---
title: What is Expansion revenue?
url: https://markin.ai/glossary/expansion-revenue
category: Revenue and ARPU metrics
---

# Expansion revenue

> Expansion revenue is additional revenue from customers a business already has: upgrades, add-ons, cross-sell, higher usage or a move to a richer plan. It is the component of growth that requires no acquisition spend and is therefore the highest-margin revenue in the business.

## Why it matters for ARPU

In a large B2C base, expansion decisions are the dominant ARPU lever simply because the addressable population is everyone who already pays.

## Related terms

- [Net revenue retention](https://markin.ai/glossary/net-revenue-retention), Net revenue retention measures revenue from an existing cohort at the end of a period against its revenue at the start, including upgrades, downgrades and churn, but excluding new customers.
- [ARPU](https://markin.ai/glossary/arpu), ARPU, average revenue per user, is total revenue in a period divided by the average number of active users in that period.
- [Next best offer](https://markin.ai/glossary/next-best-offer), Next best offer selects the most valuable commercial proposition for a customer: which product, plan, bundle or price to present.
- [Monetization rate](https://markin.ai/glossary/monetization-rate), Monetization rate is the share of active customers who pay anything in a period.

## Go deeper

- [ARPU expansion](https://markin.ai/solutions/arpu-expansion), The expansion programme, per customer.
- [Cross-sell without cannibalization](https://markin.ai/blog/cross-sell-without-cannibalization), Measuring true incremental expansion.

Source: https://markin.ai/glossary/expansion-revenue