Free tool

Customer Acquisition Cost Calculator: Calculate Your CAC

Seed Light built this free customer acquisition cost calculator to show what one new customer costs to win. It also shows whether that cost is worth it and how long payback takes.

See what one customer costs you to win, and how long it takes to earn that back.

Your costs for the period

What you spent on marketing in the period

Ad budget, agency fees, tools, content.

What your sales work cost in the same period

Wages, commission and the tools used to close deals. Put 0 if you sell alone.

New customers you won in that period

First time buyers only. Leave out repeat orders.

What a new customer brings you in profit over a year

After the cost of the product or the job. The lead value calculator works this out.

Your result

Enter your numbers and your result will appear here. The calculation runs in your browser.

Talk through your result

Book a free 15-minute call and we will help you read the numbers and decide what is worth improving first.

We record the result band you reach, not the numbers you enter.

Free to use, with no sign up. The calculation runs in your browser, so the values you enter are not sent to our server or stored.

The maths

How this calculator works

01
Count every cost of winning
Marketing spend plus the cost of the sales work. Wages, commission and tools belong here, because a customer who took six calls to close cost you those calls.
02
Divide by new customers
That total split across the customers you won gives your cost per customer. Count first time buyers only, or repeat orders will flatter the number.
03
Compare it to what a customer is worth
Value divided by cost gives a ratio, and the difference is what is left per customer before overhead. There is no universal target ratio. Below one to one you are paying to lose money on every new customer, and that part is not a matter of opinion.
04
Then check the payback
The tool spreads a year of customer profit evenly across twelve months and works out how many months it takes to earn the cost back. Real money rarely arrives evenly, so treat the payback as an estimate and check it against when you actually get paid.

A worked example

A cleaning company adds up a quarter of marketing and sales costs, counts the new customers it won, and checks the number against what a customer is worth in profit. Example only. Replace these assumptions with your own numbers.

Marketing spend: 3 units
Sales wages and tools: 1 unit
New customers won: 40 customers
Cost to win one customer: 0.1 units
Customer profit in a year: 0.4 units
Value to cost ratio: 4 to 1
Payback, if the profit arrives evenly: 3 months

See how we bring in customers

Straight answers

Common questions

Common questions about the calculation and how to use the result.

A lead is someone who got in touch. A customer is someone who paid. Since most leads do not buy, a customer generally costs several times what a lead costs.

Include the sales work, since chasing and closing is part of winning the customer. Include the share of a marketing person's time that goes on getting new customers.

There is no single figure, and there is no universal target ratio either. It only means something next to what a customer is worth, how long they stay.

Payback period matters because the acquisition cost is paid before the customer value is fully collected. A strong lifetime ratio can still put pressure on cash when recovery takes a long time. Compare the payback period with the timing of real customer payments.

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