The 2023 SaaS market did not arrive wearing a party hat. After the rocket-fueled software years of 2020 and 2021, founders entered a new reality: buyers were cautious, investors were pickier, and “growth at all costs” suddenly sounded like a phrase from an old startup museum. That is exactly why the launch of the ChartMogul SaaS Benchmarks Report 2023 mattered.
ChartMogul’s report gave SaaS leaders something more useful than motivational LinkedIn confetti: data. Based on anonymized and aggregated revenue data from more than 2,100 SaaS businesses, the report offered a grounded look at SaaS growth benchmarks, retention, churn, expansion revenue, ARR movement, and the shifting role of efficient growth. In a year when every board meeting seemed to include the words “profitability,” “runway,” and “please explain this CAC payback,” benchmark data became a compass.
This article breaks down what the report revealed, why it mattered in 2023, and how SaaS founders, operators, investors, and revenue teams can apply the lessons today.
What Is the ChartMogul SaaS Benchmarks Report 2023?
The ChartMogul SaaS Benchmarks Report 2023 is a data-driven analysis of private SaaS company performance. It focuses on the metrics that actually keep subscription businesses alive: annual recurring revenue growth, monthly recurring revenue movement, net revenue retention, gross retention, customer churn, expansion revenue, reactivation, contraction, and ARPA-based performance.
Unlike generic advice that says “grow faster” with the usefulness of a fortune cookie, the report segments SaaS companies by size, average revenue per account, and growth stage. That matters because a $500,000 ARR startup and a $30 million ARR scale-up should not be judged by the same scoreboard. Early companies usually grow faster but churn more unpredictably. Larger companies tend to grow more slowly, but they often gain stability through stronger product-market fit, mature customer success, and expansion loops.
The 2023 edition was especially valuable because it captured a turning point. SaaS businesses were no longer operating in the easy-money environment of 2021. Customers were reviewing software budgets. New deals were harder to close. Renewal conversations became more serious. Expansion revenue turned from a “nice bonus” into a growth engine.
The Big Message: SaaS Growth Slowed, but It Did Not Disappear
One of the clearest findings from the ChartMogul SaaS Benchmarks Report 2023 was that SaaS growth in 2022 slowed sharply compared with the boom years. The top quartile of SaaS businesses with ARR between $1 million and $30 million grew 62.1% in 2022, down from 93.4% in 2020 and 78.9% in 2021.
That decline was not a sign that SaaS was broken. It was a sign that the market was normalizing. The pandemic pulled forward software adoption, and then rising interest rates, tighter capital, and budget scrutiny pulled the industry back toward fundamentals. In plain English: the market went from “buy every tool” to “do we really need seven dashboards to tell us sales are down?”
Public SaaS companies felt the same pressure. High-growth software businesses saw revenue growth compress, valuation multiples reset, and investors shift their attention toward efficiency. Private companies followed the same pattern. Growth was still possible, but the definition of good growth changed.
Good Growth Became Stage-Specific
The report showed that SaaS benchmarks must be evaluated by company stage. A top-quartile business in the $1 million to $8 million ARR range could grow around 70% annually, while a top-quartile company in the $8 million to $30 million ARR range might grow closer to 45% annually. At the very top end, best-in-class companies still achieved impressive expansion, but the median company faced a much tougher climb.
This is an important SEO-friendly lesson and a strategic one: there is no single “good SaaS growth rate.” A healthy growth rate depends on ARR size, customer segment, pricing model, acquisition channel, retention profile, and capital strategy.
Expansion Revenue Took Center Stage
One of the most important SaaS growth trends in the ChartMogul report was the increasing role of expansion revenue. In 2020, expansion represented 28.8% of ARR gained. By the 2023 report, that share had grown to 32.3%. Meanwhile, new business ARR fell from 62.0% of ARR gained to 57.9%.
This shift tells a powerful story. When new customer acquisition becomes more difficult, SaaS companies must get better at growing inside their existing customer base. That means upsells, cross-sells, usage-based expansion, seat expansion, pricing improvements, and stronger onboarding.
In a strong market, a leaky bucket can still look exciting if the hose is blasting water into it. In a tighter market, the leaks become obvious. SaaS leaders in 2023 had to ask harder questions:
- Are customers adopting the product deeply enough to expand?
- Do pricing tiers encourage natural upgrades?
- Can customer success identify expansion signals early?
- Is the product valuable enough that customers add more seats or usage over time?
For higher-ARPA SaaS businesses, expansion was even more meaningful. Companies with ARPA above $1,000 per month often have more room for upsells and cross-sells, and ChartMogul found that roughly 40% of new revenue for these businesses can come from expansion. That is the classic “land and expand” model doing its job.
Retention Became the Growth Multiplier
The strongest message from the ChartMogul SaaS Benchmarks Report 2023 may be this: retention is not just a customer success metric. It is a growth strategy.
Companies with best-in-class retention grew at least 1.8 times faster than peers. SaaS businesses with net revenue retention above 100% grew 49.5% over the last 12 months, while companies with net retention in the 60% to 80% range grew only 9.2%.
