Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) Calculator

There's no universal good number. CAC must be evaluated relative to LTV. A $500 CAC is fantastic for a $5,000 ACV product and terrible for a $20/mo product. Use the LTV:CAC ratio (target ≥3:1) and CAC payback (target ≤12 months for indie SaaS, ≤18 months for venture-funded) as your benchmarks, not the CAC number in isolation.

Both are useful, for different purposes. Blended CAC (total acquisition spend ÷ total customers including organic) flatters your numbers but understates the real cost of growth. Paid CAC (paid spend ÷ paid-acquired customers only) is honest about channel efficiency. Most founders should track both. Paid CAC for channel decisions, blended for board reporting.

Yes, if you want fully-loaded CAC (recommended). Include salaries for sales reps, marketing team, and a fraction of any role that contributes to acquisition (e.g., a content writer). Excluding salaries gives you 'media-only CAC' which can be useful for channel comparison but underestimates the real cost of running a growth function.

A 3-month rolling window. Marketing spend often takes 30-90 days to convert into customers. Ad clicks become trial signups become paying customers across weeks. A single-month CAC will swing wildly month to month and not reflect actual unit economics. A 3-month rolling window smooths this out without lagging so far that the data becomes stale.

Three main levers: (1) improve conversion rate from visitor → trial → paid (compounds with every spend dollar), (2) shift mix toward organic channels with lower marginal cost (SEO, content, referrals), (3) raise prices so ARPU rises and the CAC needed for a healthy ratio rises with it. Counterintuitively, reducing churn also effectively reduces CAC by extending payback. You don't need as many new customers to maintain MRR.