LTV, CAC, and payback calculator
Enter price, gross margin, churn, and CAC. See LTV, LTV:CAC, and the months to earn back the CAC.
Calculator
Unit economics: what one customer is worth
Set the price, the gross margin, the churn, and the cost to get one customer.
Calculate LTV from
- Gross profit
- $400
- Each month
- Average lifetime
- 50 months
- 1 ÷ 2%
- LTV
- $20K
- LTV:CAC
- 3.33x
- Rule of thumb: 3x or more
- CAC payback
- 15 months
- Rule of thumb: 12 months or less
- After one year
- 78%
- Of customers stay
Gross profit from one customer, total so far
- A customer who stays
- The average customer
- CAC
Each customer brings $400 of gross profit a month and stays 50 months on average, so LTV is $20K. That is 3.33x the $6K CAC, which meets the 3x rule of thumb.
The company earns back the CAC in 15 months, slower than the 12-month rule of thumb. The average customer pays back later, because some customers leave first.