Finding customers and growing
Net revenue retention (NRR)
Net revenue retention, or NRR, compares the recurring revenue you get today from a group of customers with what the same group paid a year earlier, counting upgrades, downgrades and cancellations.
Also called NRR, net dollar retention, NDR
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New customers are left out. If the group pays more today than it did then, upgrades from customers who stayed outweighed what you lost to downgrades and cancellations.
That is why NRR is hard to flatter: strong sales can hide a base that is shrinking, but NRR shows it. Above 100% means existing customers grow on their own, so each new customer adds growth. Below 100% means lost revenue must be replaced before you grow at all. Gross revenue retention is the stricter version: it counts only losses, so it can never pass 100%.
What recent High Alpha data says
In High Alpha's 2025 survey, the median SaaS company under 1 million US dollars of ARR (yearly recurring revenue) had net revenue retention of 100%, and the median between 1 million and 5 million had 104%.
- Median net revenue retention, under 1 million and 1 million to 5 million US dollars of ARR: 100% and 104%.
Source: High Alpha, 2025 SaaS Benchmarks Report. More than 800 SaaS companies surveyed, 69% in the US, not all startups. As of 5 November 2026.
When this shows up
Example, not a real founder: revenue grew this quarter, and every new customer came from sales. When the founder looks only at customers who were there a year ago, they pay less today than they did then. The growth was real, but the base was leaking underneath it.
What to do next
Take the customers who were paying you twelve months ago. Add up what they pay today and divide it by what they paid then.