Stripe Sigma vs a revenue dashboard

Updated 2026-08-04

Stripe Sigma lets you write SQL against your own Stripe data. For a technical founder that is genuinely appealing: no third party, no subscription, complete flexibility.

It's also the wrong tool for most people who consider it.

What Sigma is good at

Arbitrary questions. "Which customers upgraded within 30 days of signup and are still active?" No dashboard has that button; SQL does.
No data leaves Stripe. Queries run inside Stripe's infrastructure.
Usage pricing. Cheaper than a $129/month subscription for occasional use.
Exact control. Your MRR definition, your edge cases, your rules.

What Sigma is bad at

Answering "what's my MRR?" quickly. You have to write the query. Correctly normalising annual and weekly intervals in SQL is more fiddly than it sounds.
Being on your phone. It's a web query interface.
Anything outside Stripe. Sigma knows about Stripe. Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy, App Store and PayPal revenue are invisible.
Maintenance. Your query becomes a small internal product. Someone has to fix it when Stripe changes a schema or you add a plan.

The honest comparison

	Sigma	Dashboard tool	FRGMNT
Custom analysis	✅ Unlimited	Limited	❌
Time to first number	Hours	Minutes	Minutes
Multi-platform	❌ Stripe only	Some	✅ 5 platforms
On your phone	❌	Rarely	✅
Ongoing maintenance	You	None	None
Price	Usage	$0–129/mo	$49.99/yr

The real question

Is your MRR question standard or bespoke?

If you want "what recurs each month, across everything I sell" — that's standard. Writing SQL to answer it is engineering work you don't need to do, and it only covers Stripe.

If you want "cohort retention by acquisition channel for annual plans sold during the Q2 promotion" — that's bespoke, and Sigma is genuinely the right tool.

Most founders think they want the second and actually check the first, daily.

Using both

A common sensible pattern: Sigma for occasional deep analysis, and something fast for the daily number. They cost usage-based-pennies and $49.99/year respectively, which isn't an extravagant combination.

If you like the SQL approach, FRGMNT also ships a CLI and an MCP server — so you can query True MRR from a terminal or let an AI assistant read it, across all five platforms rather than just Stripe.

Frequently asked

What is Stripe Sigma?

A Stripe product that lets you run SQL queries directly against your own Stripe data, priced by usage. It is powerful for custom analysis but requires writing queries.

Is Sigma cheaper than Baremetrics?

Usually yes for Stripe-only businesses, since it is usage-priced rather than a flat subscription. The cost is your time writing and maintaining queries.