Report · 20 min read

What's Really Going on in Software: The 2025 SaaS Benchmarks Report

Kyle Poyar · Growth Unhinged Freemium Advanced

Survey data from over eight hundred private companies, with an efficient growth matrix that plots CAC payback against NRR so you can locate yourself rather than just read averages.

  • Across 800 plus participants, AI-native companies grew 110 percent at 1 to 5M ARR against 40 percent for other B2B SaaS.
  • At 5 to 20M ARR the gap is 90 percent median growth for AI-native against 30 percent.
  • ARR per FTE jumped 42 percent for 20 to 50M companies and 50 percent above 50M.
  • Early-stage gross margin compressed nearly 10 points year on year.
  • 70 percent of companies have shipped AI features, and 36 percent say AI is core to the product.

It answers 2 questions

  1. What GTM efficiency numbers are investors actually benchmarking us against right now?
  2. Do the classic SaaS metrics still work if we are an AI native company?

Read with it

  1. Sets out exactly what a repeatable sales motion is supposed to look like by ten million dollars ARR, with the four GTM metrics... Bessemer Venture Partners Report · 35 min read Scaling from $1 to $10 million ARR Janelle Teng Wade, Mary D'Onofrio and Ethan Ding
  2. The annual dataset on the hundred best private cloud companies, including growth rates, multiples, and how long it now takes to... Bessemer Venture Partners Report · 30 min read The Cloud 100 Benchmarks Report 2025 Byron Deeter, Elliott Robinson, Sameer Dholakia and the Bessemer Atlas team
  3. Lays out Upekkha's Value SaaS argument that SaaS built from India is structurally capital efficient, which changes what a... Inc42 Article · 10 min read Why Indian Startup Ecosystem Needs More Catalysts Like Upekkha Than Typical Incubators And Accelerators? Team Inc42
  4. Names precisely which classic metrics stop working when revenue is consumption based and inference costs eat gross margin, then... Growth Unhinged Newsletter · 14 min read Rethinking SaaS metrics for AI Kyle Poyar
  5. Pavilion's data comes from operators rather than investors, and the headline numbers on the page (median growth, NRR... Pavilion Report · gated report, key stats on page 2025 B2B SaaS Benchmarks: CAC, NRR & Growth Rate Metrics Pavilion
  6. Video · 4 min Adapting CAC Payback Period for Usage-Based SaaS Models | SaaS Metrics School | CAC Payback Period Ben Murray
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →