SaaS Benchmark Calculator

SaaS benchmarks reveal whether your metrics are healthy or concerning relative to similar companies at your stage. Looking at your metrics in isolation is misleading. A 5% monthly churn rate might seem manageable until you learn that top SaaS companies at your stage maintain under 2%. The median Series A SaaS company has $1.5M ARR and 15% month-over-month growth per OpenView data.

Compare each metric to the benchmark for your stage and sector rather than applying a single universal standard. Use benchmarks to identify your single biggest gap versus peers and focus improvement efforts there. Set quarterly goals of 10-20% improvement per metric and track the trend over 6-12 months. Benchmarks are directional guides, not hard targets.

The five critical benchmarks are: monthly churn (<5%), LTV:CAC ratio (>3:1), CAC payback period (<12 months), net revenue retention (>100%), and Rule of 40 score (growth rate + profit margin >40%). OpenView and Bessemer publish annual benchmark reports as reference.

Focus on product-market fit signals first: activation rate, retention, and NPS. Compare against other companies at your stage, not mature businesses. A seed-stage company with 10% monthly churn is concerning but normal, the goal is rapid improvement over 6-12 months.

Use cohort analysis even with small sample sizes. Compare 30-day, 60-day, and 90-day retention across monthly cohorts. Track whether each new cohort performs better than the last. For pricing and CAC benchmarks, SaaS industry reports from OpenView, Bessemer, and SaaStr provide useful ranges you can feed into this benchmark tool.

Benchmark quarterly against industry data and monthly against your own historical performance. Annual benchmarking against published reports (Bessemer Cloud Index, OpenView SaaS Benchmarks) provides strategic context. Track trends, not single snapshots.

SaaS benchmarking compares your company's key metrics against industry standards and peers. It matters because it reveals whether your performance is strong, average, or concerning relative to similar companies, preventing the false confidence of looking at your metrics in isolation.

The five most important SaaS metrics are MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue), monthly churn rate (target under 5%), LTV:CAC ratio (target 3:1 or higher), net revenue retention (target 100% or higher), and CAC payback period (target under 12 months).

Churn rate is the percentage of customers (or revenue) lost over a given period. Monthly churn is calculated as (Customers Lost / Starting Customers) times 100.

The six most important SaaS benchmarks are MRR growth rate, monthly churn, LTV:CAC ratio, net revenue retention, gross margin, and CAC payback period. OpenView and Bessemer publish annual reports with stage-specific targets for each of these.

Right-size instances (most are over-provisioned by 40-60%), use reserved instances for predictable workloads (saves 30-60% versus on-demand pricing), implement auto-scaling to avoid paying for idle capacity, and delete unused resources like unattached storage volumes and idle load balancers.

Migration costs include planning and scoping labor (5-15% of total), data migration tooling and execution (20-30%), staff retraining (15-20%), integration rebuilding (20-30%), and lost productivity during the transition period (10-20%).