NPS Benchmarks by Industry: 2026 Averages and How to Use Them

NPS benchmarks by industry give you a reference point for judging your own Net Promoter Score. A score of 40 might be excellent in healthcare and only average in consulting, so the raw number rarely means much without context.

Every industry carries its own baseline for customer loyalty. Comparing your score against the right peer group shows whether you are genuinely ahead of the competition or simply operating in a category where scores run high.

This guide breaks down the latest NPS benchmarks by industry for 2026, shows how to use them without getting misled, and covers what to do if a clean benchmark does not exist for your sector yet.

What is an NPS benchmark?

An NPS benchmark is the average Net Promoter Score recorded across companies within a specific industry, used as a reference point for judging whether your own score is strong, average, or weak.

Your NPS score and an NPS benchmark are two different things. Your score reflects how your own customers rated you. The benchmark reflects what similar companies in your category typically achieve, based on aggregated survey data from research firms like Retently or Bain.

NPS itself runs on a scale from -100 to 100. Anything below 0 usually signals a bad NPS score that needs immediate attention, while scores above 30 are generally considered solid across most sectors.

How is NPS calculated?

NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters, based on responses to a single 0 to 10 loyalty question.

Respondents who answer 9 or 10 are promoters. Those who answer 7 or 8 are passives, and anyone who answers 0 through 6 is a detractor. Passives count toward your total response pool but drop out of the final subtraction.

A company with 60% promoters and 15% detractors would land at an NPS of 45. Say a mid-size SaaS company surveys 200 customers. 110 respond with a 9 or 10, 60 respond with a 7 or 8, and 30 respond with 6 or below. That is 55% promoters and 15% detractors, for a final NPS of 40, comfortably above the 41 average this article’s benchmark table lists for B2B software.

For a full walkthrough with worked examples, this step-by-step NPS calculation guide covers the formula in more depth, including different NPS question formats you can use depending on whether you are measuring relationship loyalty or a single transaction.

Average NPS benchmarks by industry in 2026

Benchmark values shift every year as customer expectations rise and industries adjust to new competitive pressure. The table below reflects Retently’s 2026 Net Promoter Score benchmark study, which aggregates data from thousands of companies across 14 industries with a large enough client base to be statistically meaningful.

Source: Retently 2026 NPS Benchmark.

These numbers move for real business reasons, not just survey noise. Insurance fell sharply from 80 to 46 this year, while Healthcare dropped from 53 to 37, largely tied to rising expectations around digital service and claims handling.

Other research firms track different industry cuts. Bain’s NPS Prism benchmarking service, run by the consultancy that co-invented NPS, found that grocery relationship scores averaged 34 in 2026 based on an analysis of over 50,000 consumers shopping with more than 40 grocer brands. If your industry is not in the table above, a service like NPS Prism may have a closer match.

How to use NPS benchmarks the right way

Comparing your score against the wrong peer group is the fastest way to draw the wrong conclusion. Use these checks before you decide whether your NPS is actually good.

• Compare within your industry, not across it.
  A 30 in telecom can be excellent, while a 30 in e-commerce is below average. Match your score to companies selling similar products under similar switching costs.

• Account for region.
  US respondents tend to rate more generously than European or Japanese respondents, so a global average can undersell strong regional performance.

• Match the survey channel.
  Phone and in-app surveys tend to score higher than email surveys. Only benchmark against data collected through a similar channel.

• Weigh your own trend most heavily.
  The most reliable benchmark is your own score from the last two or three quarters. If it is climbing, you are moving in the right direction regardless of where the industry average sits.

Tracking that trend over time, rather than fixating on a single snapshot, is one of the clearest benefits of measuring NPS consistently instead of running one-off surveys.

What to do if there’s no NPS benchmark for your industry

Niche categories, new markets, and B2B subsectors often lack a published benchmark altogether. If that is your situation, benchmark against yourself instead.

Record your NPS every quarter and treat your own prior score as the standard to beat. A five-point gain over two quarters tells you more about your trajectory than any industry average would, since it strips out the noise created by different survey methodologies and sample sizes across firms.

Pair that trend with open-ended feedback from detractors and passives. The number tells you where you stand. The comments tell you why, and why is what you actually act on.

It also helps to build a rough proxy benchmark from adjacent categories. A niche B2B logistics software company, for example, could reasonably look at both the broader Logistics & Transportation average and the B2B Software & SaaS average, then land somewhere between the two rather than picking one arbitrarily. This is not a perfect substitute for real industry data, but it beats operating with no external reference point at all.

Common mistakes when benchmarking NPS

Even experienced CX teams misread benchmark data in predictable ways. Watch for these before you present your numbers internally.

• Comparing your score to a competitor whose survey uses a different question wording or scale.
• Treating a single quarter’s dip as a crisis instead of checking the three-month trend first.
• Ignoring passives entirely, when they are often one small experience away from becoming detractors.
• Benchmarking against global leaders in unrelated categories just because their score looks impressive.
• Failing to segment scores by customer tier, region, or product line before drawing conclusions.

How to improve your NPS score

Improving your score is less about the survey itself and more about what you do with the answers.

1. Close the loop with detractors fast. A follow-up call or email within 48 hours can turn a frustrated customer around before they churn or post a public complaint.
2. Ask why, not just what. A plain 0 to 10 score tells you almost nothing on its own. Platforms such as QuestionPro’s Customer Experience software, including its AskWhy root-cause follow-up, prompt customers to explain the reason behind their rating right after they respond, turning a number into a specific, fixable theme.
3. Segment your data. Break results down by customer tier, geography, or product line so you can see which segments are dragging the average down.
4. Set goals tied to specific journeys, like onboarding or renewal, instead of one blanket company-wide target.
5. Share results outside the CX team. Product, support, and sales all influence loyalty, so the score needs to reach every department that touches the customer.

For a broader set of tactics, this guide on strategies to improve Net Promoter Score walks through additional approaches by team and channel.

Your NPS benchmark is a starting point, not a scoreboard

A benchmark tells you where your industry sits today. It does not tell you what your customers need from you tomorrow. The companies that treat NPS as a diagnostic tool, not a vanity number, are the ones that actually close the gap between their score and the leaders above them.

Use the table above to see where you stand. Then spend more time on the qualitative feedback behind your score than on the number itself. That is where the real improvements come from.

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