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Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) Calculator
Work out what it costs to win a customer — plus your LTV, LTV:CAC ratio, and payback period — in seconds. Free, private, no sign-up.
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LTV:CAC ratio
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Customer Acquisition Cost
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Lifetime Value (LTV)
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LTV : CAC ratio
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CAC Calculator: The Honest Cost of Winning a Customer
Why Use This CAC Calculator?
Customer acquisition cost is simple to define and easy to calculate wrongly, usually by leaving things out. The Parix.ai CAC calculator keeps the total honest by making you account for everything that goes into it.
How CAC Is Calculated
CAC = total sales and marketing spend ÷ new customers acquired, over the same period.
The word doing the work is total.
What to Include
Advertising spend, all channels. Salaries for everyone in sales and marketing. Agency and contractor fees. Software and tools — CRM, automation, analytics. Content production and creative costs. Events, sponsorships and sales travel.
Most people include only ad spend. That produces a CAC that looks excellent and is not real. Salaries alone often double the honest figure.
Blended CAC Versus Paid CAC
Blended CAC divides all spend by all new customers, including those who arrived organically. It tells you what growth costs overall.
Paid CAC divides paid spend by customers attributed to paid channels. It tells you whether a specific channel works.
Both are useful. Confusing them is not — blended CAC is always the flattering number, and quoting it as though it were paid CAC is one of the more common ways a growth plan goes wrong.
What Is a Good CAC?
There is no universal figure, because it only means something against lifetime value.
Aim for an LTV:CAC ratio of at least 3:1. A high CAC is fine if customers are worth a great deal and stay for years. A low CAC is still bad if they leave in two months. Work out the other half with the LTV Calculator.
The Payback Period
The companion metric, and often the more urgent one: how many months of revenue does it take to recover the cost of acquiring a customer?
Under 12 months is generally healthy. Beyond 18, growth consumes cash faster than it generates it, which is a solvable problem only if you have the cash to solve it with.
Who Uses It
Growth leads comparing channels on real cost. Founders preparing for a raise. Marketing teams asked why the budget should go up. Pair it with the LTV:CAC Ratio Calculator and the Marketing ROI Calculator for the full picture.
Work Out Your CAC Now
Enter your total spend and new customers above. Include the salaries — the number is only useful if it is the real one.
