Why "The" SaaS Demo No-Show Rate Is the Wrong Question
Ask what the average SaaS demo no-show rate is and you'll get a single number back from most sources. That number is close to meaningless on its own, because the two variables that actually predict whether a booked demo shows up, where the lead came from and how large the deal is, swing the real rate by 30 to 40 percentage points in either direction. A team that only tracks one blended no-show number has no way to tell whether a bad month is a channel-mix problem, a deal-size shift, or an actual confirmation-process failure.
What This Research Deliberately Left Out
A general demo no-show range in the 20% to 30% band, alongside a 50% to 80% show-rate range, circulates widely across vendor blogs in this category, including a separate Growthspree post specifically on show-up-rate and no-show-recovery benchmarks. That specific range could not be traced to a verifiable, independently corroborated primary source in this research and is treated as unverified. It is not used as a factual claim on this page. The two source-cut and ACV-cut benchmarks below, both from a different, more granular Growthspree analysis, are used instead, and are labeled directional rather than confirmed for the same reason: they come from one vendor's own benchmark analysis, not a multi-source consensus.
The Numbers
Demo show rate by lead source: inbound branded search shows at 78% to 88%, cold outbound at 32% to 48%, and outbound-SDR-sourced demos in between at 48% to 62% (directional, single-source vendor benchmark).
Calculated as the complement of the show-rate figures above (100% minus show rate), the implied no-show rate by source runs roughly 12% to 22% for inbound branded search, 38% to 52% for outbound-SDR-sourced demos, and 52% to 68% for cold outbound, a range spanning more than 3x between the best and worst source.
Growthspree, B2B SaaS demo show-rate benchmarks by source (calculated complement)
Demo show rate by ACV tier: PLG-priced deals under $5,000 ACV show at 65% to 78%, down to 42% to 52% for strategic, $1 million-plus ACV deals (directional, same single-source benchmark).
Calculated as the complement of the ACV-tier figures above, the implied no-show rate runs 22% to 35% for PLG-priced sub-$5,000 ACV demos versus 48% to 58% for strategic, $1 million-plus ACV demos, meaning enterprise-tier demos no-show at roughly double the rate of PLG-tier demos.
Growthspree, B2B SaaS demo show-rate benchmarks by ACV tier (calculated complement)
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- Growthspree, B2B SaaS demo show-rate benchmarks 2026 by source, day of week, time to demo, ACV, and vertical
- Growthspree, B2B SaaS demo show-up rate and no-show recovery benchmarks 2026 (unverified general range, not cited as fact on this page)