Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS boils customer sentiment down to a single number. You ask one question: "How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?" on a 0 to 10 scale. Based on responses, customers fall into three groups: Promoters (9 to 10), Passives (7 to 8), and Detractors (0 to 6). Your NPS is the percentage of Promoters minus the percentage of Detractors.

The result sits somewhere between -100 and +100. Simple to collect, simple to benchmark. That's the appeal.

How NPS is calculated

NPS = % Promoters - % Detractors

Say you survey 200 customers. 100 score you 9 or 10 (Promoters), 60 score 7 or 8 (Passives), and 40 score 0 to 6 (Detractors). That gives you 50% Promoters minus 20% Detractors, so an NPS of 30. Passives don't factor into the calculation directly (see our full guide on how to calculate NPS), but a large passive group is worth investigating. They're one bad experience away from becoming detractors.

You can calculate yours instantly with our free NPS calculator.

SaaS NPS benchmarks

The average SaaS NPS lands somewhere around 30 to 40, though this varies by segment. B2B SaaS products with strong customer success teams tend to score higher than self-serve tools. Here's the rough scale most practitioners use:

• Below 0: significant detractor problem. Customers are actively unhappy
• 0 to 30: decent, but room to grow. You're in the pack
• 30 to 70: strong. Your customers are generally satisfied and some are genuine advocates
• 70+: world-class. Companies like Slack and Zoom have historically hit this range

Context matters more than the absolute number. An NPS of 25 in a commoditised market with high switching costs means something different to 25 in a market where customers can leave in two clicks. For a deeper breakdown, see our guide to what counts as a good NPS score.

NPS and churn

Detractors churn at much higher rates than Promoters. That's well-documented. But NPS only captures one dimension of churn risk: how the customer feels about you. It says nothing about whether their next payment will go through.

A customer can score you a 10 and still churn next month because their card expired. That's involuntary churn, and it accounts for 20 to 40% of all SaaS churn. NPS is a strong signal for voluntary churn prediction, but it's blind to the payments side entirely.

The strongest retention strategies pair NPS insights with payment health monitoring. Fix what makes detractors unhappy. Separately, make sure you're recovering failed payments through dunning automation so Promoters don't silently disappear.

Limitations worth knowing

NPS has critics, and some of the criticism is fair. A single question can't capture why someone is unhappy. Response bias skews results because satisfied customers are more likely to respond. The score doesn't tell you what to fix.

That's why most SaaS teams pair NPS with more targeted metrics. Customer Effort Score (CES) measures friction at specific touchpoints. Customer health scores combine multiple signals into a composite risk picture. NPS tells you how customers feel overall. These other metrics tell you where to act.