How do you calculate Net Revenue Retention?

NRR % = ((Starting MRR + Expansion MRR − Contraction MRR − Churned MRR) ÷ Starting MRR) × 100. Crucially, new customer revenue is excluded — NRR only measures how the existing customer cohort trends on its own.

What's a good NRR for a SaaS company?

Best-in-class SaaS companies post NRR above 120%, meaning existing customers alone are growing revenue faster than churn and contraction can shrink it. 100%–120% is considered healthy, while anything below 100% means the existing customer base is shrinking in revenue terms even before counting new sales.

What is the difference between NRR and GRR?

NRR includes expansion revenue (upsells and upgrades) from existing customers, so it can exceed 100%. GRR (Gross Revenue Retention) excludes expansion entirely and is capped at 100% — it measures pure retention without any credit for upselling, making it a stricter, downside-only view of the same customer base.

Why do investors care so much about NRR specifically?

NRR above 100% means a business can keep growing revenue from its existing customers alone, even in a hypothetical scenario with zero new sales. It's viewed as a signal of genuine product value and pricing power, independent of how well the sales team is bringing in new logos.

Net Revenue Retention Calculator

(NRR & GRR Tool)

Calculate Net Revenue Retention and Gross Revenue Retention from your existing customer cohort's expansion, contraction, and churn — deliberately excluding new business.

Existing Customer Cohort Only — Exclude New Business

Starting MRR ($)

From customers you had at the beginning of the period

Expansion MRR ($)

Upgrades, upsells, and add-ons from those same existing customers

Contraction MRR ($)

Downgrades from existing customers

Churned MRR ($)

Lost entirely from existing customers who canceled

Calculated Results

Enter your starting MRR and its movement to calculate net revenue retention.

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The One SaaS Metric That Ignores New Sales on Purpose

Net Revenue Retention deliberately excludes new customer revenue to answer one specific question: is the existing customer base, left entirely alone, growing or shrinking? A business could be adding logos every month and still have a declining NRR if churn and downgrades are quietly eating away at the customers already on the books.

NRR % = ((Starting MRR + Expansion − Contraction − Churn) ÷ Starting MRR) × 100

Worked Example

A SaaS company starts the month with $100,000 in MRR from its existing customers. That same cohort adds $8,000 in expansion (upgrades), loses $3,000 to downgrades, and $4,000 to cancellations.

NRR = ($100,000 + $8,000 − $3,000 − $4,000) ÷ $100,000 = 101%

GRR for the same cohort, excluding the $8,000 expansion credit, would be ($100,000 − $3,000 − $4,000) ÷ $100,000 = 93% — the gap between the two numbers is entirely explained by upsell revenue.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

NRR as a percentage can't go below 0%, but it can drop well below 100% if churn and contraction badly outweigh expansion — some struggling SaaS businesses report NRR in the 70%–85% range, meaning existing customers alone are shrinking revenue by 15%–30% a year.

Both are common — investors most often see NRR reported annually or on a trailing-twelve-month basis, since a single month can be noisy. This calculator works for whatever period you enter the MRR figures for, monthly or annual.