NDR vs NRR
Net dollar retention and net revenue retention — two names, one metric. Where each is used and what to check before comparing.
What's the difference?
None — in substance. NDR and NRR are the same calculation: revenue from a cohort of existing customers at the end of a period, divided by the same cohort's revenue at the start, expansion included, new customers excluded. The two names are a geography and audience artifact, not a methodology difference.
NDR (net dollar retention) is the US capital-markets term — S-1 filings, VC benchmark reports, Bessemer's State of the Cloud. NRR (net revenue retention) dominates in Europe and in multi-currency businesses where 'dollar' reads oddly. This library uses NRR throughout; every word of it applies to NDR unchanged.
Why compare them carefully anyway?
Because two companies quoting the same acronym can still be computing different things. The definitional swings hide in the cohort mechanics, not the name: whether the metric is measured on a trailing-twelve-month cohort or month-over-month annualised, whether customers above a revenue threshold are the only ones counted (a favourite S-1 footnote), and how mid-period upgrades map to expansion.
So when benchmarking, skip the name and read the footnote. A 120% NDR computed on customers above $100k ACV is not comparable to a 105% NRR computed across a whole SMB base — and both companies are being perfectly honest.