What Is Net Revenue Retention (NRR)?
What is net revenue retention? It is the percentage of recurring revenue retained from an existing customer cohort over a period, including gains from expansion and losses from contraction and churn. An NRR above 100% means the company grows revenue from its existing base alone, without adding new customers.
Calculate NRR from two subscription snapshots and see which customer segments expand, contract, or churn
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| Customer ID |
| Plan |
| MRR Start |
| MRR End |
| New MRR |
| Expansion MRR |
| Contraction MRR |
| Churned MRR |
| Status |
| Segment |
What usually goes wrong with it
NRR requires two subscription snapshots to calculate
Net revenue retention compares starting MRR from a cohort to ending MRR from the same cohort one year later. Without two time-stamped snapshots of the same customers joined by Customer ID, the calculation isn't possible from a single export.
DataMimi Datamimi joins two subscription snapshots by Customer ID, isolates the starting cohort, and calculates NRR by comparing ending MRR to starting MRR for that cohort only — new customers excluded automat
New customer revenue inflates the NRR calculation if included
New customers acquired during the measurement period must be excluded from the NRR calculation — only the cohort that existed at the start of the period is measured. Including new customers artificially raises the numerator.
DataMimi It labels each component of the NRR waterfall — expansion, contraction, and churn — separately in the output, so the drivers of the metric are visible alongside the total.
NRR and GRR get confused when presenting to investors
Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) excludes expansion and caps at 100%. Net Revenue Retention includes expansion and can exceed 100%. Reporting one when the investor expects the other changes the interpretation of the company's retention quality.
DataMimi Datamimi calculates both GRR and NRR from the same two exports and labels them clearly, so you can report whichever the investor expects with confidence in the definition used.
Common questions
What is net revenue retention as a formula?
NRR = (Starting MRR + Expansion MRR − Contraction MRR − Churned MRR) ÷ Starting MRR × 100. All figures come from the same starting cohort. New customer MRR is excluded from the numerator.
What is a good net revenue retention rate?
NRR above 100% is the threshold for top-tier SaaS. Elite companies (Snowflake, Twilio historically) have exceeded 130%. Median public SaaS NRR is around 105–115%. Below 100% means the existing customer base is shrinking even without counting new customers.
What is the difference between NRR and GRR?
GRR (Gross Revenue Retention) = (Starting MRR − Contraction − Churn) ÷ Starting MRR. It excludes expansion and caps at 100%. NRR includes expansion and can exceed 100%. GRR shows floor-level retention; NRR shows whether existing customers grow in value.
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