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Net Revenue Retention Calculator

Enter MRR at start of period, Expansion MRR and Contraction MRR plus 1 more input — every figure updates as you type. Nothing you type leaves your browser.

How do you calculate Net Revenue Retention?

Net Revenue Retention measures what happened to the revenue of a fixed group of existing customers over a period: starting MRR plus expansion, less contraction and churn, divided by starting MRR. New customers are excluded entirely. Above 100% means the existing base grew on its own; this calculator also returns gross retention, which strips expansion out.

Net revenue retention

102.2%

Above 100% means the existing base grew without new customers.

Gross revenue retention: 94.9%Expansion excluded. Caps at 100% — this is your leakage rate.
Net revenue churn: -2.2%100 − NRR. Negative means net expansion.
Retained MRR: $43,450What the starting cohort is worth at period end.

Results are rounded for display; the calculation runs at full precision.

The maths

How Net Revenue Retention is calculated

The formula this calculator runs, written out so you can check it against your own model rather than trust a black box.

NRR = ((starting MRR + expansion − contraction − churn) ÷ starting MRR) × 100

starting MRR: Recurring revenue from the customers who existed on day one of the period. This cohort is fixed for the whole calculation.
expansion: Additional MRR from that same cohort — upgrades, seat increases, add-ons, coupon expiries and reactivations.
contraction: MRR lost where the customer remained but spent less: downgrades and seat reductions.
churn: MRR lost where the customer left entirely.

Reading the result

What the number is telling you

Bands are directional, not verdicts. Stage, price point and contract length move every one of them, so treat these as a starting point for the conversation rather than a grade.

Below 90%: The existing base shrinks materially every period, so new business has to refill the bucket before it can grow it. Growth here is expensive and stalls the moment acquisition slows. Diagnose whether the loss is churn or contraction first — they have completely different fixes.
90 – 100%: The base roughly holds but does not grow on its own. Common and workable for self-serve products with little natural expansion, though it puts the entire growth burden on acquisition. Introducing a usage or seat dimension to pricing is the usual route upward.
100 – 110%: Expansion covers losses with a little to spare — the existing base grows slowly without any new customers. A solid position that indicates pricing is at least partly aligned with the value customers get as they grow.
110 – 125%: Strong. Expansion meaningfully outpaces churn and contraction, and compounding starts doing real work: the same customer base is worth noticeably more each year. Typical of products priced on a dimension that grows with the customer.
Above 125%: Exceptional, and worth verifying before quoting. Confirm that new customers are genuinely excluded and that a small number of very large upgrades are not carrying the figure. Check gross retention at the same time — a high NRR sitting on weak GRR is more fragile than it appears.

New customers do not belong in this calculation

This is the mistake that invalidates most NRR figures in circulation. NRR follows a fixed cohort: the customers who existed on day one, and only those. Revenue from customers acquired during the period is excluded from both the numerator and the denominator.

Include new business and you are no longer measuring retention — you are measuring growth, and you will report a healthy number while the existing base quietly leaks. The check is simple: if a month with no new customers at all would still produce a number above 100%, the calculation is right.

Read NRR and GRR together

Gross revenue retention removes expansion, so it can never exceed 100%. It measures pure leakage — how much of the starting revenue survived. The gap between the two tells you how the business actually grows:

NRR 120%, GRR 95% — modest leakage, strong expansion. A healthy pattern where a well-served base keeps buying more.
NRR 120%, GRR 78% — heavy churn masked by a handful of large upgrades. The headline looks identical and the business is far more fragile, because the expansion is concentrated and the leakage is structural.

NRR alone cannot distinguish those two. That is why investors ask for both, and why quoting only the flattering one erodes trust in diligence.

Choosing a period, and why annual is the standard

Monthly NRR is useful operationally but volatile — one large upgrade can swing it several points. The convention when reporting externally is annual: take the cohort of customers from twelve months ago and compare what they pay today against what they paid then. That window captures a full renewal cycle, which is precisely where contraction and churn tend to concentrate.

Whichever window you choose, apply it consistently and state it beside the number. An NRR figure without a stated period and cohort definition is not a measurement, it is a claim.

Definition

Where Net Revenue Retention gets argued about

A calculator settles the arithmetic, not the definition — and the definition is where most disagreements about this number actually live. The glossary entry covers the conventions, the edge cases and how Bastle handles each one.

Read the Net Revenue Retention definition Browse the metric glossary

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Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between NRR and GRR?

Gross revenue retention excludes expansion, so it only ever measures loss and cannot exceed 100%. Net revenue retention includes expansion and can exceed 100% when upgrades outweigh downgrades and cancellations. GRR tells you how leaky the bucket is; NRR tells you whether what remains is growing. Reporting both is standard practice because either one alone can hide a material problem.

Should new customers be included in NRR?

No, and this is the most common error in NRR calculations. The metric tracks a fixed cohort of customers who existed at the start of the period, measuring what happened to their revenue. Including newly acquired customers turns it into a growth metric that will show a healthy number even while your existing base erodes.

What is a good net revenue retention rate?

Anything above 100% means the existing base grows without new customers, which is the threshold that matters most. Self-serve and SMB products often sit between 90% and 100% because there is less room to expand, while enterprise businesses priced on seats or usage commonly exceed 110%. Compare against companies with a similar customer size and pricing model rather than against a universal target.

Is NRR calculated monthly or annually?

Both are used, and they are not comparable. Annual NRR is the convention for external reporting because it captures a full renewal cycle, where most contraction and churn actually occur. Monthly NRR is more useful operationally but far noisier, since a single large upgrade can move it several points. Always state the period alongside the number.

How does NRR relate to net revenue churn?

They are the same measurement viewed from opposite ends: net revenue churn = 100% − NRR. An NRR of 112% is a net revenue churn of −12%, and negative net revenue churn is exactly the condition people mean by negative churn. Which one you lead with is a presentation choice, not a calculation difference.

Can NRR hide a churn problem?

Yes, and it frequently does. Because expansion and churn are netted against each other, a few large upgrades can offset a great many cancellations and still produce a number above 100%. This is precisely why gross retention is reported alongside it — a strong NRR built on a weak GRR depends on a small number of accounts continuing to grow, and it unwinds quickly if they stop.

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