CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) Calculator

CAC: customer acquisition cost

CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) = (marketing spend + sales spend) / new customers. The trick is counting everything that went into winning those customers: ads, sales team salaries, SDR/BDR commissions, tools like HubSpot, Salesforce or Outreach, and events. Tally all of it and you get the fully-loaded CAC, as opposed to blended CAC, which only looks at paid media. Say you spent R$ 80k on marketing and R$ 40k on sales to land 40 customers; that works out to a CAC = R$ 3,000. Investors tend to watch two numbers here: an LTV/CAC > 3 and a CAC Payback under 12 months.

Applications and benchmarks

You'll see this metric show up everywhere founders talk money: VC pitch decks, board updates, growth investment calls, the unit economics in the P&L. It also helps you spot which ICP segment is paying off most efficiently. For B2B SaaS the ranges tend to be SMB R$ 500-2,000, mid-market R$ 5,000-20,000, and enterprise R$ 50k+. On the B2C side, e-commerce sits around R$ 50-150 and subscription apps around R$ 20-80.

FAQ

What is the difference between CAC and CPA? CPA usually stops at paid media, while CAC folds in salaries, tools and overhead. CAC is the broader number, and the more honest one.

What is LTV/CAC? It's lifetime value divided by CAC. Below 1 you're losing money on every customer, between 1 and 3 you grow but slowly, and once you clear 3 the unit economics are in good shape.

What is CAC Payback? It's how many months of gross margin it takes to earn the CAC back. Most SaaS companies aim to keep that under 12 months.