Net Dollar Retention (NDR)
The US name for net revenue retention — what NDR measures, how to calculate it, and what counts as good.
What is it?
Net Dollar Retention is the percentage of recurring revenue retained from your existing customers over a period, after netting expansion against contraction and churn. If your existing book was worth $100,000 a year ago and those same customers are worth $112,000 today — with no new logos counted — your NDR is 112%.
If that sounds exactly like Net Revenue Retention, that's because it is. NDR and NRR are two names for the same metric. "Net dollar retention" is the term that took hold in the US, popularised by venture investors and S-1 filings; "net revenue retention" is more common in Europe and in currencies where "dollar" reads oddly. Bessemer's benchmarks say NDR, most board decks outside the US say NRR, and both mean the identical calculation.
How to calculate?
Fix a cohort of customers who were paying at the start of the period. Take their recurring revenue then, follow the same accounts to the end of the period, and divide ending revenue by starting revenue. Expansion pushes the number up; downgrades and churn pull it down; revenue from customers acquired during the period is excluded entirely.
A cohort starting at $50,000 MRR that adds $8,000 in upgrades, loses $2,000 to downgrades and $4,000 to cancellations ends at $52,000 — an NDR of 104%. The same arithmetic, run without the expansion term, gives you gross dollar retention (GRR), and the gap between the two is how much expansion is doing the lifting.
What is a good NDR?
Above 100% means your existing customers grow your revenue on their own — the compounding engine every SaaS investor screens for. Public-market medians sit near 110%; the best usage-based and enterprise businesses clear 120–130%. Below 100% means the base is shrinking and new sales are running on a treadmill.
Benchmarks shift with motion and market: SMB products with high logo churn can be healthy at 95–105%, while enterprise platforms with seat and usage expansion are expected to post 115%+. Compare yourself against companies with a similar ACV and buyer, not against a headline number.
NDR, NRR, NDE — which term to use?
Use whichever your audience expects — but define it once and keep the calculation identical everywhere:
- NDR (net dollar retention) — standard in US fundraising, S-1s and VC benchmark reports.
- NRR (net revenue retention) — standard in Europe and in multi-currency businesses; the term used across this library.
- Net dollar expansion / NDE — occasional S-1 variant; same formula, sometimes quoted only for customers above a size threshold, so read the footnote.