Free tool
CAC Calculator
Work out what it really costs to win one customer. Enter your spend and how many customers it bought.
What it actually costs to win one customer. The input that lifetime value, payback and every paid channel decision depend on.
- Marketing spend
- Sales spend
- New customers won
Calculate CAC
Example
Marketing spend $30,000 · Sales spend $20,000
$500
Customer acquisition cost
How it works
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1
Enter your numbers
Fill in marketing spend, sales spend and new customers won. Change a number and the answer updates.
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2
Press calculate cac
One button. Change any input afterwards and the answer updates as you type.
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3
Read the result
You get customer acquisition cost, plus total acquisition spend, new customers.
How CAC is calculated
Customer acquisition cost is everything you spent to acquire customers, divided by the number of customers you acquired in that period. Spend $50,000 across marketing and sales in a quarter and add 100 customers, and your CAC is $500.
The formula is simple. Deciding what belongs in the numerator is where most founders get it wrong.
What to include in the spend
Include the fully loaded cost of acquisition, not just the ad bill. If a number exists because you are trying to win customers, it belongs here.
Blended CAC vs paid CAC
This calculator gives blended CAC: total spend divided by all new customers, including the ones who arrived organically. It is the honest number for how efficiently the business converts money into customers.
Paid CAC divides paid spend by customers who came from paid channels only, and it is almost always higher. Blended CAC flatters you when organic is strong, and it will quietly rise as you scale paid spend and the organic share shrinks. Track both, because a blended number that looks stable can hide paid economics getting worse every month.
What a good CAC looks like
CAC means nothing on its own. A $5,000 CAC is excellent for enterprise software and fatal for a $10-a-month consumer app. The number only becomes useful next to lifetime value and payback period.
The standard benchmarks are an LTV:CAC ratio of at least 3:1 and CAC payback inside 12 months for SMB or 18 months for enterprise. If payback is longer than that, growth consumes cash faster than it returns it, and every new customer makes your runway shorter before it makes it longer.
What this does not do
- This is blended CAC. It counts organic customers alongside paid ones, so it flatters you while organic is strong and rises as you scale paid spend.
- Acquisition and conversion rarely happen in the same month. A long sales cycle puts spend and customers in different periods, which distorts any single-period figure.
- CAC means nothing without lifetime value. A high number is fine if customers are worth more; a low one is not enough on its own.