Growth and New-ARR Composition: The Certified Data

Headline Growth and Composition

Two cuts of the 2024 data show why expansion-majority is a large-company move. As companies scale, growth and expansion move in opposite directions: below $10M ARR the median company grows 31% but draws only 48% of new ARR from its base, while above $50M growth has fallen to 14% and expansion has risen to 56%. Expansion crosses into the majority only above roughly $25M ARR; overall median growth in 2024 was 15% (2025 Survey, p. 15 and p. 18).

Growth also splits by what a company sells. Horizontal software grew fastest at 18% in 2024, infrastructure and security at 15%, and vertical SaaS slowest at 10% (2025 Survey, p. 13), the verticals typically serving narrower or more cyclical end markets.

Expansion share does not climb cleanly with growth. It peaks in the 10–20% growth cohort at 61% and falls at both ends: the fastest growers, above 30%, draw only 40% of new ARR from expansion because new logos still dominate their mix, while the slowest, under 10%, sit at 54% (2025 Survey, p. 18).

Dispersion and Segment Cuts

Dispersion matters as much as the median, so the quartile band belongs alongside it (2025 Survey, p. 9).

The 75th-percentile grower fell from 61% growth in 2022 to 27% in 2024, more than half. The deceleration reached the top of the distribution, not just the bottom. The 25th percentile at 9% means a quarter of the survey grew in single digits in 2024, and at 14% median gross churn, a meaningful share of those companies was net-shrinking on its existing base. Inference

The Ownership Cut

Source: 2025 Survey, p. 10, p. 13 (2024 actuals)

PE-backed companies, the survey’s largest and most mature cohort at $40.9M median ARR, grew slowest at 12%, consistent with the scale gradient and a preview of where the rest of the distribution is headed as it ages. Inference

Reading the Composition Shift

The composition series is the one most often misquoted, so it is worth stating plainly: expansion’s share of new ARR is rising, and 2024 is the first year expansion crossed above half. The segment cuts show the shift is scale-gated: companies above $50M ARR draw 56% of new ARR from the existing base while sub-$10M companies still draw a small majority from new logos. The growth cuts complete the picture: the fastest growers (>30%) are the least expansion-dependent at 40%, while the 10–20% cohort leans on expansion for 61% of new ARR.

One feature of the table above is a finding in itself. Every headline metric on this page carries a 2025E and 2026E estimate, because the survey asks companies to forecast them. The expansion-composition rows do not: they run 42, 45, 52 through 2024 and then stop, their forecast cells blank. The industry forecasts the ARR it hopes to book, but not the expansion that will make up most of it at scale, because it plans the minority engine and lets the majority one happen. That forward gap is taken up in The Expansion Myth.

This section underwrites The Expansion Myth primarily, with supporting evidence for The NDR Crisis and Why the System Persists.