CAC Calculator
Work out your customer acquisition cost in seconds. Enter what you spent on sales and marketing and how many customers it won you — get CAC plus an instant read on whether it's healthy.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
How much you spend, on average, to win one new customer.
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
The total gross profit you earn from an average customer before they churn.
LTV : CAC Ratio
The single most-watched SaaS efficiency number. 3:1 is the healthy benchmark.
MRR & ARR
Monthly and annual recurring revenue from your customer base.
Churn Rate
The percentage of customers you lose in a period — and the lifetime it implies.
Customer Retention Rate
The percentage of customers you kept, excluding new ones you added.
SaaS Valuation
A revenue-multiple estimate. Faster growth earns a higher multiple.
🔒 100% client-side. Your numbers never leave this page.
How to Calculate CAC
If you spent $20,000 on sales and marketing last quarter and signed 40 new customers, your CAC is $500. The math is simple; the discipline is in what you put into "spend."
What to include in the spend figure
A CAC that only counts ad spend flatters you. The number founders and investors trust is fully-loaded CAC, which includes:
- Paid advertising and sponsorships
- Content, SEO, and creative production costs
- Fully-loaded salaries of sales and marketing staff
- Marketing and sales tools (CRM, automation, analytics)
- Agency retainers and sales commissions
What Counts as a Good CAC
CAC is meaningless alone. The benchmark is the ratio between what a customer costs and what they're worth over their lifetime:
| LTV : CAC | Verdict | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Below 1 : 1 | Losing money | You pay more to win a customer than they ever return. Fix before scaling. |
| 1 : 1 – 3 : 1 | Inefficient | Not yet ready to pour fuel on acquisition. Cut CAC or raise LTV first. |
| 3 : 1 – 5 : 1 | Healthy | The sweet spot — profitable and still investing in growth. |
| Above 5 : 1 | Under-investing | Great economics, but you could grow faster by spending more. |
Run your LTV against this CAC in the LTV calculator, then divide the two to find where you land.
CAC Payback Period
A second lens founders watch is CAC payback — how many months of a customer's revenue it takes to earn back what you spent to acquire them. Under 12 months is generally healthy for SMB SaaS; enterprise deals can justify longer. A short payback period means your growth is self-funding sooner.
Built and tested by Alston Antony, who has reviewed 500+ SaaS tools and buys lifetime deals for a 15,000-member founder community. These calculators exist because founders shouldn't need a paid analytics seat to run napkin math on their own business.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good CAC for SaaS?
There is no universal number — CAC only means something next to LTV. The rule that matters is the LTV : CAC ratio: your lifetime value should be at least 3× your CAC. A $500 CAC is excellent for a $10k-ACV enterprise product and terrible for a $10/month tool. Always judge CAC against what a customer is worth, not in isolation.
What should I include in CAC?
Everything you spent to acquire customers in the period: paid ads, content and SEO costs, the fully-loaded salaries of sales and marketing staff, agency and tool costs, and sales commissions. Fully-loaded CAC (including people) is the honest number. Paid-only CAC understates your true cost of acquisition.
What is the difference between CAC and CPA?
CPA (cost per acquisition) usually means the cost of a single conversion event like a signup or lead. CAC is the cost of acquiring a paying customer. Several CPAs (lead → trial → paid) roll up into one CAC. For unit economics, CAC is the number investors and founders care about.
How do I lower my CAC?
Two levers: pay less per customer or convert more of what you already pay for. Improve landing-page and trial-to-paid conversion, lean into lower-cost channels (SEO, referrals, community), tighten targeting so spend hits qualified buyers, and shorten the sales cycle. Retention also helps indirectly — word of mouth from happy customers is the cheapest acquisition there is.
Is this CAC calculator really free?
Yes. No signup, no account, no limits. The calculation runs entirely in your browser and none of your numbers are stored or sent anywhere.