What is Gross Revenue Retention (GRR)?

Gross revenue retention measures how much of your starting recurring revenue survives a period, counting only losses. Expansion is excluded deliberately. That restriction is the point: GRR shows how the existing base behaves before upsells are allowed to paper over it.

What Is Gross Revenue Retention?

GRR is the percentage of starting MRR retained after cancellations and downgrades, with no credit for expansion revenue. Because nothing can add to the numerator, GRR can never exceed 100%.

That ceiling is what distinguishes it from net revenue retention. NRR above 100% is a genuine achievement, but it can coexist with serious churn if a few accounts are expanding fast enough to mask it. GRR removes that possibility. It answers one question: of the revenue you had, how much stayed?

How Do You Calculate GRR?

GRR = (Starting MRR − Churned MRR − Contraction MRR) ÷ Starting MRR × 100

A worked example over twelve months:

• MRR at the start of the year: $100,000
• Revenue lost to cancellations: $8,000
• Revenue lost to downgrades: $4,000
• Expansion revenue: $25,000

GRR = ($100,000 − $8,000 − $4,000) ÷ $100,000 × 100 = 88%

NRR for the same period = ($100,000 − $12,000 + $25,000) ÷ $100,000 × 100 = 113%

Both describe the same year. The 113% is what you put in the deck; the 88% is what tells you a retention problem exists underneath it.

Why Does GRR Matter?

It cannot be flattered. Expansion revenue is often concentrated in a small number of accounts. GRR is immune to that concentration, so it is the number sophisticated investors ask for when NRR looks strong.

It sets the floor on growth. GRR of 88% means you lose 12% of revenue annually before you sell anything. Every growth plan starts by replacing that.

The GRR-to-NRR gap is diagnostic. A wide gap means expansion is carrying the business while the base leaks. A narrow gap means retention itself is healthy. Two companies both reporting 113% NRR can be in completely different positions.

What Is a Good GRR?

Segment	Healthy annual GRR
Enterprise B2B	90–95%
Mid-market B2B	85–90%
SMB-focused SaaS	75–85%
B2C / prosumer	60–75%

Above 90% is strong for any B2B business. Below 80% means the base erodes fast enough that acquisition has to run hard simply to hold position.

How Do You Improve GRR?

Everything that improves GRR is a retention lever rather than a sales one, because expansion does not count:

Reduce contraction, not just cancellation. Downgrades hit GRR exactly as hard as churn does, dollar for dollar, and they are frequently ignored because the customer stayed.

Recover involuntary churn. Failed payments reduce GRR identically to deliberate cancellations.

Fix onboarding for the segment that churns. GRR is usually dragged down by one identifiable group. Segment before deciding what to fix.

Move at-risk revenue to annual terms. It buys twelve months to fix the underlying relationship.

How Do You Track GRR?

Chartsy computes churned and contraction MRR separately from your billing data, which is all GRR requires. Because the same breakdowns apply - plan, country, metadata - you can see which segment is responsible rather than only that the number moved.