Net revenue retention (NRR) is the percentage of recurring revenue you keep from a fixed group of existing customers over a period, after adding their expansion and subtracting their downgrades and churn. Above 100% means your existing customers alone grow revenue; below 100% means you must sell new business just to stand still.
What is net revenue retention?
NRR answers one question: if we stopped acquiring customers today, would revenue still grow? Take the customers who were paying at the start of the period, measure what they pay at the end, and divide. Because upgrades, cross-sells and price increases count, NRR can exceed 100%, unlike gross revenue retention.1Source 1 · SaaS Capital, 20232023 B2B SaaS Retention Benchmarks (Research Brief 28)saas-capital.com Stripe’s cohort reports work the same way: revenue retention includes expansion and can rise above 100%.2Source 2 · Stripe DocsBilling analytics: metric definitions (cohort retention)docs.stripe.com When expansion from retained customers outweighs what churn takes away, David Skok calls it negative churn, the state in which the base grows on its own.3Source 3 · David Skok, For EntrepreneursSaaS Metrics 2.0 – A Guide to Measuring and Improving What Mattersforentrepreneurs.com
Worked example
| Cohort: customers active on 1 Oct last year | MRR |
|---|---|
| Starting MRR | $500,000 |
| + Expansion over 12 months | $80,000 |
| − Contraction | −$15,000 |
| − Churn | −$35,000 |
| Ending MRR from the same customers | $530,000 |
| NRR | 106% |
What is a good NRR?
It depends heavily on price point. SaaS Capital’s 2023 retention benchmarks put median NRR at 102% across all respondents, unchanged from 2022, with median NRR rising as annual contract value rises and companies with the highest NRR reporting roughly double the population’s median growth.1Source 1 · SaaS Capital, 20232023 B2B SaaS Retention Benchmarks (Research Brief 28)saas-capital.com Compare yourself with companies of similar contract size, not with public enterprise software leaders.
Common mistakes
- Letting new customers leak into the numerator. Anyone who started paying during the period belongs in new MRR, not retention.
- Using a monthly NRR and annualizing it by multiplying. Retention compounds; measure the 12-month cohort directly.
- Counting reactivations as expansion when a churned customer returns. Treat them separately so churn is not understated.
- Reporting only a blended number. One large expansion can hide widespread churn; always show GRR alongside NRR.
How to track NRR in Kimo
Kimo computes NRR from the customer-month model built on your billing data, so the cohort, the window and the treatment of reactivations are explicit and versioned in the semantic layer. Plot trailing-12-month NRR and GRR together in the revenue view, break it down by plan or segment with cohort analysis, and drop it into the board deck template.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between NRR and NDR?
Can NRR be above 100% while customers are churning?
Should NRR be measured monthly or annually?
Sources
3 references- 2023 B2B SaaS Retention Benchmarks (Research Brief 28) (opens in a new tab)SaaS Capital2023saas-capital.com
Survey of 1,500+ private B2B SaaS companies; median NRR 102%, median GRR 91%; NRR rises with ACV.
- Billing analytics: metric definitions (cohort retention) (opens in a new tab)Stripe Docsdocs.stripe.com
Revenue retention by cohort accounts for expansion and can exceed 100%.
- SaaS Metrics 2.0 – A Guide to Measuring and Improving What Matters (opens in a new tab)David Skok, For Entrepreneursforentrepreneurs.com
Negative churn driven by expansion revenue.
External sources were accessed at the time of writing. Kimo product details, customers and figures in examples are illustrative unless a source is cited.
