Customer acquisition cost calculator
Work out what it costs to win one new customer, with all sales and marketing costs included, see how many months it takes to earn it back, and compare CAC across your channels. Free, no sign-up, nothing leaves your browser.
Made by Anatolii Ulitovskyi 
Fact-checked by RH Fardin Updated Lower CAC from the traffic you already pay for
Answer every website visitor in seconds, at any hour, so more of the visitors you paid for become customers.
CRMsoftware.pro puts an AI agent on your website that answers questions in chat and voice around the clock, qualifies leads and saves each conversation for your team, so fewer paid visits leave without an answer.
- Answers at night and on weekends
- Qualifies leads before they reach sales
- Every conversation saved for your team
Free plan, no credit card. Paid plans from $19/month, billed yearly.
The method
How to calculate customer acquisition cost
Everything you spent to win customers, divided by the customers you won.
Add up what sales and marketing cost in a period, including the salaries of the people who do the work and the software they use, and divide by the number of new paying customers won in that period. Counting only ad spend gives the paid CAC, which looks much cheaper but hides most of the real cost.
$95,000 a month
$30,000 + $20,000 + $40,000 + $5,000
Marketing spend, marketing and sales salaries, and software.
$1,000
$95,000 ÷ 95 = $1,000
Fully loaded cost of one new customer.
$316
$30,000 ÷ 95
The number you get from ad spend alone, about a third of the real cost.
Costs
What to include in CAC
Include what you spend to win new customers, not to keep existing ones.
| Include | Leave out |
|---|---|
| Ads, sponsorships, events, agencies | Support and onboarding of existing customers |
| Marketing and sales salaries, commissions, bonuses | Account managers who only work on renewals |
| Sales and marketing software | Product and engineering costs |
| Content production and SEO | Upsells to existing customers |
If people split their time between new and existing customers, count only the share spent on new ones. With long sales cycles, compare this month's customers with costs from a month or two earlier, when those deals started.
Payback
CAC payback period and lifetime value
A customer is only profitable after the gross margin pays back the CAC.
At $120 a month and a 75% gross margin, a customer earns back $90 a month, so a $1,000 CAC takes about 11.1 months to recover. Some customers leave before that: with 3% monthly churn, the average new customer takes about 14 months to pay back, which the calculator also shows. Lifetime value = $90 ÷ 3% = $3,000, three times the CAC.
David Skok's widely used SaaS rules of thumb are a lifetime value more than three times CAC and a payback period of no more than 12 months. He describes them as guidelines that some businesses have good reasons to break.
Channels
CAC by channel
The average hides cheap and expensive channels.
$800
$40,000 ÷ 50 customers.
$600
$15,000 ÷ 25 customers.
$2,333
$35,000 ÷ 15 customers, more than double the $1,000 average.
Put each channel's own salaries and tools into its spend, so the channel numbers add up to the total. Compare channel CAC with the lifetime value of the customers each channel brings: a channel with a higher CAC can still be the best one if its customers stay longer or pay more.
Spreadsheets
CAC formulas for Excel and Google Sheets
Total sales and marketing costs in B2, new customers in C2.
Customer acquisition cost
Payback months
CAC in D2, revenue per customer per month in E2, gross margin in F2 (for example 75%).
LTV:CAC ratio
Monthly churn in G2.
FAQ
Customer acquisition cost questions
How do you calculate CAC?
Divide all sales and marketing costs for a period by the number of new customers won in that period. $95,000 of costs and 95 new customers give a CAC of $1,000.
Should salaries be included in CAC?
Yes, for a fully loaded CAC: salaries, commissions and bonuses of the people who win new customers are usually the largest part of the cost. CAC from ad spend alone is called paid CAC.
What is a good CAC?
One that the customer pays back. A common rule of thumb is a lifetime value at least three times CAC and a payback period of up to about 12 months; check both in the Payback and LTV tab.
What is the CAC payback period?
The number of months a new customer needs to earn back their acquisition cost from gross margin: CAC ÷ (monthly revenue per customer × gross margin).
What is the difference between CAC and CPA?
Cost per acquisition usually measures the cost of one action in one campaign, such as a sign-up or a lead. CAC measures the full cost of winning a paying customer across all channels.
How can I lower CAC?
Convert more of the traffic and leads you already pay for: faster replies, better qualification and follow-up, and more budget for the channels with the lowest CAC per valuable customer.
Does the calculator store my data?
No. Everything runs in your browser. The share link keeps your numbers in the address after the # sign, which is not sent to our server.
References
Sources
- LTV:CAC and payback rules of thumb: David Skok, "SaaS Metrics 2.0 – A Guide to Measuring and Improving what Matters", For Entrepreneurs
More free tools
Turn more paid visitors into customers.
Start on the Free plan: an AI agent answers website visitors day and night, qualifies leads and saves every conversation for your team. No credit card.