The share of each revenue dollar left after you pay the direct costs of delivering it (hosting, payment processing, customer support), reported as a percentage.
Zoom's GAAP gross margin sat around 80% in early 2020, classic best-in-class SaaS territory. As free-tier usage exploded, AWS and Oracle hosting bills compressed margin to 67% by mid-2020 before stabilizing in the low 70s. The dip showed how brittle 'pure software' economics can look when consumer load scales overnight.
