What is gross revenue retention?
Gross revenue retention, or GRR, is the share of recurring revenue you keep from existing customers over a period, before any expansion. It counts only what you lose to churn and downgrades, so it can never exceed 100%.
GRR is the floor under your revenue base. It answers a blunt question: if you signed no new customers and no one expanded, how much revenue would you hold onto?
The GRR formula.
GRR = starting MRR minus churned MRR minus contraction MRR, divided by starting MRR, as a percentage. Expansion is deliberately excluded, which is what separates GRR from NRR.
Use the same period and the same revenue base for each input.
A worked example.
You start with 100,000 dollars of MRR. You lose 5,000 to churn and 2,000 to downgrades. GRR is 100,000 minus 7,000, divided by 100,000, which is 93%.
What is a good GRR?
For B2B SaaS, 90% or higher is strong, and the strongest companies hold above 90%. 85 to 90% is solid. Below 85% means you are losing real revenue from the base, and below 80% is a leak that new sales has to keep refilling.
GRR and NRR tell different stories. A company can post a healthy NRR above 100% while its GRR quietly slips, because expansion is masking churn underneath.
How to improve your GRR.
GRR improves when fewer customers leave and fewer downgrade. That is a retention, onboarding, and fit problem, the same levers as logo churn.
Acquisition quality matters here too. Better-fit customers from intent-driven channels retain more revenue. See how we bring better-fit customers through SEO.