How is each component trending month by month, and what is the net coming together?
№ 001 · MRR breakdown
Definition
MetricMRR components: new, expansion, contraction, churned, month by month
Unit% of opening MRR per month, by component
Two panels sharing a zero baseline: positive components (Expansion at the bottom touching zero, New stacked on top) above; negative components (Contraction touching zero, Churn deeper) below. Two summary sparks beneath show Net existing and Net total per month. Pull New, Expansion, Contraction, Churn from billing each month. Example: $1K upgrade in March feeds the Expansion layer at column M.
- MRR
- Monthly recurring revenue. Sum of every active subscription normalised to a monthly value, excluding one-off fees.
Benchmarks
| Bottom 30% | Median | Top 30% |
|---|---|---|
| Expansion under 15% of new MRR, monthly churn plus contraction above 2.5%, net MRR growth under 1% per month | Expansion around 25-35% of gross new MRR at $1-15M ARR, monthly gross revenue churn 1-2%, net MRR growth roughly 1.9% per month (25% annualized) | Expansion contributes 40%+ of gross new MRR, monthly gross revenue churn plus contraction under 1% of MRR, net MRR growth 2.5%+ per month |
Private B2B SaaS, $1M+ ARR, 2024 data; monthly figures derived from annual survey medians (25% annual growth = ~1.9% monthly compound). Expansion share figures from cohorted billing data, companies at $15-30M ARR · No survey publishes monthly component quartiles directly; the monthly bands here are honest conversions of annual medians (SaaS Capital, KeyBanc) combined with ChartMogul expansion-share data. Expansion share rises sharply with scale, so the median band depends on ARR.
Category split omitted: Component-mix splits by segment are only published by single sources (ChartMogul by ARR band); no two independent Tier 1-2 sources cover the same cut.
When it looks bad
The new-business line trends down for 3+ consecutive months while the churn and contraction bars stay flat or grow, so the stacked components pinch toward zero net.
New MRR falls from $60k to $38k per month over a quarter while churned plus contraction MRR holds at $35k; net new MRR drops from $30k to $8k and the growth engine is one bad month from negative.
What to do about it
- Split churned MRR into voluntary and involuntary before acting; failed payments are typically 20-40% of total churn in subscription businesses (ProfitWell data), and card updater plus a tuned retry schedule recovers a large share (Recurly network median dunning recovery is 47.6%, optimized programs reach ~70%).
- Push monthly payers to annual plans in months 2-4, the window where ChartMogul data shows upgrade propensity peaks; annual plans remove 11 renewal decisions per year from the churn line.
- If expansion is under 25% of gross new MRR past $5M ARR, ship a usage or seat expansion path; companies at $15-30M ARR get up to 40% of growth from expansion (ChartMogul), and expansion revenue is roughly half the cost of new-logo revenue (Benchmarkit blended CAC ratio $1.40 vs new CAC ratio $2.00).
- Set a component-level owner: new MRR to sales, expansion to CS or product, contraction and churn to a named retention owner with a monthly target, so the breakdown chart maps to accountability.
Sources
- SaaS Capital Median annual growth 25% in 2024, down from 30% in 2023; 6.9% of companies flat or negative saas-capital.com ↗
- ChartMogul Expansion drives up to 40% of growth for companies at $15-30M+ ARR, up from ~30% in 2021 chartmogul.com ↗
- KeyBanc Capital Markets and Sapphire Ventures 2024E ARR growth ~19%, GRR ~90%, NRR ~101% sapphireventures.com ↗
- KeyBanc Capital Markets and Sapphire Ventures ARR growth expected to accelerate from 15% (2024) to 20% (2025), first acceleration in three years sapphireventures.com ↗
- ChartMogul Roughly 50% of revenue at both low and high ARPA SaaS comes from annual plans; upgrades from monthly to annual billing peak in months 2-4 chartmogul.com ↗
- Recurly Research Monthly total churn ranges 2.9-4.3% by price tier; involuntary churn falls from 1.30% to 0.18% of subscribers per month as ARPC rises recurly.com ↗