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CAC Payback & LTV:CAC Calculator

CAC and LTV get thrown around constantly, but most teams eyeball them rather than calculate them properly: and a CAC that ignores fully-loaded S&M spend, or an LTV that ignores gross margin, will flatter numbers that don't survive board scrutiny. This calculator uses the same subscription-economics formulas investors use: gross-margin-adjusted LTV, a churn-derived customer lifetime, and a payback period benchmarked against the 12-month standard for efficient SaaS and B2B growth. Enter your spend, customer, revenue, margin, and churn numbers below to see where you actually stand.

Your numbers

Fully loaded: salaries, commissions, tools, ad spend, overhead — same period as customers below
In the same period as the spend above
Average annual contract value across your customer base
Revenue minus the cost of delivering the product/service
% of customers lost per year — lower churn means longer customer lifetime and higher LTV

Method & assumptions

  • LTV = (annual revenue per customer × gross margin) ÷ annual churn rate, the standard subscription-economics formula used in SaaS/B2B investor reporting.
  • CAC payback period = CAC ÷ monthly gross profit per customer. Under 12 months is the widely-used benchmark for efficient venture-backed SaaS; longer can still be healthy for capital-efficient or enterprise motions with long contract terms.
  • 3:1 is treated as the minimum sustainable LTV:CAC ratio, with 3–5:1 as the healthy range. Ratios far above 5:1 aren't necessarily a problem, but can indicate under-investment in growth rather than pure efficiency.
  • "Total S&M spend" should be fully loaded: reps' OTE and commissions, marketing headcount, tools and ad spend, and a fair share of overhead. A partial number will understate CAC and overstate every ratio built on it.

How to use it

Enter total fully-loaded Sales & Marketing spend and the number of new customers acquired in that same period, the tool divides these to get CAC. Then enter average annual revenue per customer, gross margin %, and annual churn rate: it uses these to derive LTV (gross-margin-adjusted, divided by churn) and the CAC payback period (CAC divided by monthly gross profit per customer). The output shows all four headline metrics, bar comparisons against standard benchmarks, a status table, and a verdict with specific recommendations for whichever metric is weak.

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