Gross revenue retention (GRR)
Gross revenue retention (GRR) measures how much of a cohort's recurring revenue survives churn and downgrades over a period, with expansion excluded. Because upgrades cannot count, GRR is capped at 100% — it can only stay flat or fall. It isolates raw stickiness, separate from a company's ability to upsell. GRR is a subscription convention and the exact construction varies by vendor.
What this means
Gross revenue retention = (starting recurring revenue of a cohort − contraction − churn) ÷ starting recurring revenue. It uses the same cohort as net revenue retention but deliberately omits expansion from the numerator. Because nothing can be added back, the highest possible GRR is 100%, achieved only when no customer churns and none downgrade.
Why it complements NRR
NRR and GRR answer different questions about the same cohort. NRR (which includes expansion) can mask churn behind strong upselling — a company can post NRR above 100% while quietly losing logos. GRR strips out expansion to expose that underlying leakage. Reading the two together separates 'we keep customers' from 'we grow the ones we keep'. As with NRR, the window and MRR-vs-ARR basis vary by vendor, so match definitions before comparing.
This page is educational and not financial advice.
- (Start − contraction − churn) ÷ start, expansion excluded
- Capped at 100% — can only stay flat or fall
- Read with NRR to separate stickiness from upsell
How it appears in analytics and logs
GRR shows how leaky the base is on its own: a value near 100% means little churn or contraction; a lower value means revenue is being lost regardless of any upselling. Unlike NRR, it can never exceed 100%.
Diagnostic use case
Measure the pure retention floor of an existing customer base by excluding expansion, to see how much revenue would remain with no upsell at all.
What WebmasterID can help detect
WebmasterID measures engagement and conversion signals first-party; combined with billing data it helps ground the churn and contraction inputs to GRR without cross-site tracking.
Common mistakes
- Including expansion revenue in the GRR numerator.
- Treating GRR and NRR as interchangeable.
- Comparing GRR across vendors with mismatched windows.
Privacy and accuracy notes
GRR aggregates recurring-revenue movements within a cohort and uses no personal data. This page is educational, not financial advice.
Related pages
- Net revenue retention (NRR)
Net revenue retention (NRR), also called net dollar retention, measures how much recurring revenue a fixed cohort of customers produces at the end of a period versus the start, counting upgrades (expansion) and subtracting downgrades (contraction) and churn — but excluding revenue from brand-new customers. Above 100% means the cohort grew on its own. It is a subscription-economics convention, and definitions vary by vendor.
- Logo churn rate
Logo churn rate is the percentage of customers — 'logos', meaning whole accounts — that cancelled during a period, counted by number of accounts rather than by revenue. It differs from revenue churn because each account counts equally regardless of size. A business can have low revenue churn but high logo churn if it loses many small accounts, or the reverse. It is a subscription convention; the window varies.
- Churn rate
Churn rate measures how many customers (or how much recurring revenue) you lose in a period. Like retention, it is defined by choices: the window, what counts as 'churned', and whether you count customers or revenue. Customer churn and revenue churn can diverge sharply, so the basis must be stated.
- Web analytics
Ground subscription signals in first-party data.
Sources and verification notes
- U.S. SEC — investor guide to financial statementsBackground on revenue concepts; GRR is a subscription-economics convention without a single official definition.
Last reviewed 2026-06-24. Facts are checked against primary/official sources where available; uncertain specifics are marked “Data not yet verified” rather than guessed.