What this calculator measures
CAC — customer acquisition cost — is what it actually costs to win one new customer. The operative word is actually: the honest version is fully loaded, counting salaries, commissions, tooling and programme spend, not just the advertising line. This calculator produces two figures: blended CAC (everything ÷ everyone) and paid CAC (channel spend ÷ channel customers), because each answers a question the other cannot.
The formulas
Paid CAC = paid channel spend ÷ customers attributed to paid channels
Blended CAC tells you whether the whole go-to-market engine is affordable given your LTV. Paid CAC tells you whether the marginal pound of ad budget still buys customers at an acceptable price. A business scaling paid spend on the strength of a low blended CAC is being subsidised by its own organic channel — and will find out the hard way.
Worked example
A company spends $85,000 on fully loaded S&M in a month and signs 68 new customers: blended CAC = $85,000 ÷ 68 = $1,250. Of that spend, $40,000 went to paid channels which produced 25 of the customers: paid CAC = $40,000 ÷ 25 = $1,600. The paid channel is 28% more expensive than the blend — fine if LTV supports it, dangerous if the plan assumes $1,250.
What good looks like
Raw CAC has no universal benchmark — $5,000 is superb for enterprise and ruinous for a $29/month product. Judge CAC through two lenses: the LTV:CAC ratio (3:1 or better on a margin-adjusted basis) and CAC payback (under 12 months for SMB, under 18–24 for enterprise). As a texture point, industry surveys put fully loaded B2B SaaS CAC anywhere from a few hundred dollars (self-serve) to $10,000+ (field sales) — the motion, not the market, sets the number.
Common mistakes
- Leaving people out. Salaries and commissions are 60–80% of S&M in most B2B SaaS. Ad-only “CAC” flatters every downstream metric.
- Ignoring the sales-cycle lag. With 60–90 day cycles, this quarter’s customers came from last quarter’s spend. Lag the denominator or use the magic number, which builds the lag in.
- Counting upsells as new customers. Expansion revenue has its own (near-zero) acquisition cost; mixing it into CAC understates the true cost of new logos.
- One CAC across motions. Self-serve and sales-led customers cost wildly different amounts. Blend them for the board, split them for decisions.
FAQ
Do salaries belong in CAC?
Yes. Fully loaded CAC includes sales and marketing salaries, commissions, benefits, tools and agency fees — typically 60–80% of total S&M cost in B2B SaaS. Ad-spend-only CAC is a channel metric, not the cost of acquiring a customer.
What is the difference between blended and paid CAC?
Blended CAC divides all S&M spend by all new customers, including organic ones. Paid CAC divides paid-channel spend by customers attributed to those channels. Blended judges the whole machine; paid judges the marginal pound of ad budget. Compare them: a wide gap means organic is subsidising paid.
Which period’s customers do I divide by?
For self-serve products with short cycles, same-period spend over same-period customers is fine. With a 60–90 day sales cycle, divide this period’s new customers by the prior period’s spend — otherwise you charge today’s spend with customers it has not yet produced.