Customer acquisition cost calculator: what did one new customer cost?

What to enter

Use one period you can explain, such as last quarter. The currency menu changes the symbol only. It doesn't convert amounts.

Put each cash cost in one field:

• Paid media is ads and sponsored placements.
• Sales and marketing pay is salaries and commission for people who work on winning customers full time.
• Agencies and freelancers is outside help hired for that work.
• Tools, content, and events is software, content, sponsorships, and events used to win customers.

Leave a field blank to leave that cost out. The result then says Not counted, which is different from $0.00. Type 0 when the cost really was zero. Fill in at least one cost.

A mixed role, rent, or general software goes in shared costs. Turn on Include shared costs and split the total by a percent, by hours, or by people. The split is your own estimate.

Your unpaid hours never change the cash figure. Turn on Include founder time, then enter your hours and what one hour is worth to you. There is no suggested rate, and 0 is allowed.

New paying customers means people who paid you for the first time in this period. Leave out trials, sign-ups, and renewals.

Paid-sourced customers is optional. It's how many of those new customers you credit to paid media, so it can't be higher than new paying customers. If you fill it in, fill in paid media too, even if that's 0.

The same period divides this period's costs by this period's new customers. Matched to these customers means you've already worked out which costs won this group. The math is the same for both. The choice only changes the label, and the calculator doesn't check your matching.

Compare a second scenario adds a second set of the same fields, so you can test another channel, period, or split. The result says how much more or less the second cash cost per customer is. The table shows the same gap for founder time and paid media.

Blank is not zero. Type digits with up to two decimal places, and no minus sign, $, or comma.

How to read the result

The top line is the cash cost per new paying customer. A second line appears when founder time is on. A third appears when you entered paid-sourced customers. It divides paid media by that smaller count.

The table shows each cost and its share per customer. Each row is rounded on its own, so the rows may not add up to the total by a cent. A note under the table says when that happens.

How is customer acquisition cost calculated?

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the acquisition spending you counted, divided by the new paying customers you counted. The calculator keeps three versions apart because each answers a different question.

The cash figure is the main result. Stripe's guide to CAC in SaaS uses the same basic formula: total sales and marketing costs divided by new customers acquired.

Which costs belong in CAC?

Count the costs you spent to win new customers. The fields give each kind of cost a place. They aren't a full list of accounts you must fill in.

Stripe's guide says to leave out customer support, infrastructure, and research and development (R&D), and to count only costs tied directly to winning new users. They stay out of CAC, but they don't all go to the same place:

• Costs to serve paying customers, such as hosting, support, and payment fees, lower your gross margin. They go into the margin you enter on the customer lifetime value calculator.
• Costs to build the product, such as engineers and designers working on new features, are usually operating costs. They belong in neither CAC nor gross margin. They are part of the fixed monthly costs on the break-even MRR calculator, which finds the revenue that covers them.

Count each cost once. If a person or tool does several jobs, put only the acquisition part here, through shared costs. Don't also count that same part in gross margin.

A blank row is left out. A row with 0 is counted and adds nothing.

How do you split a cost that only partly wins customers?

Turn on shared costs and pick a split you can explain.

• Fixed share uses the percent you type. A 12.5% share of $4,000 adds $500.00.
• Hours uses acquisition hours divided by total hours. A $9,000 shared cost with 120 acquisition hours out of 400 adds $2,700.00.
• Headcount works the same way with people. A part-time person can be 0.5. Total headcount has to be above 0, and the acquisition part can't be higher than the total.

The line under the allocated amount repeats the split you entered. The calculator can't check that your hours, people, or percent are right.

Should you count your own unpaid time?

Count it as a second figure when you want to know what the work would cost if you paid for it. Cash CAC stays the same either way, so you can still compare it with a team that pays for the same work.

In the example above, cash CAC is $75.00. Add 40 unpaid hours at $75.00 an hour and founder time is $3,000.00. CAC with founder time is $225.00, and cash CAC is still $75.00.

The hourly value is your choice. It could be what you'd pay someone else, or what you earn elsewhere. The calculator doesn't suggest one.

Why is paid media CAC a different number?

It uses a different cost and a different customer count. Cash CAC divides every counted cost by every new paying customer. Paid media CAC divides only the paid-media field by the customers you credit to paid media.

The two numbers aren't meant to match. The $125.00 is ad spend per ad-sourced customer. It leaves out the pay, tools, and agencies that also helped win them. If paid-sourced customers is 0, cash CAC still works, and the paid-media line says there is no paid media CAC.

What if spend and new customers fall in different months?

The timing choice says what you paired. It can't fix a long sales cycle for you.

Both choices give the same number for the same inputs. Check the timing line under the result before you compare two calculations.

What if there were no new paying customers?

The result says No new customers. The spend still shows, but there's no cost per customer, because the calculator won't divide by zero.

$5,000 of paid media and 0 customers means $5,000.00 was spent and there's no CAC. Ten customers with paid media typed as 0 is different. That cash CAC is $0.00.

What CAC doesn't tell you

There's no single good CAC to aim for. Stripe's guide says there's no universal CAC benchmark across SaaS. This page doesn't score your result or tell you to spend less.

It isn't the figure your accountant uses either. US accounting rules under ASC 340-40 decide when some costs of winning a contract, such as a commission paid only when a contract is signed, are spread over time. The FASB memo on costs to obtain a contract covers that question. It doesn't define the fields on this page.

CAC isn't lifetime value, a payback period, or cash collected from customers. For those:

• Customer lifetime value calculator: the gross profit one customer may bring in.
• LTV to CAC calculator: lifetime value compared with this cost.
• CAC payback calculator: the month a group of customers earns the cost back, counting the ones who leave.
• SaaS metrics calculator: a quick monthly snapshot with one spend figure and one new-customer count.