CAC, LTV & LTV:CAC Calculator
SaaS unit economics in one place - customer acquisition cost, lifetime value, and the LTV:CAC ratio that signals whether the business scales.
About the CAC, LTV & LTV:CAC Calculator
The CAC and LTV Calculator answers the question every SaaS founder, marketing lead, and investor needs to know: do the unit economics work? It computes customer acquisition cost from your sales and marketing spend, customer lifetime value from your ARPU and churn, and the LTV:CAC ratio that determines whether more spend is worth it.
A healthy SaaS business has an LTV:CAC ratio of at least 3:1 - every dollar spent acquiring a customer generates three dollars in lifetime value. Below 2:1, the model is broken and scaling acquisition just burns cash faster. Above 4:1, you are probably underspending on growth. The calculator surfaces both the absolute numbers and the relative health of the ratio.
Common use cases
- Justify a growth budget to a board or investor
- Spot a churn problem hiding inside a "healthy" CAC number
- Model the impact of a price increase on LTV and payback
- Compare paid-channel vs organic-channel unit economics side by side
Tips for accurate results
Always look at CAC payback period alongside the LTV:CAC ratio. A 3:1 ratio with 36-month payback is much riskier than a 3:1 ratio with 12-month payback - the longer the payback, the more your customers have to stick around for the math to work out. Sub-12-month payback gives you room to maneuver if churn ticks up.
Privacy & data handling
The CAC, LTV & LTV:CAC Calculator runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is uploaded, logged, or shared with third parties - the math happens locally and your inputs disappear when you close the tab. There is no signup, no email collection, and no daily-use limit.
How is CAC calculated?
CAC = total sales & marketing spend ÷ new customers acquired in that period. Include the full team-loaded cost: ad spend, salaries, content, tools, freelancers. Splitting "paid CAC" from "blended CAC" is useful - blended is the honest number, paid CAC shows your ad efficiency.
How is LTV calculated?
LTV = average revenue per account × gross margin × (1 ÷ monthly churn rate). For a $50/mo product with 80% margin and 3% monthly churn: $50 × 0.8 × (1/0.03) ≈ $1,333. The tool handles both simple and discounted-LTV (which shrinks future revenue by a cost-of-capital rate).
What is a good LTV:CAC ratio?
The startup-finance consensus is 3:1 - every dollar spent acquiring a customer should generate three dollars in lifetime value. Above 4:1 you're probably underspending on growth. Below 2:1 the unit economics are broken - fix retention or pricing before scaling acquisition.
How does payback period fit in?
CAC payback period is how many months of gross-margin revenue it takes to recover CAC. For a $300 CAC and $30/mo gross-margin: 10 months. SaaS investors look for under 12 months on inbound channels and under 18 on paid. Long payback compounds with churn - a 24-month payback on a 30-month average customer life is essentially break-even.
Do I include free trials and demos in CAC?
Yes - anything spent on the funnel. Spending that produced a trial that didn't convert still gets counted (the cost happened). The cleanest approach: total marketing/sales spend in the period ÷ new paying customers acquired in the same period, accepting some smoothing if your sales cycle is long.
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