paying now?	Has access?
`on_trial`	No	Yes
`active`	Yes	Yes
`paused`	No	Depends on your setup
`past_due`	Payment failing	Usually yes
`unpaid`	No, dunning gave up	Usually no
`cancelled`	Until `ends_at`	Until `ends_at`
`expired`	No	No

Three different questions produce three different counts.

How many people are paying me? active alone.

How many people have access? active, on_trial, past_due, and cancelled that has not reached ends_at. This is the number your infrastructure costs track.

How big is the book? active plus cancelled before ends_at, because that money is already committed.

None of these is wrong. Picking one quietly and calling it "subscribers" is.

The call

curl -s 'https://api.lemonsqueezy.com/v1/subscriptions?filter[store_id]=12345&filter[status]=active&page[size]=100' \
  -H 'Accept: application/vnd.api+json' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <api key>'

Remember this is JSON:API: the status is at data[].attributes.status, not data[].status.

Lemon Squeezy's own count includes trials

Worth knowing before you compare your figure against the dashboard. Lemon Squeezy reports trialling subscriptions as active in its own subscriber count, so a filter on filter[status]=active returns fewer rows than the dashboard shows.

Neither is a bug. They are answering the second question and the first question respectively.

cancelled is not expired

The distinction people miss. A cancelled subscription keeps running until ends_at. Somebody who cancels an annual plan today is cancelled and paying for another eleven months.

const stillRunning = subs.filter((s) => {
  const a = s.attributes;
  if (a.status === "active" || a.status === "on_trial") return true;
  if (a.status === "cancelled") return Date.parse(a.ends_at) > Date.now();
  return false;
});

That is also where your churn leading indicator lives. The count of cancelled subscriptions with a future ends_at is revenue you are going to lose, visible months before it goes.

past_due is recoverable

A past_due subscription is a card that failed and dunning retrying. Most recover. Counting them as lost today means counting the loss twice: once now and once when they actually go unpaid.

Watch the past_due count as its own number. It is the churn you can fix.

In the notch

Notch Metrics reports Lemon Squeezy active subscribers as subscriptions in status active right now, trials included, which is Lemon Squeezy's own definition. The page says so rather than leaving you to discover it from a disagreement with the dashboard.

Place it beside MRR, which excludes trials, and the gap between the two is how many people are still deciding.

Everything Lemon Squeezy reports, or download Notch Metrics.