Startups & SaaS
Customer Acquisition Cost Calculator
Work out how much each new customer costs to acquire.
Customer Acquisition Cost Calculator
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How it works
Customer acquisition cost divides everything you spent to win customers by the number of customers won. Spending $15,000 to add 100 customers means each one cost $150.
Use the full cost, not just ad clicks: paid ads, creative production, sales salaries, tools and agency fees all belong in the numerator. A CAC quoted from ad spend alone flatters the real number and hides the true economics.
Formula
CAC = Total acquisition spend / New customers
Include all marketing and sales costs attributable to winning those customers over the period.
Worked example
Example: $15,000 spent across ads and sales tools brought in 100 new customers. CAC = 15000 / 100 = $150. With a $600 LTV, the ratio sits at a healthy 4.0.
WORKED EXAMPLE — DEFAULT INPUTS
What to know
Blended CAC hides channel differences. Paid search, content, referrals and sales all carry very different costs, so the blended number is only a summary. Break CAC down by channel to see where acquisition is cheap and where it is burning money.
As channels saturate, the marginal CAC rises even when the blended number looks stable. Tracking the cost of the newest customers, not the average of all customers, tells you whether the next dollar of growth is affordable.
For a product sold through several channels, measure CAC per channel before averaging. A channel that costs $50 a customer and another at $300 produce a blended number that describes neither one, and the cheap channel may be the one worth scaling.
Track the marginal cost of the newest customers separately from the blended average; the number that decides whether to scale a channel is the cost of the next one, not the last one.
FAQ
What is a good CAC?
Relative to LTV, most teams want CAC below one third of LTV. In absolute terms it depends on price: a $49 a month product cannot afford a $500 CAC.
What belongs in the spend?
Ads, agency fees, content production, sales team salaries, tools and any other cost that exists to win customers. Be honest about the total.
Does CAC change with scale?
Almost always. Early channels are cheap; as they saturate, blended CAC tends to rise unless new channels open up.
How do I lower CAC?
Improve conversion (better landing pages, clearer offers), optimize channel mix toward cheaper sources, and lean on referrals and organic content that compound over time.