# How do I know whether a SaaS benchmark applies to my company?

Run four checks in order: does the denominator match, does the panel match, is it the same statistic (median vs mean), and is it the same time basis? If a comparison fails any one of them, the gap you are looking at is measurement, not performance. Most comparisons do fail, usually on the first or the third.

Add a fifth check on provenance: how many of the sources you are citing are ultimately quoting each other? Benchmark categories go circular quickly — a figure published without method gets repeated by a vendor blog, cited by an SEO page, and becomes "industry standard" within two years.

## Sources

- **Measurement** — [B2B SaaS Benchmark Corpus](https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/research/benchmark-corpus/)

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Cluster: Benchmarks · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/answers/how-to-compare-saas-benchmarks/