Net Revenue Retention (NRR)

The percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers over a period, including expansion, contraction, and churn. NRR above 100% means the customer base is growing without new logos.

Formula

(Starting ARR + Expansion - Contraction - Churn) / Starting ARR × 100

Who Is This Metric For?

VP/Director of CS

Report monthly to leadership as the definitive measure of CS’s impact on revenue growth.

CRO/CCO

Board-level metric showing whether the installed base is growing or shrinking without new logos.

CS Manager

Track by team and segment to identify which CSMs and accounts are driving net growth.

Priority by Stage

Crawl low

Focus on GRR first. You need to stop the bleeding before optimizing for growth. NRR is noise when your churn fundamentals aren't solid.

Walk medium

Start tracking NRR alongside GRR. Use it to build the case for CS as a revenue function, but don't optimize for it yet.

Run high

NRR should be a primary CS metric. Your expansion motions and risk management should directly influence this number.

Benchmarks

Segment	Good	Great	World Class
SMB	100-105%	105-110%	110%+
Mid-Market	105-110%	110-120%	120%+
Enterprise	110-115%	115-130%	130%+

Common Mistakes

Tracking NRR before you have reliable GRR. You can't grow what you can't retain
Blending all segments into one NRR number. Segment-level NRR reveals where the real problems and opportunities are
Confusing NRR with logo retention. You can have great NRR with terrible logo churn if a few large accounts expand

Used in Playbooks

Crawl Establish a Retention Baseline Walk Build Lifecycle Journey Maps Walk Operationalize QBR/EBR Cadence Walk Build a Renewal and At-Risk Save Motion Walk Design Your CS Team Structure and Capacity Model Run Build a Predictive Customer Intelligence Model Run Formalize Expansion Motion with CS Run CS-Led Revenue Strategy Run Deploy Agentic Workflows with Bounded Autonomy