That is a massive difference. It means retention is not a back-office number that customer success reviews once a quarter while everyone else pretends to understand the dashboard. It is a board-level metric. It affects growth, valuation, hiring plans, sales efficiency, and product strategy.
Why Net Revenue Retention Matters So Much
Net revenue retention, often called NRR or net dollar retention, measures how much recurring revenue a company keeps and expands from existing customers after churn, contraction, upsells, cross-sells, and price increases. When NRR is above 100%, the existing customer base is expanding even after losses.
ChartMogul’s 2023 benchmark data placed best-in-class net revenue retention around the 110% mark, with B2B SaaS leaders often targeting the 110% to 125% range. This is especially common in companies selling to larger accounts, where expansion opportunities are stronger and churn tends to be lower.
Broader SaaS retention research from 2023 pointed in the same direction. Median net revenue retention across private B2B SaaS companies hovered around 102%, while median gross revenue retention was around 91%. In practical terms, gross retention near 90% became table stakes, while strong NRR separated durable companies from fragile ones.
Churn Was Harder to Ignore
The 2023 SaaS market punished weak retention. More than half of SaaS businesses saw lower retention rates in 2022, a sharp contrast to 2021, when nearly 70% of companies improved retention compared with the prior year.
ChartMogul’s churn benchmarks showed that customer churn often stabilizes around 3% to 4% per month as companies mature. Bringing churn down to 1% to 2% per month can put a SaaS company among stronger performers, although the right target depends heavily on ARPA and customer type.
B2C SaaS companies usually face higher churn because customers make faster buying decisions, switch tools more easily, and often have fewer expansion opportunities. B2B SaaS companies, especially those with higher ARPA, generally enjoy stronger retention because purchases involve more evaluation, onboarding, workflow integration, and organizational commitment.
Churn Is Not Always a Customer Success Problem
A common mistake is treating churn as something customer success must magically fix after the sale. In reality, churn often starts much earlier. It can be created by poor-fit acquisition, unclear positioning, weak onboarding, overpromising in sales, confusing packaging, missing product functionality, or pricing that does not match perceived value.
The 2023 report encourages SaaS teams to think about churn as a full-funnel issue. Marketing attracts the right or wrong audience. Sales qualifies the right or wrong buyers. Product delivers the right or wrong experience. Customer success helps customers reach the right or wrong outcomes. When churn rises, the whole company should investigate, not just the poor CSM who already has 90 accounts and three tabs open called “urgent renewal risk.”
New Business ARR Showed Early Signs of Recovery
Although the report emphasized slower growth, it was not all doom and gloomy dashboards. ChartMogul observed signs of stabilization in early 2023. After several quarters of weak new business growth, companies with ARR above $1 million saw new business ARR begin ticking upward in the first quarter of 2023.
That finding was cautiously optimistic. It did not mean the SaaS market had instantly returned to 2021 conditions. It suggested that some companies were adapting. Stronger positioning, clearer ROI messaging, more disciplined sales processes, and tighter ideal customer profiles helped resilient SaaS businesses win even in a more skeptical buying environment.
ARR Movement Became a Better Operating Lens
One of the most useful parts of the ChartMogul SaaS Benchmarks Report 2023 is its focus on ARR movement. Instead of looking only at total ARR growth, the report breaks revenue movement into components:
- New business: revenue from newly acquired customers
- Expansion: revenue from upgrades, add-ons, additional seats, or increased usage
- Reactivation: revenue from returning customers
- Contraction: revenue lost from downgrades or reduced usage
- Churn: revenue lost from cancellations
This is critical because two companies can both grow 30% annually while having completely different business health. One may grow through strong new logo acquisition but suffer heavy churn. Another may grow more slowly through strong retention and expansion, creating a more durable revenue base. Investors, executives, and operators need to know the difference.
ARR movement analysis helps teams identify where growth is really coming from. It also reveals whether the business is balanced. Too little expansion may signal weak product adoption. Too much reliance on expansion may suggest market saturation. High contraction may reveal pricing pressure or budget cuts. High reactivation may show a strong win-back opportunity.
How SaaS Teams Can Apply the 2023 Benchmarks
The best way to use SaaS benchmarks is not to copy another company’s number and panic. Benchmarks should create context. They help teams ask better questions and identify where performance is unusually strong or weak.
1. Benchmark by ARR Stage
A startup below $1 million ARR should expect more volatility. A company between $1 million and $8 million ARR may still have room for fast growth, but it must also begin proving repeatability. A company above $8 million ARR needs stronger systems, segmentation, sales efficiency, customer success processes, and expansion motions.
2. Benchmark by ARPA
ARPA changes everything. Low-ARPA SaaS companies often need efficient self-service acquisition, strong onboarding automation, and high-volume retention tactics. High-ARPA SaaS companies need deeper onboarding, account management, executive relationships, and structured expansion plans.
