The CAC calculator that counts the fees.
Free tool · LTV and payback included · no email required · nothing stored
Customer acquisition cost is every cost of winning a customer divided by the customers you won. Most calculators ask only for ad spend, which leaves out the fees, the tools and the time, and produces a number that is comfortably too low.
This one asks for all of it, then does the part that actually decides anything: what a customer is worth against what they cost, and how many months it takes to get the money back.
Your CAC
$180
The field most calculators leave out
Ad spend is not your acquisition cost.
Almost every CAC calculator online asks for two numbers: what you spent on marketing and how many customers you got. That gives you a figure, and the figure is wrong in a predictable direction.
What it leaves out is everything that makes the marketing happen. The management fee. The email platform. The design work. The hours someone spends answering enquiries. Those are costs of acquiring customers in exactly the way the ad spend is.
Spend $3,000 on ads, win 25 customers, and your CAC looks like $120.
Add a $1,500 management fee and it is $180. The same month, the same customers, and a number half as good again. If you are deciding whether to scale, you have just made that decision on the wrong figure.
The smaller your budget, the worse this gets, because a fixed fee is a larger share of a smaller total. A business spending $1,000 a month with a $700 fee has a real CAC nearly twice what the simple sum says.
Blended CAC and paid CAC are different numbers
Blended CAC divides everything you spent by every new customer, including the ones who came by referral, by word of mouth, or because they drove past. Paid CAC divides only the paid spend by only the customers the paid channels produced.
Blended is almost always the prettier number, and it is the one quoted when somebody wants advertising to look like it is working. If half your customers were always going to find you, they are subsidising the half you paid for, and the average hides it.
Work out both. If they are far apart, the paid channel is carrying less than you think.
What the number is for
CAC on its own decides nothing.
A $300 acquisition cost is excellent if a customer is worth $2,000 and ruinous if they are worth $350. The figure only means something beside the value of what it bought, which is why the calculator asks for both.
LTV to CAC is customer value divided by acquisition cost. Below 1 you lose money on every customer you win, and winning more of them makes it worse faster. The commonly quoted healthy figure is 3 or above. Treat that as a rule of thumb rather than a law, because it came from subscription software and your business may not look like that at all.
Payback period is how many months of one customer's gross profit it takes to repay what you spent winning them. It matters more than the ratio when cash is tight, because a business can have a perfectly healthy ratio and still run out of money waiting for it to arrive.
If a customer is worth $900 over a year at 60 percent margin, that is $45 of gross profit a month. A CAC of $180 pays back in about four months. A CAC of $540 pays back in twelve, and you have funded a year of someone else's growth.
Before you trust the number
Count customers, not enquiries.
The commonest way a CAC figure goes wrong is not the costs. It is the denominator.
Enquiries are not customers. Bookings are not customers. Trials are not customers. A new customer is somebody who paid. If the number you divide by includes people who have not, your CAC is understated by exactly the proportion that never converts, which is usually most of them.
The second commonest is a mismatched period. Money spent in March often buys customers who appear in May. Over a long enough window that evens out. Over one month it does not, and a bad month can look like a broken campaign when it is a timing artefact.
Use this calculator elsewhere
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Measuring a single advertising channel rather than the whole picture? The ROAS calculator works out break-even and target return on ad spend.
Common questions
How do you calculate customer acquisition cost?
Add every cost of winning customers over a period, then divide by the number of new customers that period produced. That means ad spend plus the fees you pay anyone running the marketing, plus the tools, plus the time of anyone selling. Most calculators only ask for ad spend, which produces a number that is too flattering to act on.
What is a good customer acquisition cost?
There is no universal figure, because it only means anything next to what a customer is worth. The usual rule of thumb is that lifetime value should be at least three times CAC, so a $300 CAC is fine if customers are worth $900 and a problem if they are worth $400. The ratio matters, not the number.
What is the difference between blended CAC and paid CAC?
Blended CAC divides all your marketing and sales cost by all new customers, including the ones who arrived by referral or walked past the door. Paid CAC divides only your paid spend by only the customers that paid channels produced. Blended is almost always the prettier number and it is the one people quote when they want advertising to look like it is working.
Should I include agency or freelancer fees in CAC?
Yes. The fee is a cost of acquiring customers in exactly the way the ad spend is. Leaving it out is the single most common way a CAC figure ends up wrong, and the gap gets wider the smaller your ad budget is, because the fee is a larger share of the total.
What is LTV to CAC ratio?
Lifetime value divided by acquisition cost. It answers whether a customer is worth more than it cost to win them, and by how much. Below 1 you are losing money on every customer. The commonly cited healthy target is 3 or above, though it is a rule of thumb rather than a law.
What is CAC payback period?
How many months of a customer's gross profit it takes to repay what you spent acquiring them. It matters more than the ratio if cash is tight, because a business can have a healthy LTV to CAC ratio and still run out of money waiting for it.
Do you store what I type in?
No. The calculation runs in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere. There is no form, no email field and no results emailed to you.
My CAC looks fine but we are not growing. Why?
Usually because the CAC is blended and the paid channels underneath it are losing money while referrals carry the average. Split the two and look at them separately. The other common cause is that new customers are being counted before they have actually paid.
Where to start
Not sure which number is the broken one?
I will look at your website, your tracking and how you show up in search, and tell you plainly which part is costing you the most. Written findings in five business days. All I need is your website address.