What Is a Good NPS Score? Benchmarks by Industry

Ask what counts as a good NPS score and you'll be told 30 is good, 50 is great and 70 is world-class. Those numbers circulate everywhere and are usually attributed to Bain & Company, who own the Net Promoter trademark. Bain's own published guidance doesn't state them.

What Bain does say is more useful and less quotable: scores run from -100 to +100, higher is better, and performance depends heavily on context, industry, country, business model, and how you collected the responses. In their words, good looks different for every organisation.

So here's the honest version: real benchmark data from two sources, what it shows, why the two disagree with each other, and what to do instead of chasing a number.

Why the famous thresholds are shakier than they look

The 30/50/70 rule of thumb is repeated so often it has acquired the appearance of a standard. Treat it carefully for three reasons.

It ignores industry. An NPS of 25 is poor for a car dealership and strong for a broadband provider. Applying one threshold across both is like judging every athlete by the same 100-metre time.

It ignores methodology. Scores shift with how you ask. Transactional surveys sent straight after a good experience run higher than relationship surveys sent quarterly. Chasing non-responders raises your response rate and usually lowers your score, because the enthusiastic answer first.

It ignores country. Cultural response styles differ enough to move a score meaningfully. Respondents in some markets use the top of a scale freely; in others a 7 is genuine praise. A multi-country average conceals this entirely.

NPS benchmarks by industry

Two published datasets are worth knowing. They use different methods and produce noticeably different numbers, which is itself the most instructive thing about them.

NPS Prism (Bain & Company), 2025-26

Bain's benchmarking product publishes consumer-facing product NPS figures:

Retently's 2026 benchmark report

Retently publishes averages drawn from their own customer base, limited to industries with more than ten clients and a sample of at least 10,000 surveys, not segmented by company size or country:

What actually counts as good

Four comparisons are worth more than any published average.

Your own trend. Same question, same scale, same audience, same timing, measured over at least four cycles. A score of 22 rising steadily from 8 is a healthier business than a 45 that was 60 last year.

Your distribution, not your headline. Because passives (7s and 8s) are excluded from the calculation, two businesses with identical scores can be in very different positions. A 30 built from 45% promoters and 15% detractors is fragile. A 30 built from 35% promoters and 5% detractors, with a large passive middle, is a much safer base. Always publish the split alongside the number.

Your direct competitors, measured the same way. Not a sector average, the two or three businesses your customers actually chose between. This is hard to get, which is why it's valuable.

Whether the score moves when you fix things. If you resolve a known problem and your NPS doesn't respond over two cycles, your survey isn't reaching the affected customers. That's a measurement problem worth more attention than the number itself.

Small businesses and small samples

If you're collecting 30 or 40 responses a quarter, your NPS is dominated by noise. It's a difference between two percentages, so a handful of people changing their minds moves the headline several points, and you'll spend meetings explaining variance that means nothing.

At that volume, the honest approach is to read the responses rather than score them, and to lean on sources that don't depend on survey participation: repeat business, retention, and the reviews customers write unprompted. Introduce the score when your volume makes it stable.

Raising the score honestly

The reliable levers are unglamorous: close the loop with every detractor within a business day, fix the causes that repeat rather than the individual complaints, and make sure your promoters are actually asked to say so publicly. Most businesses have far more goodwill than reviews, simply because nobody asks.

That last part, and the rest of the loop, is what Dinopix Reviews runs. It sends review requests and an NPS survey after each delivered order, so you can follow up privately with detractors, and Surveys Pro adds CSAT and customer effort surveys alongside. Every review lands in one inbox with AI-drafted replies, so closing the loop with an unhappy customer takes minutes (pricing shows which plans include each). For the detail on wording your survey so it produces usable answers, see the exact NPS question; for choosing between NPS, CSAT and CES in the first place, see our head-to-head comparison.

Sources

This guide draws on the sources below. Benchmark figures are updated periodically. Always check the current version before quoting them.

• What Is a Good Net Promoter Score? NPS Benchmarks by Industry · NPS Prism (Bain & Company)
• Measuring Your Net Promoter Score · Bain & Company, Net Promoter System
• NPS Benchmarks by Industry, 2026 · Retently
• Prohibited & restricted content · Google Business Profile Help