MRR

MRR - Monthly Recurring Revenue, monthly recurring revenue. This is the “pulse” of a subscription product: you look at the MRR every week and immediately see whether the business is growing or declining. Unlike ARR, MRR reacts quickly: churn this month is immediately visible, as is upsell.

Formula: sum of all active monthly subscriptions. Annual subscriptions are divided by 12. One-time payments are not included. The MRR decomposition that I use in projects: new MRR (new clients), expansion MRR (upsells and cross-sells), reactivation MRR (returning clients), churned MRR (departed) and contraction MRR (clients who switched to a lower tariff). Net MRR = new + expansion + reactivation − churned − contraction.

Growth benchmarks for Russian B2B SaaS: startup up to 10 million rubles ARR - healthy MRR growth 15-25% per month, company 10-100 million rubles ARR - 8-15% per month, 100+ million rubles ARR - 5-10%. If MRR stagnates for 2+ months in a row, this is a signal to revise CAC or work on expanding MRR.

For a marketer, MRR is especially important through the lens of CAC ROI. If CAC = 15,000 ₽, and MRR from the client = 3,000 ₽, payback of 5 months is normal with Churn Rate ≤3% per month. With Churn 8%, the same CAC no longer pays off. Therefore, MRR is always looked at together with the churn rate.