GRR (Gross Revenue Retention)

What is Gross Revenue Retention?

Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) measures how much revenue you keep from existing customers without counting any upsells or expansion. It's capped at 100% and shows the baseline health of your customer relationships.

While NRR can mask churn problems with strong expansion, GRR exposes the raw truth about customer satisfaction. A company with 120% NRR but 70% GRR has a serious retention problem hidden by aggressive upselling.

Why GRR Matters

GRR reveals the fundamental stickiness of your product. High-performing SaaS companies maintain GRR above 90%. Enterprise software often achieves 95%+ GRR because switching costs are high and contracts are long.

If your GRR is below 80%, you have a product or customer success problem that no amount of expansion can sustainably fix. You're essentially filling a leaky bucket.

GRR vs NRR

Use GRR to diagnose retention health. Use NRR to measure overall revenue efficiency. A healthy business has both high GRR (above 90%) and high NRR (above 100%).

Your quarterly metrics:

• Starting MRR: $200,000
• Downgrades: $10,000
• Churned customers: $15,000

GRR = ($200K - $10K - $15K) ÷ $200K = 87.5%

You're losing 12.5% of revenue from existing customers each quarter. That's a 50% annual revenue leak that needs immediate attention.