What is Gross Revenue Retention (GRR)?
Gross revenue retention is the share of existing revenue you held onto, counting only the losses. Downgrades and cancellations count against you; expansion earns no credit, so GRR can never exceed 100%.
GRR is the floor under NRR. Where NRR asks whether the book grew on its own, GRR asks a blunter question: of the revenue you had, how much survived? Because it caps at 100%, it cannot be rescued by a handful of large upgrades.
The gap between the two numbers is the whole expansion story. A company at 92% GRR and 118% NRR keeps most of what it has and expands the rest aggressively. A company at 92% GRR and 94% NRR keeps the same amount and expands almost not at all, and the two look nothing alike despite similar retention.
How to calculate GRR
GRR = (starting MRR − contraction − churn) ÷ starting MRR x 100
- starting MRR
- MRR from existing customers at the start of the period
- contraction
- downgrades and seat reductions
- churn
- MRR lost to cancellations
The same statement, as churn
GRR = 100% − gross MRR churn rate
GRR example
Given
- Starting MRR: $48,000
- Contraction: $820
- Churn: $1,900
- Expansion: $1,450 (ignored here)
The book loses 5.67% of its revenue a month and buys back 3.65 points through upgrades. Reading NRR alone would have made the leak look smaller than it is.
Why GRR matters
- It isolates retention from expansion, which is the only way to tell whether a strong NRR rests on a healthy base or on a few big upgrades papering over churn.
- It is the more stable of the two. Expansion is lumpy, losses are steadier, so GRR trends are easier to read month to month.
- Diligence asks for it specifically, and asks for it alongside NRR, precisely because the gap is informative.
Common GRR mistakes
Reporting a GRR above 100%
It is not possible. If your calculation produces one, expansion or new business has leaked into the numerator.
Reporting only NRR
NRR on its own cannot distinguish a company that keeps everything from one that loses a lot and upsells hard. The pair is the story.
How Kometrics computes GRR
As with NRR, Kometrics does not publish a metric named GRR today. It publishes gross MRR churn rate, which is its complement: 100% minus that rate is GRR for the period. The report divides net churn plus net contraction by MRR at the period start, with no credit for expansion or reactivation, which is precisely the GRR definition.
Related terms
Net revenue retention is what happened to the revenue you already had. Take a cohort of existing customers, add the expansion they bought, subtract what they downgraded or cancelled, and compare against what they were worth at the start. New customers are excluded by definition.
Churn rateChurn rate is the share of your customers, or of your revenue, that you lost during a period. Which of the two you mean changes the number substantially, so the qualifier matters as much as the figure.
Contraction MRRContraction MRR is recurring revenue lost from customers who stayed: downgrades, removed seats, dropped add-ons and expired discounts running the other way. The customer is still yours, they are simply worth less.
Cohort retentionCohort retention groups customers by the month they started paying and follows each group forward, so you can see how long customers stay and how their spend develops, without newer customers masking older ones.
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