Net Dollar Retention vs Net Revenue Retention: Which Term Should You Use?

Ask a VC how a SaaS company is doing and they'll ask about NDR. Ask the same company's finance team and they'll pull up NRR. Same formula, same result, different label. That naming split trips up first-time founders writing a data room or pitch deck, so this post covers where each term comes from, who uses which one, and how to avoid confusing an investor by mixing them. For the actual calculation, see how to calculate net revenue retention or the full net revenue retention formula guide.

Table of Contents

• Where "Net Dollar Retention" Comes From
• NDR and NRR Are the Same Formula
• Why VCs and Board Decks Lean Toward "NDR"
• Why Finance and RevOps Teams Say "NRR"
• Which Term to Use in Fundraising Materials
• Frequently Asked Questions

Where "Net Dollar Retention" Comes From

"Net Dollar Retention" is the term that stuck in public-company SaaS reporting and, from there, in venture capital. Enterprise SaaS companies popularized the phrase in earnings calls and investor letters, describing how much revenue a cohort of existing customers retained and expanded in dollar terms. Because so many growth-stage and late-stage investors came up watching those public filings, the term carried over into how they talk about private companies too.

If an investor asks "what's your NDR," they're using the vocabulary they picked up from the companies they benchmark you against.

NDR and NRR Are the Same Formula

There's no calculation difference between the two terms. Both measure the same thing:

NDR = NRR = (Starting MRR + Expansion MRR − Contraction MRR − Churned MRR) ÷ Starting MRR × 100

Whichever label you use, the formula excludes new customers, includes existing-customer expansion and contraction, and subtracts churned revenue from the same fixed cohort. If two SaaS companies report different NDR and NRR figures for what looks like the same business, the difference is almost always in cohort definition or data handling, not in what the terms mean.

Why VCs and Board Decks Lean Toward "NDR"

Investors default to "NDR" because it's the term embedded in the SaaS benchmarking reports, portfolio dashboards, and comparable-company analyses they already use. When a partner is scanning ten term sheets a week, consistent vocabulary across companies matters more than which label is technically more descriptive. Using "NDR" in your deck signals that you speak the same shorthand the room already uses.

Why Finance and RevOps Teams Say "NRR"

Inside a company, finance and RevOps teams more often say "NRR" because it sits naturally next to Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) — the two terms share the "revenue retention" framing and get reported side by side on the same dashboard. "Net revenue retention" also reads more clearly in an internal FP&A model or a board packet appendix where the term needs to be unambiguous to someone outside the deal-making context.

Neither convention is wrong. The mismatch only becomes a problem when a company uses one term internally and a different one externally without saying they're the same metric.

Which Term to Use in Fundraising Materials

In a pitch deck or data room, state both terms once, in one line, the first time the metric appears — for example, "Net Revenue Retention (NRR / NDR): 114%." That single line removes any ambiguity for a reader who's used to seeing the other label. After that first mention, use whichever term matches how the rest of your materials are written, and stay consistent for the remainder of the document.

Standard SaaS metrics templates used in data rooms typically list this figure once, so don't create two separate line items for "NDR" and "NRR" in the same financial model — that reads as if they're different numbers when they aren't.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Net Dollar Retention the same as Net Revenue Retention?

Yes. Both terms describe the same formula and the same result: how much revenue a fixed cohort of existing customers retained and expanded over a period, expressed as a percentage of that cohort's starting revenue.

Which term should I use in my pitch deck?

Use "NRR / NDR" together the first time the metric appears, then use whichever term the rest of your deck already uses. This avoids making an investor wonder if you're reporting two different numbers.

Do investors care which term I use?

Not usually, as long as you're consistent and the underlying formula and cohort definition are clear. What investors do care about is whether the number is calculated the same way period over period.

Why do some companies report both NDR and GRR?

NDR (or NRR) includes expansion revenue and can exceed 100%. GRR excludes expansion and caps at 100%. Reporting both shows an investor whether growth in the existing base comes from upsells or purely from not losing customers.

Once you've settled on which term to use, the net revenue retention formula guide covers the full calculation, benchmarks, and related metrics like renewal-based NRR — and Chartsy can run the underlying math directly from your Stripe or Paddle data.