---
title: "Adding Engineering Metrics to the Redpoint SaaS Metrics Template"
description: "Learn 3 essential engineering metrics for SaaS startups: reliability, availability \u0026 incident rates. Updated Redpoint metrics template for data-driven founders."
categories: ["data analysis","benchmarks"]
keywords: ["Redpoint SaaS Metrics Template","engineering metrics","SaaS reliability","application availability","incident rate","data-driven founders","software performance metrics","SaaS benchmarks"]
ai_summary: "Explore essential engineering metrics for SaaS startups, focusing on reliability, availability, and incident rates to enhance product quality."
date: 2019-07-08
lastmod: 2026-07-28
canonical_url: https://www.tomtunguz.com/engineering-metrics/
author: "Tomasz Tunguz"
---

When I shared the [Redpoint SaaS Metrics Template,](https://tomtunguz.com/saas-startup-metrics-template/) I wrote about the difficulty I had identifying key engineering metrics. I was grateful for all the responses from leaders at many startups to share their expertise. I’ve updated the template with a few metrics.

**Reliability** - percent of application requests that load. 1 minus reliability is the percentage downtime. This measures the durability of the application.

**Availability** - percent of application requests that load within a certain latency. 99% uptime means for 99% of seconds within a month, the application responded to requests within 5 seconds. Each company should define the acceptable latency. This measures the responsiveness of the application.

**Incident rate -** support case count divided by active users. This is a proxy for product quality. If the support case count declines on a per user basis, this indicates product quality broadly defined has improved.

I think these three metrics provide a sense of engineering efforts for boards and executives to discuss. I wish there a way to get a sense of engineering cadence or productivity (similar to AE quota attainment), but that remains elusive.

Thank you to everyone who wrote in!