How are subscribers counted?

Subscribers is the number of unique users who started a subscription at least once. It counts people, not payments, and it counts them once.

What is included

Free trials, intro offers and direct paid subscriptions all count as a subscriber at the moment the subscription starts.
A user who cancels and subscribes again is still one subscriber. The payment count grows; the subscriber count does not.
The subscriber stays in the cohort where they were acquired, even if they subscribe much later.

Mobile: in the cohort of the install date — the user’s last non-organic install.
Web: in the cohort of the first-visit date — the last non-organic visit before the subscription.

In Calendar Insights the same event is shown on the date it actually happened, which is why calendar and cohort counts differ for the same period.

Subscribers — everyone who started a subscription, including trials that may never convert.
Payers — unique users who have paid at least once; Payers full counts those who paid a full price, so trial-only and intro-only users are not included.
pSubscribers and pPayers are the predicted versions of the same counts for cohorts that are still maturing.
Subscribers alive is who is active right now; Subscribers churned is who cancelled.

Subscribers vs transactions. Many dashboards count payments or subscriptions, not unique people. One user with a trial and then a renewal is one subscriber and several payments.
Date type. A cohort report groups by acquisition date, your billing tool by event date.
Timezone, and the fact that the current day is always partial.
Mobile only: iOS attribution settles about four full days after the cohort date, so the newest cohorts keep growing.
Web only: subscriptions without the cw_subscribe event are still counted in the total, but cannot be split by source.

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