CAC Calculator
Calculate customer acquisition cost from marketing and sales spend, then compare it with lifetime value to get the LTV:CAC ratio and payback period.
- LTV : CAC
- 4.08×
- CAC payback · months
- 7.35
- Lifetime profit after CAC
- $231.00
Results update as you type. Values are kept in the URL, so you can share or bookmark this exact calculation.
Formula
CAC = (Marketing spend + Sales spend) ÷ New customers LTV : CAC = Lifetime gross profit ÷ CAC Payback (months) = CAC ÷ Monthly gross profit per customer
How to read CAC
Customer acquisition cost is everything you spent to win new customers in a period, divided by how many you won. Blended CAC includes all channels and all costs; paid CAC counts only media spend against customers from paid channels. Both are useful — blended for the business, paid for the channel.
CAC only means something next to LTV. The widely quoted 3:1 LTV:CAC benchmark assumes gross-profit LTV; below about 1.5:1 you are buying customers at a loss once overhead is counted. Payback period tells you how long that cash is tied up, which matters as much as the ratio when growth is funded from cash flow.
Frequently asked questions
- Should CAC include salaries and tools?
- For blended CAC, yes — people, software, agencies and creative production are all acquisition costs. Excluding them makes CAC look better than it is. For channel-level optimisation, media-only CAC is fine as long as everyone knows which number they are looking at.
- What is a good LTV:CAC ratio?
- 3:1 on gross-profit LTV is the common target; higher usually means you are under-investing in growth, lower means the unit economics need work. The right number depends on payback period and how long you can wait for the cash to return.
- New customers or new leads?
- Customers — people who paid. Cost per lead is a different metric (see the CPA calculator). Mixing them is the most common way CAC gets understated.