Benchmarks for churn / retention rates

Edited excerpt from What is good retention by Lenny Rachitsky:

We reached out to twenty of the most experienced growth practitioners we knew and asked them two simple questions: What do you consider GOOD and GREAT user retention (at 6 months)? What do you consider GOOD and GREAT net revenue retention (at 12 months)?

The results:

User Retention at 6 months:
Consumer Social: ~25% is GOOD, ~45% is GREAT
Consumer Transactional: ~30% is GOOD, ~50% is GREAT
Consumer SaaS: ~40% is GOOD, ~70% is GREAT
SMB / Mid-Market SaaS: ~60% is GOOD, ~80% is GREAT
Enterprise SaaS: ~70% is GOOD, ~90% is GREAT

Net Revenue Retention at 12 months:
Consumer SaaS: ~55% is GOOD, ~80% is GREAT
Bottom-Up SaaS: ~100% is GOOD, ~120% is GREAT
Land and Expand VSB SaaS: ~80% is GOOD, ~100% is GREAT
Land and Expand SMB / Mid-Market SaaS: ~90% is GOOD, ~110% is GREAT
Enterprise SaaS: ~110% is GOOD, ~130% is GREAT

Notes:
(i) An important ingredient for benchmarking your company is frequency of habit. See: The relationship between frequency of habit and customer retention.
(ii) For practical advice to raise retention, see How to reduce churn by identifying your “red flag metrics”.
(iii) See also: To reduce churn by more than 2 percentage points, you have to raise product value and usage.

One thought on “Benchmarks for churn / retention rates

Leave a comment