How to calculate gross revenue retention
Gross revenue retention measures how much recurring revenue you keep from existing customers before any expansion. Because it ignores upsell, it is the purest measure of leakage: it shows how sticky your product truly is once you remove the masking effect of growth within accounts.
Short answer
Calculate gross revenue retention (GRR) by taking a cohort's starting recurring revenue, subtracting churn and contraction, then dividing by the starting revenue and multiplying by 100. Expansion is excluded, so GRR caps at 100 percent. For example, losing 8 percent of starting revenue to churn and downgrades yields 92 percent GRR.
Step by step
Set the cohort and starting revenue
Take the recurring revenue of customers who existed at the start of the period as your base.
Subtract churn and contraction only
Remove revenue lost to cancellations and downgrades. Do not add any expansion.
- GRR = (starting - churn - contraction) / starting x 100
- Never add expansion
- GRR caps at 100 percent
Divide and express as a percentage
Divide the retained revenue by starting revenue. The result can never exceed 100 percent.
Compare to net revenue retention
The gap between NRR and GRR is exactly your expansion contribution. A wide gap means expansion is masking real churn.
Segment to find leakage
Break GRR down by plan and cohort to locate where churn and contraction concentrate.
How Ardovo helps
Ardovo computes GRR and NRR side by side per cohort, so Rook can show how much of your retention is genuine stickiness versus expansion masking churn, and pinpoint the segments leaking the most revenue.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between gross and net revenue retention?
Gross revenue retention counts only churn and contraction and caps at 100 percent, showing pure leakage. Net revenue retention also adds expansion and can exceed 100 percent. GRR reveals stickiness; the gap between them measures your expansion engine.
What is a good gross revenue retention rate?
Enterprise SaaS often targets GRR in the low-to-mid 90s, while SMB tends to run lower. Because expansion is excluded, GRR is a stricter test of product stickiness, so healthy numbers are lower than NRR benchmarks.
Why track GRR if I already track NRR?
Because NRR can look healthy while real churn is high, if expansion masks it. GRR strips out expansion to show true leakage, so a strong NRR with weak GRR warns that your growth depends on upsell papering over a retention problem.