What is Gross Revenue Retention (GRR)?

Gross revenue retention (GRR) is the percentage of recurring revenue a company keeps from its existing customers over a period after cancellations and downgrades, with upsells and price increases left out, so it can never go above 100%.

At a glance

• GRR meaning: how much of last year’s recurring revenue you still have from the same customers, before any expansion.
• Formula: GRR = (starting recurring revenue minus churned revenue minus contraction) ÷ starting recurring revenue.
• Can GRR be over 100%? No. Expansion is excluded, so the most a cohort can keep is all of it. Revenue retention above 100% is net revenue retention.
• SaaS Capital’s 2025 survey of private B2B SaaS companies puts median GRR at 91% and median NRR at 101%.
• Gross revenue churn is roughly 100% minus GRR.

How to calculate GRR

Take a cohort: the customers you had at the start of the period. Note their recurring revenue then. At the end of the period, look at the same customers only. For each one, count their current revenue but cap it at what they paid at the start, so upgrades don’t count. Add it up and divide by the starting total.

SaaS Capital calculates it annually, comparing December MRR from customers who were already customers the previous December with total MRR the previous December, and capping each customer’s revenue at the earlier figure. New customers won during the year never enter the calculation.

Example (illustrative): you start the year with $2M in ARR. During the year, customers worth $120,000 cancel and others downgrade by $60,000. Some customers also expand by $200,000, but that’s excluded. GRR is ($2M minus $120,000 minus $60,000) ÷ $2M, or 91%. Net revenue retention for the same cohort, with expansion added back, would be 101%.

What GRR tells you

GRR is the floor under growth. It shows how much revenue leaks out before sales and account management add anything. A company with strong expansion can post a healthy NRR while GRR slides, which means more customers are leaving and a few big ones are masking it.

It also varies by price point. SaaS Capital found that companies with the highest contract values have the highest gross retention, which fits longer scoping, deeper implementation and dedicated account management.

Common GRR mistakes

• Letting expansion leak in. If you don’t cap each customer at their starting revenue, you’re calculating NRR.
• Including new customers. Only the starting cohort counts.
• Comparing across price points. A product sold at $20 a month and one sold at $250,000 a year shouldn’t share a benchmark.
• Reading GRR alone. Pair it with logo churn to see whether you’re losing many small accounts or a few large ones.

How GRR shows up in a revenue system

GRR is mostly decided after the sale, by onboarding, support and the renewal conversation. Our work with Datatruck began with one embedded AE and grew into a pod, then a self-serve channel, then a post-sale team. Read how the Datatruck customer team runs.

Terms that sit next to GRR

GRR is built from churned MRR and contraction, and it’s the retention side of churn rate.