3. Track Gross Retention and Net Retention Separately
NRR can hide problems if expansion is strong enough to cover churn. GRR shows whether customers are staying before upsells save the day. A company with high NRR but weak GRR may look healthy until expansion slows. That is like balancing a laptop on a stack of coffee cups: impressive, but not a long-term operating model.
4. Treat Expansion as a Product Strategy
Expansion should not depend only on heroic account managers. The product itself should create reasons to expand. Usage limits, team collaboration features, premium workflows, integrations, analytics, security features, and add-on modules can all support natural account growth.
5. Use Benchmarks to Improve Forecasting
In 2023, forecasting became harder because historical growth rates from 2020 and 2021 were unreliable. Benchmark data helped SaaS leaders create more realistic plans. Instead of assuming last year’s growth would magically return, teams could model revenue using current retention, churn, expansion, and acquisition trends.
Why the Report Launch Mattered for the SaaS Industry
The launch of the ChartMogul SaaS Benchmarks Report 2023 mattered because it gave SaaS operators a reality check without turning the room into a funeral. The market was harder, yes. Growth was slower, yes. Retention was under pressure, yes. But the report also showed that strong companies were still growing, especially those with disciplined retention, efficient acquisition, and meaningful expansion revenue.
Other 2023 SaaS benchmark research reinforced the same themes. OpenView emphasized efficient growth, ARR per employee, product-led growth, and expansion. SaaS Capital highlighted the relationship between net retention and growth. Carta’s private market data showed how sharply venture funding conditions changed. Bessemer’s cloud research pointed to profitable growth and AI adoption as new strategic priorities. Together, these sources painted a consistent picture: SaaS was not dead; lazy SaaS was in trouble.
Experience Notes: What Launching a SaaS Benchmark Report Teaches Teams
Launching a report like the ChartMogul SaaS Benchmarks Report 2023 is not simply a content marketing exercise. Done well, it becomes a strategic product for the market. It helps founders see where they stand, gives investors a common language, supports revenue leaders in planning, and gives customer success teams evidence for why retention deserves serious investment.
From an operator’s perspective, the biggest lesson is that benchmark reports must be both credible and usable. Credibility comes from clean data, transparent methodology, meaningful sample size, and careful segmentation. Usability comes from plain-English interpretation. A founder does not only need to know that top-quartile companies in a certain ARR band grow at a specific rate. They need to understand what that means on Monday morning. Should they hire more account executives? Raise prices? Build an expansion playbook? Improve onboarding? Revisit their ICP? A great benchmark report turns numbers into decisions.
The second experience-based lesson is that launch timing matters. In 2023, SaaS leaders were actively looking for answers. They were trying to understand whether their slowdown was company-specific or market-wide. They needed to know whether lower retention was a warning sign unique to their product or part of a broader budget-tightening trend. By launching during a period of uncertainty, the report became more valuable. It did not just provide information; it provided perspective.
The third lesson is that distribution should be treated as seriously as research. A SaaS benchmark report can live as a downloadable asset, a blog launch announcement, a webinar, a founder newsletter, a sales enablement tool, a customer success conversation starter, and a series of social posts. The strongest launches break the report into smaller insights: one chart about retention, one article about expansion revenue, one post about churn by ARPA, one discussion about what “good growth” means in 2023. This gives the research a longer shelf life and helps different audiences find the insight that matters to them.
The fourth lesson is that benchmarks create trust when they avoid hype. The 2023 SaaS environment had enough noise already. Founders did not need another “ten secrets to hypergrowth” article written as if capital markets had not changed. They needed honest comparisons, practical segmentation, and a balanced message. ChartMogul’s report worked because it acknowledged the slowdown while still identifying resilience. That tone is important: realistic, but not defeated.
Finally, launching a SaaS benchmarks report teaches teams that data can become community. When founders compare metrics, they often feel less alone. A company struggling with slower new business ARR may discover that peers are facing the same headwinds. A team with strong NRR may realize it has a genuine advantage. A startup with high churn may learn that its issue is not just “bad luck,” but a signal to improve product-market fit or customer onboarding. In that sense, the report is more than a document. It is a mirror, a map, and occasionally, a polite slap from reality.
Conclusion
The ChartMogul SaaS Benchmarks Report 2023 captured a defining moment for the SaaS industry. Growth slowed after the extraordinary highs of 2020 and 2021, but strong SaaS companies continued to find momentum through retention, expansion revenue, disciplined acquisition, and better operational focus.
The report’s most important lesson is simple: SaaS growth is healthier when it is built on customers who stay, expand, and succeed. New business still matters, but in a tougher market, retention becomes the engine that compounds revenue. Companies that understand their ARR movement, benchmark by stage and ARPA, and invest in product-led expansion will be better prepared for whatever the next SaaS cycle brings.
In 2023, average was no longer good enough. The companies that stood out were the ones that understood their numbers, protected their customer base, and turned existing relationships into durable growth. That is the real value of the ChartMogul SaaS Benchmarks Report 2023: it did not just describe the market. It helped SaaS teams decide how to survive and grow inside it.
