2025 B2B SaaS Startup Benchmarks
- Stephanie Pflaum
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
A year ago, Lighter Capital rolled out a first-of-its-kind analysis of benchmarks and trends from more than 125 private B2B SaaS startups. With breakdowns by industry vertical, and age, we presented actual performance data from real SaaS startups to help founders and investors alike draw better insights and conclusions based on metrics from comparable businesses.
Our SaaS benchmarks for 2025 come from 155 private B2B SaaS startups across 11 different verticals and their connected business data—not a survey—recorded from CY 2020 to 2024.
Below we summarize the key takeaways and dig into interesting trends between 2024 and 2025 benchmarks.
Key Takeaways
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1. SaaS startups continue to grow, but at a more modest pace
Growth rates have scaled back over the last year, which lines up with the increasing pressure on SaaS startups to achieve growth and capital efficiency.
Annual revenue growth rate benchmarks for both the median and the top quartile in 2025 were significantly lower than benchmarks in 2024. Median annual revenue growth was 28% in 2025, down 40% from 2024’s benchmark of 47%. Companies in the upper quartile grew revenue at an annual rate of 65%, versus 88% in 2024—a 25% reduction in the growth rate among top performers. By age, annual growth followed the same pattern we saw in last year's data, as we'd expect, but at a significantly slower pace across all age brackets.
Looking at annual revenue growth across ARR buckets, we see slower growth from most SaaS startups making less than $100M ARR, with the biggest slowdown (about 50% YoY) among startups making less than $50K ARR and those making between $1M and $50M ARR. The annual growth rate for startups making $50K to $1M was minimized by top performers that accelerated growth by 3% in 2025.
Annual Revenue Growth by Vertical
SaaS startups in the Restaurant, Hospitality, and Leisure space and startups in the Education vertical experienced a slow down in growth by more than 50% from 2024 to 2025.
SaaS startups in the HR, Legal, and Backoffice category, which was the slowest growing vertical last year, caught up to 2025's benchmark—it was the only vertical to accelerate growth. While Healthcare growth did slow slightly, it remains one of the top revenue-generating SaaS verticals.
B2B SaaS Growth Benchmarks
Annual Revenue Growth Rate
Year | 25th Percentile | Median | Mean | 75th Percentile |
2024 Benchmarks | 23.52% | 47.25% | 57.82% | 87.55% |
2025 Benchmarks | 15.25% | 28.29% | 41.70% | 65.40% |
2. Churn ticked up slightly; driven by SaaS startups in the education vertical
SaaS churn rates stayed relatively consistent to previous years in 2025 with a modest increase in median revenue churn from 11.34% to 12.50%. Among top performers, customer churn rate went up slightly, while revenue churn went down. It's likely that top performers made an effort over the last year to refine their target customer segments and zero in on those with the best lifetime value (LTV).
SaaS Churn by Industry
Churn increases in 2025 were largely driven by the performance of SaaS startups in the Education vertical, which showed a 71% increase in revenue churn and saw customer churn double from 11% in 2024 to 22%.
SaaS startups in the Healthcare vertical exhibited a 67% increase in revenue churn, while most other verticals held steady. Customer churn for SaaS businesses in the Healthcare vertical went down slightly, along with customer churn rates in the Ecomm & Retail vertical and the HR, Legal & Backoffice space.
SaaS Churn by ARR
Churn is also interesting across ARR buckets. Looking at benchmarks by ARR, startups with less than $50K in ARR saw a small increase in customer churn and revenue churn. All other cohorts decreased customer churn, with the exception of the $50K to $1M ARR group that was flat year over year.
SaaS businesses with more than $100M ARR—that tend to have significantly higher revenue churn rates—also saw revenue churn increase, even though customer churn improved.
B2B SaaS Churn Benchmarks
Customer Churn Rates
Year | 25th Percentile | Median | Mean | 75th Percentile |
2024 Benchmarks | 9.07% | 16.21% | 20.32% | 27.00% |
2025 Benchmarks | 9.35% | 16.25% | 20.46% | 27.25% |
Revenue Churn Rates
Year | 25th Percentile | Median | Mean | 75th Percentile |
2024 Benchmarks | 6.07% | 11.34% | 17.01% | 22.75% |
2025 Benchmarks | 5.48% | 12.50% | 17.90% | 24.53% |
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3. Sales and marketing dollars went half as far to generate SaaS revenue in 2025
The sales and marketing (S&M) multiple shows how much revenue a company makes from every dollar spent on sales and marketing, excluding salaries. The median S&M multiple for 2025 was about 3x, so a startup that spent $150k on sales and marketing activities in a year typically generated $450K in annual revenue.
This is half of the benchmark from 2024 (6x)—indicating that SaaS businesses across the board are generating half the revenue they were with their sales and marketing budgets. We see an even steeper decline among top performers in the upper quartile S&M benchmark, which is about a third of what it was last year (7.18 vs. 21.62).
