---
title: "What's the difference between subscribers, subscriptions, and products (subscription lines)?"
slug: "whats-the-difference-between-subscribers-subscriptions-and-products-subscription-lines"
updated: 2025-11-11T08:34:16Z
published: 2025-11-17T19:25:49Z
canonical: "help.skio.com/whats-the-difference-between-subscribers-subscriptions-and-products-subscription-lines"
stale: true
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.skio.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# What's the difference between subscribers, subscriptions, and products (subscription lines)?

Understanding the difference between these three concepts is essential for interpreting your analytics accurately.

## Subscribers

**A subscriber is a unique individual customer** who has at least one active subscription.

If Jane Smith has two active subscriptions in your store, she counts as **1 subscriber**.

## Subscriptions

**A subscription is a unique subscription contract.** Each subscription has its own billing schedule, products, and status.

If Jane Smith subscribes to coffee and also subscribes to tea as two separate contracts, that's **2 subscriptions** even though she's only 1 subscriber.

## Products (subscription lines)

**A product or subscription line is an individual item within a subscription.** One subscription can contain multiple products.

If Jane's coffee subscription includes both ground coffee and whole bean coffee, that's **1 subscription with 2 products (or 2 subscription lines)**.

## Why this matters

These distinctions affect how you read your dashboards:

- **Subscriber-level analysis** helps you understand customer behavior and loyalty. Use this when you want to know how many unique people are subscribing.
- **Subscription-level analysis** helps you understand contract performance and churn. Use this when tracking individual subscription lifecycles.
- **Product-level analysis** helps you understand which items drive retention and revenue. Use this for inventory planning and product strategy.

Many dashboards let you toggle between **Subscriber view** and **Subscription view** to analyze the same data from different angles.

## What's the difference between Total Quantity and Total Distinct Count?

**Total Quantity** counts the units of each product, not just the lines. If Jane's subscription includes 3 bags of coffee, that's:

- 1 subscription line (the coffee product)
- 3 units of quantity

**Total Distinct Count** would count that as just 1 product, regardless of quantity.

**For more details on how these concepts apply across dashboards**, see the [Analytics Glossary](/help/docs/analytics-glossary).