Gross Revenue Retention (GRR)

Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) measures how much recurring revenue you retain from an existing cohort after subtracting cancellations and downgrades, with no credit for expansion. Because upgrades are excluded, GRR can never rise above 100%, which makes it the honest floor of your retention story: it shows pure revenue leakage, with nothing to hide it.

How to calculate GRR

Take the cohort's starting revenue, subtract only the losses, and divide by where it started.

A cohort at $100,000 in MRR that loses $8,000 to contraction and $5,000 to churn has GRR of ($100,000 − $8,000 − $5,000) ÷ $100,000 = 87%. Notice that expansion never enters the formula, so the same cohort's net revenue retention would be higher.

Why GRR matters

• No masking — because expansion is excluded, a few large upgrades can't paper over churn the way they can in NRR.
• Retention floor — GRR is the worst case for an existing cohort. A high GRR means the base is genuinely sticky.
• Benchmarks — strong B2B SaaS companies often see GRR in the high 80s to low 90s; consumer and SMB products typically run lower because churn is naturally higher.

GRR vs NRR

The pair tells one story. Net revenue retention lets expansion offset losses and can exceed 100%; GRR strips expansion out and caps at 100%. When NRR is strong but GRR is weak, growth is being carried by upgrades while the base quietly leaks, a signal to invest in reducing churn and recovering failed payments rather than relying on expansion to cover the gap.