Gross Revenue Retention

GRR uses the same cohort as net revenue retention but strips out upsells, cross-sells and price increases, so it cannot exceed 100%.¹Source 1 · SaaS Capital, 20232023 B2B SaaS Retention Benchmarks (Research Brief 28)saas-capital.com It isolates the defensive side of the business: how much of what customers already pay survives a year of renewals, budget cuts and competitors. The two losses it counts are the same pair Stripe groups as “churned revenue”: churned MRR plus contraction MRR.²Source 2 · Stripe DocsBilling analytics: metric definitions (churned revenue)docs.stripe.com

A cohort starts the year at $500,000 MRR. Over 12 months it loses $15,000 to downgrades and $35,000 to cancellations, and expands by $80,000. GRR = (500,000 − 15,000 − 35,000) ÷ 500,000 = 90%. NRR for the same cohort is 106%. The 16-point gap is expansion; if expansion stalls next year, growth from the base drops to whatever GRR allows.

SaaS Capital’s 2023 survey of more than 1,500 private B2B SaaS companies found a median GRR of 91%, unchanged from the prior year, and described 90% as the bar you need to clear to have a shot at parity with peers.¹Source 1 · SaaS Capital, 20232023 B2B SaaS Retention Benchmarks (Research Brief 28)saas-capital.com Higher-priced products retain better: companies with annual contract values above $25,000 showed roughly 93% median GRR versus 90% below that.¹Source 1 · SaaS Capital, 20232023 B2B SaaS Retention Benchmarks (Research Brief 28)saas-capital.com

• Netting expansion and contraction on the same account before calculating. If a customer drops one product and adds another, count the drop as contraction.
• Reporting logo retention instead. Keeping 95% of customers can still mean losing 15% of revenue if the biggest accounts leave.
• Excluding “involuntary” churn from failed payments. It is still revenue you no longer collect.

In Kimo, GRR and NRR share one customer-month model built from Stripe or your billing database, so the cohort and window always match. Chart them together in the revenue view, set an alert when trailing GRR drops below your floor, and use cohort analysis to see which signup quarters or plans are dragging it down. The SaaS metrics guide covers the SQL.