Quick answer
Gross revenue retention (GRR) is the percentage of recurring revenue from a starting group of customers that remains after a period, counting losses from cancellations and downgrades but excluding any expansion revenue, so it can never exceed 100%.
Formula: GRR = (starting recurring revenue − contraction − churn) / starting recurring revenue × 100
What is gross revenue retention?
Gross revenue retention (GRR) measures how much recurring revenue you keep from your existing customers over a period, counting the losses from cancellations and downgrades but ignoring any expansion:
GRR = (starting recurring revenue − contraction − churn) / starting recurring revenue × 100
Because upsells are left out, GRR shows how well the product holds on to what customers already pay. It can never be above 100%.
A worked example next to NRR
One year, customers who were active on January 1 (sample numbers, monthly recurring revenue):
| Movement | Amount |
|---|---|
| Starting MRR | $100,000 |
| Contraction (downgrades) | −$3,000 |
| Churn (cancellations) | −$7,000 |
| Expansion (upgrades, extra seats) | +$12,000 |
- GRR = (100,000 − 3,000 − 7,000) / 100,000 = 90%
- NRR = (100,000 − 3,000 − 7,000 + 12,000) / 100,000 = 102%
NRR above 100% looks great: existing customers are paying more than a year ago. GRR says a tenth of the starting revenue walked out. Both are true, and investors usually look at the pair.
New customers acquired during the year are not in either figure.
Benchmarks
| Segment | Typical GRR |
|---|---|
| Enterprise B2B | 90–95%+ |
| Mid-market | 85–92% |
| SMB / self-serve | 75–88% |
Ranges are approximate; the KeyBanc private SaaS survey has reported a median around 90% across respondents. Compare yourself with companies selling to similar customers.
Calculation pitfalls
- Mixing in new customers. Only revenue from customers present at the start counts.
- Netting within a customer. If a customer upgrades in March and downgrades in September, count the downgrade only up to the starting amount; GRR should not credit the upgrade.
- Timing of cancellations. Count churn when the cancellation takes effect, consistently.
- Monthly vs annual. A monthly GRR of 99% compounds to about 88.6% a year (0.99¹²). Say which one you report.
Product signals that protect GRR
Churn and downgrades rarely come without warning. Leading signals include fewer active users per account, a key feature no longer used, fewer logins by the admin who bought the product, and support tickets about missing features. Watching these per account gives customer success time to act, which is the idea behind a customer health score.
In TapCub
TapCub does not read your billing system, so it does not report GRR. It covers the usage side: with account-level identity, the Accounts page (All-platform analytics › Users › Accounts) shows activity per company, retention and lifecycle show whether accounts' users keep coming back, and a rule segment for "accounts whose weekly active users fell by half" can send membership changes to a webhook for your customer success tool. See also monthly recurring revenue.
Was this explanation clear?
We use your answers to fix and expand this page.
Couldn’t send. Please try again in a minute.
Thanks for the feedback. We’ll use it to improve this page.You’ve already sent feedback on this page. Thanks.
Data Engineer
Writes about event design, data quality, and collection workflows, with verifiable implementation methods for reliable analytics.