CAC & LTV Calculator

Enter what you spend and what a customer is worth. You get blended and paid CAC, margin-based LTV, the LTV:CAC ratio, your payback period, and the churn sensitivity that usually decides the answer.

CAC & LTV Calculator

Live

Enter what you spend and what a customer is worth. Everything below recalculates as you type, including the churn sensitivity that usually decides the answer.

Business model

Recurring revenue per customer, with churn setting the lifetime.

Currency

Acquisition cost

Everything you spend to win a customer, not just media.

Paid media spend / month

Team, agency & tools / monthSalaries, retainers, contractors and software attributable to acquisition. Leaving these out is the single most common reason a CAC figure is wrong.

Sales cost / monthCommissions and the variable cost of closing. Include SDR and AE compensation if they only exist to convert new business.

Volume

New customers / month

Share sourced by paid media60%

Splits blended CAC into a paid and an organic number, which is where the real decisions get made.

Customer value

Monthly revenue per customer

Gross marginLTV here is margin-based, not revenue-based, because revenue LTV flatters every business that has a cost of delivery.72%

Retention

Monthly churn3.5%

Implies an average lifetime of 2.4 yrs.

Monthly expansion revenueUpgrades, seat growth and price rises from existing customers. Subtracted from churn to give net revenue churn.1.0%

Discount rate (annual)Used only for the discounted LTV. Cash arriving in year four is worth less than cash arriving now, and this is how much less.12%

Blended CAC

$1,200

$24,000 / 20 customers

LTV (gross margin)

$13k

$9.2k discounted

LTV : CAC

10.8:1

3:1 is the standard floor

CAC payback

3.7 mo

on gross profit

Unit economics health

< 1:1 losing3:1 healthy> 5:1 underspending

Cohort payback curve

Cumulative gross profit per customer, starting at −CAC. Where it crosses zero is your payback month.

What the numbers say

Generated from your inputs, and the thresholds are the ones investors and boards apply.

You are almost certainly underinvesting in acquisition

Above 5:1 the constraint is usually demand generation, not economics. Test a deliberate spend increase and watch CAC rather than the ratio, because the ratio is supposed to fall as you scale.

CAC pays back in 3.7 months

Under 12 months means acquisition largely self-funds, because each cohort recovers its cost inside the annual planning cycle that paid for it.

Churn is the highest-leverage number on this page

Cutting monthly churn by a quarter extends average lifetime to about 53 months and lifts LTV by the same proportion, with no extra acquisition spend.

CAC by source

Paid-sourced CAC$1,200

Organic / other CAC$1,200

Blended CAC$1,200

Blended CAC is the number for the board. Paid CAC is the number for the media decision, because it is the one that tells you whether the next dollar of spend is worth putting in.

Headroom

Gross profit per customer / month

72% margin on $450

$324

Average customer lifetime

2.50% net monthly churn

3.3 yrs

Lifetime profit per customer

LTV net of acquisition cost

$11,760

Max affordable CAC at 3:1

$3,120 of headroom per customer

$4,320

Annual value created

Lifetime profit × customers won per year

$2.8M

Churn sensitivity

Churn moves LTV proportionally and costs nothing in media spend to improve, which is why it is almost always the highest-leverage number on this page.

Scenario	Monthly churn	Lifetime	LTV	LTV:CAC
Churn halved	1.75%	10+ yrs	$43k	36.0:1
Churn −25%	2.63%	5.1 yrs	$20k	16.6:1
Today	3.50%	3.3 yrs	$13k	10.8:1
Churn +25%	4.38%	2.5 yrs	$9.6k	8.0:1
Churn doubled	7.00%	16.7 mo	$5.4k	4.5:1