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How long until a customer pays back?

Months of gross profit needed to repay fully loaded CAC, what a customer is worth, and whether the ratio clears the bar.

Your numbers

Starting numbers: A seed-stage subscription business winning a couple of dozen customers a month through paid acquisition. Change anything below.

Everything paid out to bring customers in - media, tools, agency fees.

Paying customers won in a typical month.

What one customer pays you in a typical month.

Share of customers who leave each month. This sets how long one lasts.

Salaries and commission for the people who close, including outbound reps.

What this also assumes (2)

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Months to earn a customer back

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Lifetime value vs cost to win
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Lifetime value of one customer
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How it's computed

About this calculator

CAC payback divides the fully loaded cost of winning one customer - paid media plus the sales team that closes - by the gross profit that customer generates each month. Revenue does not repay CAC; gross profit does, which is why margin sits in the chain. The shorter the payback, the faster acquisition spend comes back as cash you can redeploy. Lifetime value and the LTV to CAC ratio then tell you whether the customer is worth the chase at all. Pull the levers to match your own spend, conversion, pricing, and churn, and watch payback and the ratio move together. The chain above shows exactly how each number is computed. When it looks like your business, save the model to stress-test scenarios - a churn spike, a pricier channel - and share it with your team or investors.

Related calculators

Burn MultipleHow much cash you burn for every dollar of net new ARR - the efficiency number investors check first.Fully Loaded CACYour CAC once team, tools, agencies, and SDRs are loaded in - next to the paid-only number on the slide.CAC & RunwayStress-test your runway against rising acquisition costs - see how fast the cash goes when each customer costs more to win.Channel PaybackWhat a customer really costs with agency and creative counted in, what they are worth, and how fast the channel pays back.Content PaybackHow many months a piece of content needs to earn back its production cost, and what the programme returns over asset life.Paid Search Break-EvenThe landing page conversion rate paid traffic must hit to pay for itself, and how much headroom your funnel has above it.Sales Rep PaybackHow many months until a new sales rep covers their own cost - and what the ramp really costs you.Unit EconomicsLTV against CAC on a live model - see how churn quietly destroys lifetime value and flips unit economics red.

Every number on this page is computed live by the LeverMap engine.