What's a Good NPS Benchmark by Industry in 2026?

A Net Promoter Score above 30 is generally considered strong, above 50 is excellent, and above 70 puts a company in the global top tier. But those thresholds are only useful in context: 2026 industry benchmarks show average NPS ranging from the single digits for internet and cable providers up to the high 60s and 70s for insurance and professional services.

The Overall Baseline

Across all industries, the 2026 average NPS is 32, with a median of 44. B2C companies average higher than B2B overall — 49 versus 38 — which matters when you're picking a comparison point, since holding a B2B software company to a B2C retail benchmark will make a genuinely good score look mediocre.

What "Good" Looks Like by Industry

The spread between industries is large enough that a single global average is close to meaningless for benchmarking your own score. Insurance and professional services post the highest scores, in the high 60s to low 70s, reflecting relationship-driven purchases with high switching costs and infrequent but high-stakes interactions. SaaS companies average in the 30s to low 40s, e-commerce runs 45–55, healthcare spans a wide 38–58, financial services sits around 35–45, and consumer electronics runs higher at 50–65. Telecom and internet/cable providers sit at the bottom, with cable and internet providers averaging in the low single digits to high single digits and telecom overall around 27 — a reflection of famously low switching flexibility paired with chronic service frustration.

Why Cross-Industry Comparison Misleads

A company posting an NPS of 40 could be beating its sector average by 20 points, or trailing best-in-class competitors by 30 points, entirely depending on which industry it's compared against. Treating 40 as a fixed universal "good score" ignores that context completely. The only comparison that tells you anything useful is against your own industry's benchmark, and ideally against your closest direct competitors rather than a broad category average.

How to Benchmark Your Own Score Correctly

Start by identifying your closest published industry benchmark rather than a generic cross-industry average, and track your score's trend over time as much as its absolute level — a SaaS company moving from 25 to 35 over a year is a stronger signal of health than a static score sitting anywhere on a broad range. Segment responses by customer tenure and plan tier too: a low blended score can hide a strong score among your best customers and a much weaker one among new or about-to-churn accounts, which is a more actionable finding than the blended number alone.

How the Score Is Actually Calculated

NPS comes from a single question — "How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?" on a 0–10 scale — where respondents scoring 9–10 are Promoters, 7–8 are Passives, and 0–6 are Detractors. The score itself is the percentage of Promoters minus the percentage of Detractors, which is why it can run negative: a company with more Detractors than Promoters posts a score below zero even if most respondents were only mildly unhappy rather than actively hostile.

Bottom Line

Don't chase a universal "good NPS" number — pull your specific industry's 2026 benchmark, compare your score against that, and track the trend quarter over quarter rather than fixating on a single snapshot.

Sources: Retently, "What is a Good Net Promoter Score? (2026 NPS Benchmark)"; StealthAgents, "Net Promoter Score Benchmarks by Industry 2026: Average NPS Data"; Sybill, "NPS Scores by Industry: 2026 Benchmarks & What's a Good Score."