Churn & retentionMetric 11 of 35

GRRGross Revenue Retention

NRR's honest sibling: no expansion, just survival.

Same time window as NRR, but no expansion in the numerator. GRR is capped at 100% — it answers 'of what we had a year ago, how much did we keep?' without any upsell flattering.

Formula

GRR = (Starting MRR − Contraction − Churn) ÷ Starting MRR

Worked example

Start $100K, churn $4K, contraction $2K → GRR = (100 − 4 − 2) ÷ 100 = 94%.

Benchmark

B2B SaaS, annualised

Excellent

> 95%

Good

85–95%

At risk

< 80%

Why it matters

If NRR is your growth story, GRR is your defence. A company with 130% NRR and 75% GRR is using expansion to paper over heavy customer loss — which only works while a few big accounts keep growing. GRR above 90% is the foundation of compoundable SaaS.

Common mistakes

Reporting only NRR because it looks better.
Forgetting that GRR is by construction ≤ 100% — if you got >100%, you made a mistake.

Tracked in FlowMRR

Retention → NRR/GRR trend card — GRR is the same chart with expansion stripped out.

Track GRR in FlowMRR