CAC payback period calculator
How many months until a customer pays back what they cost, from CAC, price, and margin.
Months to pay back
Payback = CAC ÷ (monthly revenue per customer × gross margin)
Runs in your browser. No signup, no AI.
How it works
Enter your CAC, what a customer pays you each month and your gross margin. The CAC payback period calculator tells you how many months it takes for a customer to pay back what they cost to win.
It uses gross margin, not revenue, because only the part you keep pays back your acquisition cost.
FAQs
How do you calculate CAC payback period?
Payback period = CAC ÷ (monthly revenue per customer × gross margin).
What is a good CAC payback period?
Under 12 months is great. Between 12 and 24 is common for B2B SaaS. Over 24 months makes growth expensive.
Why use gross margin?
Because you only keep your margin. A €100 customer at 80% margin gives you €80 a month to pay back what you spent winning them.
More tools like this
- Customer acquisition cost calculator: Ad spend, salaries, tools, and agency fees in, the real CAC per channel out.
- Break-even ROAS calculator: Your margin in, the ROAS you need to stop losing money out. Any number solves for the rest.
- Ad frequency calculator: Reach and impressions in, frequency out, with the point where people start scrolling past.
From the blog
- Free marketing tools that don't want your email first: Free marketing tools with no email wall: UTM builder, ad specs, subject line preview, CAC and ROAS calculators, safe zones, and more.
- How to calculate break-even ROAS: Break-even ROAS is the return on ad spend where you stop losing money. The formula, worked examples at different margins, and the mistakes people make.
- How to calculate CAC and CAC payback: Customer acquisition cost and CAC payback without the finance-speak: the formulas, what to include, worked examples, and healthy numbers for SaaS.
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