SaaS S&M Multiples by ARR
We see the most pronounced decline in S&M effectiveness in younger SaaS startups making less than $1M in ARR, and in more mature businesses making over $100M ARR. Top performers in the upper quartile experienced the most significant declines in every revenue bracket.
It's possible that the decrease in sales and marketing effectiveness played a major role in the slower annual growth trend we see in the 2025 data.
SaaS S&M Multiples by Vertical
There were significant declines in S&M multiples across most verticals, with the exception of HR, Legal & Backoffice (the lowest S&M multiple we saw last year).
Healthcare experienced the biggest decline, dropping 83% from 9.64, which was well above the benchmark last year, to only 0.78—well under the 2025 S&M benchmark. The S&M multiple for the Data, Infrastructure, and Process Automation vertical also decreased 68%.
Among top performers, Ecomm and Retail SaaS saw the steepest decline—almost 90%—in their S&M multiple from 2024 to 2025. The Ecomm and Retail vertical was the top performer among top performers in 2024.
B2B SaaS Sales and Marketing Benchmarks
Sales & Marketing Multiple
Year | 25th Percentile | Median | Mean | 75th Percentile |
2024 Benchmarks | 2.50 | 6.08 | 14.22 | 21.26 |
2025 Benchmarks | 0.94 | 3.19 | 5.13 | 7.05 |
4. Salaries ate up much more of the budget at SaaS businesses making $100M+ ARR
Overall, there wasn't much fluctuation in salary costs as a percentage of revenue and as a percentage of operating expenses (OPEX) benchmarks among B2B SaaS startups from 2024 to 2025.
There was an increase in median salary as a percent of revenue (63.59% to 66.67%), with top performers in the upper quartile holding steady at about 44%. We saw a smaller increase in median salary as a percent of OPEX (53.61% to 55.29%) and a slight decrease among top performers (40.47% to 38.84%).
We continue to see wages account for a little over half of a B2B SaaS startup’s operating expenses and just over 60% of revenue on the median in our data.
SaaS Salary Cost Benchmarks by ARR
The most significant change in salary costs occurred in SaaS businesses making more than $100M ARR—both salary as a percent of revenue and salary as a percent of OPEX in 2025 were more than double the 2024 benchmarks. This indicates that these mature SaaS startups are seeing wages eat up more of their operating budgets, with less revenue growth to show for it.
Startups with less than $50K ARR reported a fairly significant decrease in salary as a percent of revenue for 2025, which dropped 25% (79.05% to 61.23%).
Median salary as a percent of OPEX increased about 33% on average in 2025 for SaaS startups making over $1M ARR, and decreased about 4% for those making less than $1M.
SaaS Salary Cost Benchmarks by Vertical
In the vertical breakdown, we can see that salary as a percent of revenue decreased in most SaaS verticals except Restaurant, Hospitality & Leisure and Data, Infrastructure & Process Automation, which increased 8% and 5%, respectively, from 2024 benchmarks.
Healthcare SaaS experienced the most significant change in benchmarks for salary as a percent of OPEX, which decreased 20% in 2025. Median salary as a percent of OPEX increased the most in 2025 for HR, Legal, and Backoffice SaaS by about 13%.
B2B SaaS Salary Cost Benchmarks
Salary as % Revenue
Year | 25th Percentile | Median | Mean | 75th Percentile |
2024 Benchmarks | 43.60% | 53.59% | 73.68% | 89.23% |
2025 Benchmarks | 43.67% | 66.77% | 73.21% | 83.99% |
Salary as % OPEX
Year | 25th Percentile | Median | Mean | 75th Percentile |
2024 Benchmarks | 40.47% | 53.61% | 53.01% | 67.65% |
2025 Benchmarks | 39.84% | 55.29% | 53.16% | 67.54% |
Benchmarking Data and Definitions
The financial performance metrics in this report are calculated using actual data from 155 private B2B SaaS startups, recorded from 2020 to 2024 and aggregated over all 5 years. The startups are located in the United States, Canada, and Australia; they span 11 different industries, which are broken down below.
Annual Churn: Churn calculations annualize the average monthly rate for the trailing 12 months. Annual Churn = 1 – (1 – trailing 12-month Average Churn per month) ^12, where Monthly Churn is lost Revenue (or Customer Count) divided by total Revenue generated (or total Customer Count) the prior month
Salary as % of Revenue: Salary Costs divided by Gross Revenue
Salary as % of OPEX: Salary Costs divided by Operating Expenses (OPEX), where OPEX = Revenue – (Net Operating Margin x Revenue) – Interest Expense
Sales & Marketing Multiple: This metric shows how much revenue a company makes for every dollar spent on sales and marketing, excluding salaries. Sales and marketing (S&M) ROI is revenue divided by S&M costs for the one-year period, where revenue is normalized: Annual Revenue Growth Rate x Annual Gross Revenue
YoY Growth: Year-over-year (YoY) growth is the Annual Gross Revenue Growth Rate (last 12 months)
Industry Verticals
The B2B SaaS startups in this report represent 11 different industries (shown below). One of the industry verticals has a data set of 5 or fewer companies. The remainder range from 6 - 34 companies.
