Gross Revenue Retention (GRR)
Gross revenue retention (GRR) measures how much recurring revenue you keep from existing customers over a period after churn and downgrades, with expansion revenue excluded. It can never exceed 100%.
How to calculate GRR
GRR = (starting MRR − churn − contraction) ÷ starting MRR × 100
Take the recurring revenue from your existing customers at the start of the period. Subtract what you lost to cancellations (churn) and downgrades (contraction). Divide by the starting number. Expansion and upgrades are excluded, and so are new customers, GRR only measures what you kept of what you had.
Example: you start the quarter with $100,000 MRR from existing customers, lose $5,000 to churn and $2,000 to downgrades. GRR = (100,000 − 5,000 − 2,000) ÷ 100,000 = 93%, regardless of how much those customers expanded.
The floor metric
GRR is the honest floor under your retention story. NRR can look healthy while the base quietly erodes, a few large upsells cover a lot of churn. GRR can’t be rescued that way: every point below 100 is real revenue that walked out the door and has to be re-sold from scratch. That’s why buyers, boards and acquirers read GRR as the measure of how much customers actually want to keep the product.
It also sets the ceiling on efficient growth. A business at 85% GRR must replace 15% of its revenue every year before growing at all, and acquiring a new customer is almost always more expensive than keeping an existing one.
What healthy looks like
90%+ is a typical target for B2B SaaS. Enterprise products with annual contracts and high switching costs commonly run in the mid-90s; self-serve and SMB products usually sit lower, monthly plans are easier to cancel. As with NRR, the trend matters as much as the level: a GRR drifting down two points a quarter is a churn problem announcing itself early.
Keep both on the dashboard
GRR measures the leak; net revenue retention (NRR) measures whether growth from the base outruns it. Read together they tell you where to act: low GRR with high NRR says fix churn before the expansion engine slows; high GRR with modest NRR says the base is solid and the opportunity is expansion.
GRR moves one save at a time.
Every point of GRR is an account someone kept. Keply reads your email, ticket, usage and billing signals, flags the accounts at risk while the renewal is still saveable, and drafts and sends the save with your approval by default. Flat $299/month. See how it works.
GRR, FAQ
- What is a good GRR for B2B SaaS?
- 90%+ is a typical target for B2B SaaS, meaning you lose no more than 10% of existing recurring revenue a year to churn and downgrades. Enterprise books with high contract values often run higher; self-serve SMB books typically run lower. Compare against companies with a similar motion.
- Can GRR be over 100%?
- No. GRR excludes expansion by definition, so the best possible outcome is keeping everything you started with, exactly 100%. If your calculation exceeds 100%, expansion revenue has leaked into it and you're computing NRR.
- Why track GRR if I already track NRR?
- Because expansion can hide churn. A company with 115% NRR and 80% GRR is losing a fifth of its base every year and covering it with upsells, which works until the expansion slows. GRR shows the leak with nothing papering over it.
- How do I improve GRR?
- Catch at-risk accounts before the renewal, not at it. That means watching the leading signals, usage dropping, support tickets piling up, champions going quiet, invoices slipping, and acting on them early. GRR moves account by account, save by save.
See the revenue at risk on your own book.
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