CAC Calculator
CAC is everything you spend to win one customer. Enter your sales and marketing costs and the customers they produced to see blended CAC, paid CAC and payback time.
Inputs
Customers no paid channel touched.
Result
$600
blended customer acquisition cost
$21,000 of sales and marketing produced 35 customers — a blended CAC of $600. Counting only the 25 non-organic customers, paid CAC is $840, recovered in about 15.3 months of gross profit.
- Total S&M spend
- $21,000
- Blended CAC
- $600
- Paid CAC
- $840
- Monthly gross profit per customer
- $39.20
- CAC payback
- 15.3 months
- Spend per organic customer avoided
- $6,000
Formula
- CAC = (marketing spend + sales costs) ÷ new customers acquired
- paid CAC = total S&M spend ÷ customers acquired through paid channels
- monthly gross profit = ARPA × gross margin
- CAC payback (months) = CAC ÷ monthly gross profit
Methodology
Fully loaded CAC includes every cost of acquisition: ad spend, content and SEO, events, sales salaries and commission, and the tools both teams use. Counting ad spend alone typically understates CAC by half.
Blended CAC divides by every new customer including organic word of mouth. Paid CAC divides only by customers a paid channel produced, and is the number to use when deciding whether to increase a budget — the marginal customer costs the paid rate, not the blended one.
Payback is measured in gross profit, not revenue. A $49 subscription at 80% margin returns $39.20 a month towards CAC, so a $600 CAC takes about 15 months to recover.
These are modelling estimates based on standard SaaS metric definitions. Real results depend on your billing data, contract terms and accounting treatment, so reconcile against your finance system before reporting numbers externally.
Example calculation
- A team spends $12,000 on marketing and $9,000 on sales in a month and adds 35 customers, 10 of them organic.
- Blended CAC: $21,000 ÷ 35 = $600.
- Paid CAC: $21,000 ÷ 25 = $840.
- At $49 ARPA and 80% margin, each customer contributes $39.20 a month, so blended CAC pays back in about 15.3 months.
Frequently asked questions
What should be included in CAC?
All sales and marketing costs for the period: advertising, content, events, agency and tool fees, plus salaries, commission and benefits for sales and marketing staff. Exclude product, engineering and customer support costs.
What is a good CAC payback period?
Under 12 months is strong, 12-18 months is acceptable for enterprise deals, and over 24 months usually means growth is consuming more cash than the business can fund.
Should I use blended or paid CAC?
Report blended CAC to investors because it reflects the whole business, but make channel decisions on paid CAC — that is the true cost of the next customer you buy.
How does the attribution window affect CAC?
Spend and customers should cover the same cohort. With a long sales cycle, compare this month's customers against spend from one to three months earlier, or you will understate CAC while growing.
How do I lower CAC?
Improve conversion rates before cutting spend, lean on channels with compounding returns such as SEO and referrals, shorten the sales cycle, and move upmarket only if ACV rises faster than acquisition cost.
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