How much of your revenuecomes back on its own.
A repeat customer costs a fraction of a new one and buys without you paying to find them again. This calculator turns your order data into a repeat purchase rate, a purchase frequency, and a first-time share — then tells you whether you're building a brand or renting an audience.
Your numbers
Unique customers who bought at least once in the period.
Customers with 2 or more orders — the ones who came back.
Every order placed in the period, first-time and repeat combined.
The verdict
Repeat purchase rate
27.0%
Purchase frequency
1.6
Avg orders per customer.
Repeat customers
270
First-time share
73.0%
Your customer base
The blended ecommerce repeat rate sits around 27%. Above ~25% you're building real loyalty; clear 40% and your revenue compounds without re-buying every customer. Judge against your category, not the average.
Reverse-solve · hit a target repeat rate
Repeat customers needed
350
Short by
80
To hit a 35% repeat rate on 1,000 customers you'd need 350 of them to come back — 80 more than the 270 you have now. Every one of those extra second orders is revenue you don't pay to acquire.
Sensitivity · the compounding effect
What each repeat-rate point is worth
| Repeat rate | Repeat customers | Extra orders vs 27% | Modeled repeat revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10% | 100 | -170 | $6,500 |
| 15% | 150 | -120 | $9,750 |
| 20% | 200 | -70 | $13,000 |
| 25% | 250 | -20 | $16,250 |
| 30% | 300 | +30 | $19,500 |
| 35% | 350 | +80 | $22,750 |
| 40% | 400 | +130 | $26,000 |
| 50% | 500 | +230 | $32,500 |
Modeled at one repeat order per returning customer and a $65 order value. Your numbers vary, but the shape holds: moving the repeat rate a few points adds orders and revenue you never have to re-acquire.
Your move
You've got the rate. I find the repeat revenue you're leaving behind.
Repeat purchase rate 27.0% (270 of 1,000 customers), 1.60 orders each.
Send me your repeat rate and how you sell. In the first 30 minutes I'll show you where the second order is leaking — onboarding, lifecycle, offer, or product — and what I'd build first to compound it. Free, and you keep the plan whether you hire me or not.
Plain English
The cheapest revenue you'll ever earn
Repeat purchase rate (RPR) is the share of your customers who buy more than once. If 270 of 1,000 customers placed a second order, your RPR is 27%. It's the simplest, hardest-to-fake signal of whether people actually want what you sell — or just clicked an ad once and never thought about you again.
It matters because acquisition is the most expensive thing you do. You already paid to win the first order; the second one rides on the brand, the product, and the experience instead of the ad account. A business at 40% repeat rate keeps compounding revenue it doesn't have to re-buy every month. A business at 12% is on a treadmill — running hard just to stay level.
This calculator gives you three numbers from the same data: the repeat purchase rate (your loyalty headline), purchase frequency (average orders per customer, which captures the heavy repeaters a percentage hides), and your first-time share (how much of your base is one-and-done). Read together they tell you whether your growth is real or rented.
The formula
Repeat purchase rate = (Repeat customers ÷ Total customers) × 100
270 repeat customers ÷ 1,000 total = 27% repeat purchase rate. With 1,600 total orders, purchase frequency is 1,600 ÷ 1,000 = 1.6 orders per customer, and your first-time share is the other 73%. Lift RPR from 27% to 35% and you've added compounding revenue without spending a dollar more on ads.
What good looks like
A good repeat rate is one that matches how often your product can plausibly be re-bought — consumables get reordered on a schedule and should clear 40%, a mattress can't and shouldn't be judged like one. Blended ecommerce sits near 27%, but that average hides everything. Read your number against your category, not the crowd. Typical repeat-rate ranges by type:
| Category | Repeat rate |
|---|---|
| Consumables / CPG | 40-50% |
| Apparel | 25-35% |
| High-consideration / one-off | 10-20% |
Source: Repeat purchase benchmarks (Shopify / Metrilo) · 2025
Your repeat rate came back low. Now what?
Low RPR, replenishable product.
You're leaving the easiest money on the table. If people should be re-buying and aren't, the gap is lifecycle: post-purchase email, a subscribe-and-save offer, and a reorder reminder timed to when they run out.
Low RPR, genuinely one-off product.
Stop chasing repeat rate and chase referrals and AOV instead. A mattress brand wins on review-driven acquisition and accessories, not on making someone buy a second mattress this year.
Decent RPR but flat purchase frequency.
A handful of loyalists are propping up the average. Most repeaters bought twice and stopped. Build the third-order moment — that's the cliff most brands fall off.
High first-time share that never shrinks.
Acquisition is outrunning retention. You're filling a leaky bucket. Before you scale spend further, fix onboarding and the first 30–60 days, or you'll just buy more churn.
Nine ways to lift repeat purchase rate
01Win the first 60 days
The window right after the first order is when intent is highest. A timed second-order offer here moves RPR more than any later campaign.
02Build a post-purchase flow
Onboarding, how-to-use, and a 'time to reorder' email sequence quietly turn one-time buyers into two-time buyers on autopilot.
03Offer subscribe and save
For consumables, a subscription converts a one-off into recurring revenue and locks in repeat rate by default.
04Time reorder reminders to usage
Know how long the product lasts and email right before it runs out. Relevance beats frequency every time.
05Reward the second order, not just the first
Most discounts go to new customers. Flip some budget to a returning-customer offer — it's cheaper revenue and it builds the habit.
06Make reordering one tap
Saved carts, a reorder button, and stored payment remove the friction that quietly kills the second purchase.
07Run a real loyalty program
Points or tiers give a concrete reason to come back to you instead of the cheapest alternative.
08Fix the product and the unboxing
No flow saves a product that disappoints. The fastest repeat-rate lever is sometimes just shipping something people love.
09Segment by buying behavior
One-time, repeat, and lapsed customers need different messages. Blasting everyone the same email wastes your best retention asset.
The vocabulary
- Repeat purchase rate
- Share of customers who have placed 2 or more orders. Repeat customers ÷ total customers, as a percentage.
- Purchase frequency
- Average number of orders per customer in the period: total orders ÷ total customers. Captures heavy repeaters a flat percentage hides.
- First-time share
- Share of customers who have ordered only once. The inverse of repeat purchase rate.
- Retention rate
- Share of customers who remain active across periods. Related to RPR but measured over time rather than order count.
- Churn
- The opposite of retention: customers who stop buying. A high first-time share that never converts is silent churn.
- LTV
- Lifetime value: total profit a customer generates over their relationship with you. Repeat rate is its single biggest input.
Repeat purchase rate questions, straight answers
It depends on your category. A blended ecommerce benchmark sits around 27%, but consumables and CPG brands often run 40–50% while high-consideration, one-off products live at 10–20%. Anything above ~25% is generally healthy for most stores; above 40% you're running a loyalty machine. Compare yourself to your category, not the average.
Keep going
A calculator tells you what. A call tells you what to do about it.
Send me the account behind these numbers. I'll tell you straight where the money's leaking and what I'd fix first — free, and you keep it whether you hire me or not.