GRR
Gross Revenue Retention
Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) measures the percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers, excluding any expansion. Unlike NRR, GRR can never exceed 100% — it purely measures your ability to keep existing revenue. GRR below 90% in enterprise SaaS signals serious retention problems.
Start of year ARR from existing customers: $10M. During the year: $800K churns, $200K downgrades. No expansion included. GRR = ($10M - $800K - $200K) / $10M = 90%. If this same cohort expanded by $500K, NRR would be 95% — but the underlying GRR reveals the retention challenge.
GRR is the truth metric that NRR can hide. If your NRR is 105% but your GRR is 80%, you're losing $20 of every $100 and desperately upselling to cover it. That's not sustainable — eventually expansion opportunities run out. The best SaaS companies have GRR above 95%, meaning they barely lose any existing revenue. The gap between your GRR and NRR tells you how dependent you are on upsells. A 20-point gap means you're running to stand still. If you had to pick one retention metric, pick GRR — it shows your actual customer satisfaction and product stickiness without the expansion mask.
Define ItOther Definitions
“Gross Revenue Retention measures the percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers over a given period, excluding any expansion, cross-sell, or upsell revenue. GRR cannot exceed 100%.”
“GRR isolates the impact of churn and contraction on existing revenue. It's a purer measure of customer retention than NRR because it removes the masking effect of expansion revenue.”
“Gross Revenue Retention represents the recurring revenue retained from your existing customer base after accounting for churn and downgrades, but before accounting for any expansion.”
Gross Revenue Retention calculates the percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers, accounting only for churn and contraction (downgrades). Unlike Net Revenue Retention, GRR excludes expansion revenue and therefore can never exceed 100%. This makes GRR a purer measure of customer retention and product stickiness. For enterprise SaaS, best-in-class GRR exceeds 95%; anything below 85% indicates serious retention challenges. The difference between GRR and NRR reveals expansion dependency — a large gap means the company relies heavily on upselling to offset churn. While NRR shows overall revenue health from the existing base, GRR shows the underlying retention foundation.
MistakesCommon Mistakes
Confusing GRR with NRR — GRR excludes expansion, NRR includes it
Celebrating high NRR while ignoring low GRR (expansion is masking churn)
Not calculating GRR by segment — enterprise vs SMB have very different benchmarks
Expecting GRR above 100% — it's mathematically impossible
Using GRR alone without NRR — both metrics together tell the full story
NRR looks fine but GRR tells a different story?
We analyze your retention by segment to find where you're losing customers — and build the CS processes to stop the leak.
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