Customer Acquisition Cost
Calculate the total cost of winning one new customer.
About Customer Acquisition Cost
Customer acquisition cost divides every marketing and sales dollar by the new customers those dollars produced over the same window. CAC only means something next to the lifetime value of those customers, and a rising CAC is the earliest warning that growth is getting pricier.
Formula
Customer Acquisition Cost
CAC = (marketing spend + sales cost) / new customers
- CAC
- Fully loaded cost to gain a paying customer
Worked example
With the default values below, Customer Acquisition Cost returns Total Acquisition Cost of $16,000.00. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.
Inputs used
- Marketing spendminimum 0
- 10,000
- Sales team costminimum 0
- 6,000
- New customersminimum 1
- 400
Results
- Total Acquisition Cost
- $16,000.00
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
- $40.00
Step by step
- 1Values used
- 2Customer Acquisition Cost
- 3Total Acquisition Cost= 16,000.00
- 4Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)= 40.00
Assumptions and limits
- The result is derived only from the 3 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
- In particular, this calculator does not take inflation, tax or compounding frequency into account.
- Figures are rounded for display to 2 decimal places, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.
- This is an estimate for general information and not professional financial, tax or legal advice. See the full disclaimer for the limits that apply to this kind of calculator.
How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is Customer Acquisition Cost calculated?
CAC = (marketing spend + sales cost) / new customers Customer acquisition cost divides every marketing and sales dollar by the new customers those dollars produced over the same window.
Why does Customer Acquisition Cost matter?
CAC only means something next to the lifetime value of those customers, and a rising CAC is the earliest warning that growth is getting pricier.
What values do I need to enter?
This calculator takes 3 inputs: Marketing spend, Sales team cost, New customers. The pre-filled defaults are a realistic starting point — replace them with figures from your own environment for a result you can act on.