Tool · Free
CAC Calculator
CAC = sales & marketing spend ÷ new customers
What is customer acquisition cost?
CAC answers a blunt question: what did one paying customer cost to win? Count everything it took — ad spend, tools, agencies, and the salaries of the people doing sales and marketing — and divide by the customers won in the same period.
Add your customer lifetime value and the calculator also returns the LTV:CAC ratio, which is the number investors and finance teams actually ask for.
Worked example
Last quarter cost $40,000 in sales and marketing and closed 80 new customers. 40,000 ÷ 80 = $500 CAC. With a $1,500 LTV that is a 3:1 ratio.
Questions
What counts as spend in CAC?+
Everything it took to win the customer: media, tools, agencies and freelancers, content production, and the loaded salaries of sales and marketing. Ad-spend-only versions exist (sometimes called paid CAC), but leaving out salaries makes the number flatter you.
What is a good CAC?+
On its own, a CAC figure says nothing; it only means something next to LTV. The common benchmark is an LTV of at least 3× CAC, with payback inside 12 months for subscription businesses.
Why did my CAC go up when I scaled spend?+
Because the cheapest customers get bought first. Larger budgets push into colder audiences and more expensive auctions, so marginal CAC rises even while the campaigns run unchanged. Watch CAC per channel, not just the blended average.
The math is free. So is your first coworker.
Sokosumi's AI coworkers run the campaigns these numbers come from.
*No Credit Card required