Strategy & economics
Net revenue retention
Also known as: NRR · net dollar retention · NDR
The percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers over a period, including expansion (upgrades) and net of churn (cancellations, downgrades) — above 100% means the existing customer base is growing revenue without new acquisition.
Net revenue retention (also NDR / net dollar retention) measures how much existing-customer revenue a business retains through a period, accounting for expansion and churn together. Formula: (start-of-period recurring revenue + expansion − churn − downgrades) ÷ start-of-period recurring revenue. Above 100% means the existing customer base is growing revenue organically, which is the strongest retention signal a SaaS can produce — public-market SaaS benchmarks run 110-130% for healthy companies, 140%+ for best-in-class. Below 90% is a leaky-bucket warning. NRR is more important than gross retention for investor conversations because it captures whether the product's commercial relationship with existing customers is compounding or eroding.