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Sales & acquisition

Customer Acquisition Cost Calculator

Spread marketing, sales and allocated tools across new paying customers in the same acquisition period or cohort.

38 / ALLOCATE ACQUISITION COST

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Starting values are illustrative. Use your own costs, rates and assumptions.

INPUT GROUP 01

Acquisition-period inputs

Check the assumptions before acting on a result.

Read the method and example

YOUR CALCULATION

Allocate the entered acquisition costs across newly acquired customers.

Total acquisition-period costs

$22,000.00

Blended cost per new customer

$220.00

New customers acquired

100

Included acquisition costs

Included acquisition costs
Cost categoryAmount
Marketing$12,000.00
Sales$8,000.00
Allocated tools and other$2,000.00

Keep the calculation

Saving is optional and stays on this device. Unsaved edits are not kept when you leave. CSV includes every input and the current results.

Illustrative inputs loaded. Replace them with your own assumptions.

How the customer acquisition cost calculator works

Blended CAC is total marketing, sales and allocated acquisition-tool cost divided by new paying customers. The numerator can include cash expenses and valued internal costs, provided that every category is defined and included once.

Match costs to the customer acquisition period or cohort as closely as practical. Current-month expense and customers closing from an earlier sales cycle can create a misleading comparison. Zero newly acquired customers makes CAC unavailable while leaving total cost visible.

This is a blended allocation, not campaign CPA, a channel attribution system or a customer lifetime-value estimate. It does not set an industry target, establish incremental customers, or calculate payback. Compare consistent definitions across periods.

Worked example

Marketing costs of $12,000, sales costs of $8,000 and $2,000 allocated tools total $22,000. Dividing by 100 new paying customers gives $220 blended CAC. With 200 customers at unchanged cost, CAC would be $110.

Sources and assumptions

The source material explains the underlying calculation or pricing structure. Entered prices, costs, schedules and scenario choices are your assumptions; this tool does not obtain supplier quotes or predict actual results.

  • Maximum Acquisition-Cost Allowance

    Estimate the contribution available for acquisition after onboarding and a chosen profit allowance, using an explicit order horizon.

  • Customer Retention & Churn

    Separate the retained starting cohort from new customers still active at period end. Report customer-count retention and churn together.

  • Customer Lifetime Contribution

    Apply entered monthly churn to a starting customer cohort and compare expected revenue, variable cost and onboarding outlay over a chosen horizon.

  • Conversion Lift Impact

    Hold visitor volume constant and compare two assumed conversion rates using contribution per conversion and a one-time implementation cost.

Calculation methods, testing and sources · Practical calculation guides