NPS Benchmarks by Industry: Tables and Trajectory

NPS benchmarks by industry: typical ranges across 12 sectors. What the median tells you, what it does not, and the better benchmark almost no team uses.

Benchmarks tell you where you stand. They never tell you what to fix.
A 35 is average in B2B SaaS, top-quartile in airlines, and below median in consumer electronics. Industry benchmarks are useful for sanity checking and useless as targets — the same number means three different things in three different sectors. The benchmark that actually moves your program is your own prior wave on the same customers. Sopact tracks NPS as a trajectory per customer across waves, with every verbatim attached — so the score arrives with the reason and the comparison underneath.

What an NPS benchmark is

Start with the definition

An NPS benchmark is a reference NPS score, usually a median or quartile range, drawn from a published industry study or internal historical data. The benchmark answers where does this score sit relative to others. The benchmark does not answer what to do about it — that question lives in the verbatim that arrives with each response.

NPS by industry: typical ranges

Approximate medians and quartile ranges across twelve sectors, drawn from published benchmarking studies. Use the numbers as orientation, not as targets. The right column is the one that matters.

Source orientation: medians and quartiles approximated from Bain & Company, Satmetrix (NICE), Qualtrics, and Forrester benchmarking studies. Methodology varies; the published numbers in any single study should be read as estimates with substantial confidence intervals. The ranges above are useful for sanity checking, not as targets.

Why the benchmark is the starting line

The industry median is where you stand. It is not what to do.
For twenty years CX teams asked the same question after every NPS wave: how does our score compare to the industry. The answer felt important. It oriented the team. It made the conversation about external position rather than internal action.

The answer was useful and incomplete. A 35 in B2B SaaS is average. A 35 in airlines is exceptional. A 35 trending down on the same customer base across three quarters is a churn signal regardless of where the industry median sits. The industry comparison tells the team one thing: whether the score is roughly in the expected range for the sector.

Two answers from the same number

The industry benchmark answers one specific question well and dozens of others poorly. Knowing which is which is the difference between a useful benchmark conversation and a defensive one.

What benchmarks tell you

• A rough sanity check: is your score roughly normal for the sector you operate in.
• Whether you are an outlier on the high or low side — useful information for the first board conversation about the program.
• How wide the natural variance is in your industry — an indication of how meaningful a +/- 5 movement actually is.
• Context for new leadership who do not yet know what to expect from the program.
• An external talking point for sales conversations or investor decks — "we are top quartile in our sector."

What benchmarks do not tell you

• Which specific customers became detractors this wave.
• Why each detractor scored low — their verbatim names the reason; the benchmark does not.
• Whether any promoter just shifted to passive on the same record.
• What the team should change about the product, the service, or the relationship.
• Whether the customers most likely to churn next quarter are already named in the current wave's response set.

Four recurring benchmark mistakes

Each is a pattern that shows up in NPS programs at least once a quarter. Each treats the benchmark as something it is not.

Mistake 01

Setting the benchmark as the target.
"Our goal is to reach industry median by Q4." The benchmark is an average across companies of varying maturity, customer mix, and survey methodology. Targeting the median is targeting average — and the team has no idea which specific customers would need to move to get there. Track trajectory instead.

Mistake 02

Comparing across incomparable industries.
"Apple's NPS is 70; ours is 35; we have work to do." Apple is a consumer-electronics monoculture with decades of brand investment; an enterprise SaaS at 35 is in the same range as its peers. The cross-industry comparison is a vanity exercise. Compare to your own sector and your own prior wave.

Mistake 03

Treating the benchmark as stable over time.
A benchmark study from 2019 reported a 38 median for B2B SaaS. The team set 38 as their bar in 2026. Industry NPS shifts with macro conditions — tightening budgets, shifts in switching costs, AI disruption. A six-year-old benchmark is a historical artifact. Use the most recent study you can find, and trust your own trend more than the published median.

Mistake 04

Reporting only the gap to benchmark.
The board sees "we are 8 points below industry median." The conversation moves to closing that 8-point gap. Nobody asks which customers moved, what they said, or whether the gap is even real given methodology differences. A program that reports only the benchmark gap is using the benchmark to avoid the work.

Questions teams ask about NPS benchmarks

What is a good NPS score?+

There is no universal good NPS. The same number means very different things in different industries: a 30 is excellent in airlines, average in SaaS, and poor in consumer technology. The more honest measure is whether the score is improving on the same customer base across waves — the trajectory, not the absolute number.

What is the average NPS by industry?+

Approximate industry medians published by Bain, Satmetrix, and the major benchmarking studies: SaaS and B2B software 30-40, retail 40-50, financial services 20-40 with wide variation, telecom and utilities 0-15, airlines and hospitality 15-40, healthcare 20-40, consumer electronics 40-60.

Should I compare my NPS to the industry benchmark?+

Use the comparison as a sanity check, not as a target. The right comparison is your prior wave on the same customers. The industry benchmark tells you whether your program is roughly in the expected range for your sector; it does not tell you what to do next, which customers to call, or what verbatim to read.

What is a NPS benchmark report?+

An NPS benchmark report is a published study (usually annual) that reports NPS medians by industry, by company size, by region, and sometimes by segment.