Gross revenue retention (GRR) measures how much revenue from a starting customer cohort remains after churn and contraction, before counting expansion from those customers.
A common analytical form is:
GRR = (starting cohort revenue - churned revenue - contraction revenue) ÷ starting cohort revenue
If a cohort begins with $100 million of recurring revenue, loses $4 million from departed customers and $6 million from downgrades, GRR is 90%.
GRR excludes expansion
This is the defining difference from Net Revenue Retention.
Upsells, additional products, increased usage, and other expansion from existing customers do not repair the GRR calculation. The metric is intended to show how much of the original revenue base survived.
GRR is not the same as customer retention
A company can retain most customers but still have weak GRR if large customers downgrade. It can also lose many small customers while retaining a larger share of starting revenue.
GRR therefore measures revenue durability, not simply the percentage of customer accounts that remain.
Issuer definitions vary
Gross revenue retention is not a standardized GAAP measure. One company may use annual contract value, another recurring revenue, and another a different issuer-defined revenue base.
Cohort rules, acquisition adjustments, contract changes, currency, customer consolidations, and the treatment of temporary pauses can also change the result.
Why GRR matters
A high GRR can indicate that the installed revenue base is durable before any cross-sell or price expansion is considered. A declining GRR can reveal worsening customer losses or downsells even when total company revenue continues to grow through new-customer acquisition.
That makes GRR useful alongside Customer Acquisition Cost, Customer Churn Rate, and NRR.
Investor interpretation
Check the starting cohort, revenue basis, period, contraction treatment, and whether management reports an exact percentage or only a threshold such as “greater than 95%.” Do not assume similarly titled retention metrics are directly comparable across issuers.
Sources
- DoubleVerify 2025 Form 10-K, gross and net revenue retention disclosures
- Clearwater Analytics 2025 operating-metric disclosure, GRR and NRR definitions
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