Back to glossary

Gross Revenue Retention

Gross revenue retention measures retained recurring revenue from an existing customer cohort before counting expansion revenue.

GRRgross dollar retentionGDR

Primary keyword

gross revenue retention

GRR formulagross dollar retentionSaaS GRR

Plain-English definition

GRR shows how much revenue stays when you ignore upsells and only look at churn and contraction.

Why it matters

GRR reveals product-market and customer success health more cleanly than NRR because expansion cannot mask lost or downsized customers.

Formula

GRR = retained recurring revenue from the starting cohort, capped at each customer's starting amount / starting recurring revenue x 100.

Example

A starting cohort contributes $500,000 in ARR. After downgrades and churn, retained ARR is $430,000 before upsells, so GRR is 86%.

Common mistakes

Counting upsells in GRR, using customer count retention as a substitute, or comparing GRR and NRR from different cohorts.

TurnkeyGTM angle

TurnkeyGTM can help teams inspect the customer conversations behind churn, downgrade, and expansion themes instead of only looking at the spreadsheet result.