Customer Acquisition Cost Calculator
Free CAC calculator: divide marketing plus sales spend by new customers to get acquisition cost, and compare channels side by side to find the cheapest.
About the Customer Acquisition Cost Calculator
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) tells you what winning one new customer really costs: CAC = (marketing spend + sales spend) ÷ new customers acquired in the same period. This free CAC calculator computes your blended CAC and includes an optional channel-comparison table — add rows for Google Ads, Meta, referrals or field sales and it ranks each channel by cost per customer.
CAC only means something next to customer lifetime value (LTV): a common healthy benchmark is LTV of at least 3× CAC. If you spend 500,000 across marketing and sales to win 125 customers, your CAC is 4,000 — great for a service worth 30,000 per customer, alarming for a 2,000 product. Startup founders, e-commerce sellers and agencies across Pakistan and India use this check before scaling ad spend.
How to Use the Customer Acquisition Cost Calculator
- 1Enter marketing spend and sales spend for the period.
- 2Enter the number of new customers acquired in that period.
- 3Read your blended CAC instantly.
- 4Optionally add channel rows to compare acquisition cost by channel.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is customer acquisition cost calculated with an example?
CAC = (marketing + sales spend) ÷ new customers. Spending 300,000 on marketing and 200,000 on sales to acquire 125 customers gives (300,000 + 200,000) ÷ 125 = 4,000 per customer.
What costs should be included in CAC?
Everything spent to acquire: ad spend, content and creative, marketing tools, agency fees, plus sales salaries and commissions for the same period. Excluding sales costs makes CAC look artificially good — a 4,000 blended CAC can hide a 1,200 ads-only figure.
What is a good CAC?
Judge it against lifetime value. The common rule of thumb is LTV ≥ 3× CAC with CAC paid back within 12 months. A 4,000 CAC is excellent if customers generate 20,000 of gross profit over their lifetime (5:1), but unsustainable if they generate 6,000 (1.5:1).
Why compare CAC by channel?
Blended CAC hides winners and losers. If Google Ads acquires customers at 2,500 while Facebook costs 7,000, shifting budget toward search lowers your blended CAC without spending more. The channel table in this calculator sorts channels cheapest-first automatically.