saas-revenue-growth-metrics

Calculate SaaS revenue, retention, and growth metrics. Use when diagnosing momentum, churn, expansion, or product-market-fit signals.

5,807stars714forksUpdated 7/17/2026

#revenue #metrics #finance-metrics #product-management #retention #SaaS

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About saas-revenue-growth-metrics

saas-revenue-growth-metrics is a framework for calculating and interpreting SaaS revenue, retention, and growth metrics to understand business momentum, evaluate product-market fit, and make data-driven decisions about growth investments. It is explicitly not a business intelligence tool but a reference that helps product managers know which metrics matter, how to calculate them correctly, and what actions to take based on the numbers. It works best when given a specific question (is growth healthy? is churn a fire?) or a set of metrics to interpret, and it can work from partial data or be used purely as a reference by reading the relevant metric sections.

It organizes metrics into families with formulas and benchmarks. The revenue family covers Revenue, ARPU (Total Revenue / Total Users), ARPA (MRR / Active Accounts), combined ARPA/ARPU analysis, ACV (annualized recurring revenue per contract, excluding one-time fees), MRR/ARR (ARR = MRR x 12), and gross vs. net revenue. The retention and expansion family covers Churn Rate (customers lost / starting customers, with monthly benchmarks of under 2% great and over 5% crisis), NRR ((Starting ARR + Expansion - Churn - Contraction) / Starting ARR x 100, with over 120% excellent), Expansion Revenue, and the SaaS Quick Ratio ((New MRR + Expansion MRR) / (Churned MRR + Contraction MRR), with over 4 excellent). Analysis frameworks include Revenue Mix Analysis (no single product over 60% ideal) and Cohort Analysis (grouping customers by join date so blended metrics don't hide trends). It ships a template.md plus healthy-saas and warning-signs examples.

It targets product managers diagnosing momentum, churn, expansion, or product-market-fit signals, and communicating business health to stakeholders such as in a board deck. It emphasizes anti-patterns to avoid: treating revenue as profit, chasing vanity metrics, relying on blended averages that hide segment economics, and reading isolated numbers without cohort trends and NRR. Estimated time is 10-15 minutes, and any context supplied with the invocation counts as answers already given and should not be re-asked.

FAQ

What key metrics does the skill calculate?

It covers revenue metrics (Revenue, ARPU, ARPA, ACV, MRR/ARR where ARR = MRR x 12, gross vs. net revenue) and retention/expansion metrics (Churn Rate, NRR, Expansion Revenue, and the SaaS Quick Ratio), plus Revenue Mix and Cohort analysis frameworks.

How is Net Revenue Retention calculated and benchmarked?

NRR = (Starting ARR + Expansion - Churn - Contraction) / Starting ARR x 100. Benchmarks are over 120% excellent, 100-120% good, 90-100% acceptable, and under 90% a problem. NRR over 100% means you grow without new logos.

Do I need complete data to use it?

No. It works best with a specific question or the metrics you want interpreted, but partial data is workable. You can also arrive empty-handed and use it as a reference by reading the metric sections relevant to your diagnosis.

What are the churn rate benchmarks?

Monthly churn under 2% is great, 2-5% acceptable, and over 5% a crisis; annually under 10% is great, 10-30% acceptable, and over 30% a crisis. The skill notes that 5% monthly churn compounds to about 46% annually, and that logo churn differs from revenue churn.

What anti-patterns does it warn against?

It warns that these are not profit metrics (revenue is top-line, not bottom-line), not vanity metrics, not blended averages that hide segment economics, and not isolated numbers, since churn alone needs cohort trends and NRR for context.