Free checklist

AARRR audit checklist

25 questions to diagnose your funnel stage by stage — Awareness, Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue. Copy it, answer it, fix the biggest leak first.

Markdown — paste it into Notion, Linear or any doc

# AARRR Audit Checklist

Run this audit quarterly. For each question, note the metric, its trend, and one action.

## Awareness
- [ ] Do we know our top 3 traffic sources and their month-over-month trend?
- [ ] What share of traffic is branded search vs. non-branded?
- [ ] Which content or channel produced the most first-touch visits last quarter?
- [ ] Are we measured on impressions and reach, or only on clicks?

## Acquisition
- [ ] What is our visitor-to-signup conversion rate, per channel?
- [ ] What does a signup cost (CAC) per channel, fully loaded?
- [ ] Which landing page converts best, and do we know why?
- [ ] Are UTM conventions enforced so attribution is trustworthy?

## Activation
- [ ] Have we defined the activation moment (the "aha") in one sentence?
- [ ] What percentage of signups reach activation within 7 days?
- [ ] Where is the biggest drop-off in the onboarding flow?
- [ ] What is the median time-to-value for a new account?

## Retention
- [ ] What is monthly logo churn and monthly revenue churn?
- [ ] What does the week 1 / week 4 / week 12 retention curve look like?
- [ ] Which behaviors correlate with long-term retention?
- [ ] Do we have a win-back or dunning flow, and does it recover revenue?

## Referral
- [ ] Can users share or invite from inside the product in under 10 seconds?
- [ ] What is our k-factor (invites per user x invite conversion)?
- [ ] What share of new signups is referred vs. paid vs. organic?
- [ ] Is there a reason (incentive or status) to refer, on both sides?

## Revenue
- [ ] What are MRR, ARPU and gross margin, and their 3-month trend?
- [ ] What is LTV, and is LTV:CAC above 3?
- [ ] What is CAC payback in months, per channel?
- [ ] Which plan or segment drives expansion revenue?
- [ ] Where do trials or checkouts abandon, and have we tested that step?

## Wrap-up
- Top 3 leaks found: ...
- One experiment per leak: ...
- Owner and review date: ...

How to run an AARRR audit

The AARRR framework — pirate metrics, coined by Dave McClure — splits your funnel into six stages so you can find where growth actually leaks. Most teams obsess over the top (more traffic, more signups) while the real problem sits in the middle: users sign up, never reach the aha moment, and quietly churn. An audit forces you to look at every stage with the same rigor.

Work through the checklist in order, but resist fixing things as you go. The goal of the first pass is a map, not a to-do list. For each question, write down three things: the current number, its trend over the last quarter, and how confident you are in the data. A metric you cannot measure is itself a finding — instrumentation gaps are usually the first fix.

Then prioritize by arithmetic, not by excitement. A 10 percent improvement at a stage that processes 10,000 users is worth more than a 50 percent improvement at a stage that sees 200. In practice the highest-leverage leaks are almost always activation and retention: they compound into every downstream metric, and they are the cheapest to fix because the users are already in the product.

Finish with the wrap-up section: three leaks, one experiment each, one owner, one review date. An audit without a named owner and a date is a document, not a decision. Re-run the audit quarterly — the leaks move as you fix them.

Related: AAARRR in the glossary and the k-factor calculator for the referral stage.