Methodology

OperatorIndex aggregates self-reported metrics from vertical SaaS operators who run the public calculator. The dataset compounds with every submission. Here is what you should know before reading a report.

What we collect

Twelve metrics per submission: vertical, ARR range, employee count, gross margin, NRR, gross churn, CAC payback, magic number, implementation revenue mix, services revenue mix, country, and email (so we can deliver the PDF).

Cohort logic

For each submission, we compare your metrics against the same-vertical peer cohort (rolling 365-day window). When the same-vertical sample size is below n = 25, we fall back to the all-vertical-SaaS pool and disclose the fallback in the report. We never report a percentile against a sample below n = 5.

Percentile computation

We recompute p25/p50/p75 per metric per vertical once per day via a Cloudflare cron trigger. Your percentile rank is interpolated linearly between p25, p50, and p75 (and clamped at the tails).

External anchors

• NRR: median private SaaS 101% — Benchmarkit 2025 (cited by Maxio).
• CAC ratio / payback: Benchmarkit 2025 — median new CAC ratio increased 14% to $2.00 of S&M spend per $1 of new ARR.
• Rule of 40: public-SaaS median 28% (Aventis Advisors Q4 2025, 58 actively traded SaaS); private-SaaS median 12% (Benchmarkit via SaaS Mag); top quartile 50+.
• Gross margin: 75%+ top-quartile for SaaS subscriptions — G-Squared 2026.
• ARR per FTE: top-quartile traditional SaaS ~$250K/FTE.

Data discipline

Submissions are stored encrypted. Personally identifying information (email) is separated from the metrics. After 730 days, individual rows are truncated to vertical-level aggregates only.

What we will not do

We do not blend public and private benchmarks unless explicitly labeled. We do not publish percentiles for thin samples without disclosure. We do not resell anonymized raw submissions to third parties. We do not run third-party advertising trackers.