Customer acquisition cost calculator for B2B: Blended, paid and fully loaded CAC

The customer acquisition cost (CAC) formula is total sales and marketing spend in a period divided by the number of new customers won in that same period. In ChartMogul's worked example, a company spends $90,000 on sales and marketing in a quarter and wins 60 new customers, so CAC is $1,500. Blended, paid and fully loaded CAC use the same arithmetic. Only the costs in the numerator change.

What is the customer acquisition cost formula?

CAC is the average cost of winning one new paying customer. ChartMogul defines it as total sales and marketing spend in a period divided by the number of new customers won in that same period. Both numbers have to cover the same window. If they don't, the result is not CAC.

CAC = sales and marketing spend in period / new customers won in same period

ChartMogul works an example. A company spends $90,000 on sales and marketing in a quarter and wins 60 new customers in that quarter, so CAC = $90,000 / 60 = $1,500. On average, each new customer cost $1,500 to win.

Three versions of the same formula

The arithmetic stays the same. What changes is the cost you put in the numerator.

• Blended CAC is our working name for the default: all sales and marketing spend divided by all new customers, with no attempt to split by channel.
• Fully loaded CAC adds cost lines that teams often leave out. Amplitude lists items such as overhead costs like desk space or office rent for sales and marketing employees.
• Paid CAC evaluates the effectiveness of paid channels by excluding salaries and overhead expenses from the calculation.

Spend after the contract is signed does not belong in any of the three. ChartMogul notes that onboarding and ongoing customer success, are usually tracked separately.

What the calculator asks for

The calculator takes three inputs:

1. Spend by cost line. Enter salaries, commissions, ad spend, tooling, events and overhead as separate lines. Each output then includes only the lines it needs.
2. New customers won. Use closed-won deals in the period, not opportunities or signups.
3. Sales cycle lag. Enter the number of months between first touch and close. The calculator moves the spend window back by that many months, so a deal closed this quarter is matched to the spend that produced it.

It returns blended, paid and fully loaded CAC side by side. Use the paid figure to judge channels and the fully loaded figure to judge the business.

Here is an example with round inputs, not a benchmark. For example, a company has $600,000 of fully loaded spend in a period and 40 new customers, so fully loaded CAC is $15,000. In this example, $400,000 of spend in the same period counts as paid, and 40 customers came through paid channels, so paid CAC is $10,000. With a 2 month lag, both spend figures come from the window that starts 2 months before the customer window.

Take any of these outputs into the LTV to CAC ratio calculator, or use it to work out CAC payback.

What costs go into CAC?

The formula from the previous section only works if everyone on the team counts the same costs in the numerator. ChartMogul calls this choice the single biggest source of confusion when comparing CAC figures. The fix is to write the definition down once, as a table, and attach it to every CAC number you report.

Two of the three versions have a published definition. ChartMogul defines fully loaded CAC as every sales and marketing cost involved in winning a customer: salaries, commissions, ad spend, tooling, and events, Paddle sets the boundary in plain accounting terms: anything on your P&L that is contributing to the acquisition of new customers should be included.

Blended CAC sits between them. On this page we use it to mean all program spend with no headcount costs: media, events, tooling, agencies and content, but no salaries or commissions. That definition is ours. Rename it if your finance team uses another.

Agencies and content do not appear in the published definitions above. We place them using Paddle's test: if the cost helps win new customers, it belongs in fully loaded CAC. An agency retainer for paid campaigns is close enough to media that we count it in paid CAC too. A content retainer is not.

What the choice does to the number

Take an example, not a benchmark. Suppose a team's fully loaded spend for a quarter is $600,000, its paid spend is $400,000, and it wins 40 new customers.

• Fully loaded CAC: in this example, $600,000 divided by 40 customers is $15,000.
• Paid CAC: in this example, $400,000 divided by 40 customers is $10,000.

The customers are the same and the quarter is the same, but the figures are a third apart. In our reading, most CAC disputes in planning meetings come from this kind of numerator drift, not from bad arithmetic.

Fixing one definition

1. Copy the table into your reporting doc and mark each row for your company.
2. Map each row to a general ledger account or a vendor list so the numbers can be pulled the same way every period.
3. Label every CAC figure with its version in your demand gen dashboard.

ChartMogul's advice to always check which definition is behind a CAC figure before comparing it to your own, or to a benchmark applies inside your own company as well.

Blended, paid and fully loaded CAC computed on the same inputs

The quarter below starts from a published example. ChartMogul describes a company that spends $90,000 on sales and marketing in a quarter, wins 60 new customers, and lands at $1,500 per customer. The line items, the overhead allocation and the paid-attributed count in the worksheet are our own illustrative inputs. They are an example, not a benchmark.

On this page, blended CAC means program spend only (media, agency, tooling, events) with no headcount, divided by all new customers. Paid CAC narrows both halves. Amplitude defines it as spend "Without Salaries and Overhead Costs" over "Number of New Customers Gained via Paid Channels". Fully loaded CAC adds headcount and overhead. Amplitude's list of overhead includes office rent, legal costs for sales and marketing contracts, and special offers and discounts for new customers.

Quarter worksheet (illustrative inputs)

Line items
  Sales and marketing salaries        48,000
  Commissions                         12,000
  Paid media                          18,000
  Agency fees (paid media)             3,000
  Tooling                              6,000
  Events                               3,000
  Subtotal, sales and marketing       90,000
  Allocated overhead                  10,000
    (rent, legal, new-customer discounts)
  Total acquisition cost             100,000

Denominators
  All new customers                       60
  Paid-attributed new customers           24

Blended CAC       = (18,000 + 3,000 + 6,000 + 3,000) / 60 = 30,000 / 60  =   500
Paid CAC          = (18,000 + 3,000) / 24                 = 21,000 / 24  =   875
S&M CAC           = 90,000 / 60                                          = 1,500
Fully loaded CAC  = 100,000 / 60                                         = 1,666.67

Paid CAC comes out above blended here because the denominator drops to paid-attributed customers while the numerator keeps only media and agency fees. Fully loaded is the largest because it carries salaries, commissions and overhead over the same customer count. The paid-attributed count depends on the attribution model you choose, and Amplitude notes that companies define the attribution rules for paid channels before running the formula.

Report all three side by side with the definition printed under each. ChartMogul warns that a narrow CAC will always come out smaller than a fully-loaded CAC for the same business, so a payback figure built on the paid number will flatter the plan.

How CAC differs from cost per acquisition

In the way we use the terms, cost per acquisition (CPA) is a channel metric: media cost divided by conversion events in an ad platform, such as form fills, demo requests or trials. CAC divides cost by signed new customers. A CPA can fall while CAC rises if those conversions stop turning into deals. Treat CPA as an input to the paid CAC line, and keep sourced and influenced counts separate when you roll it up.

Should CAC include salaries?

Yes, for the fully loaded figure. In a business where people close the deals, salaries and commissions are usually the largest part of what it costs to win a customer. ChartMogul's guidance on how to lower CAC treats sales productivity as a lever because it lowers the labor cost embedded in CAC. If payroll is left out, that lever drops out of the number entirely.

There is also a behavioral reason to keep salaries in. David Skok wrote that entrepreneurs are usually overoptimistic about how much it costs to acquire a customer. A figure that leaves out headcount reinforces that optimism.

The early-stage adjustment

The full formula has a known weakness in the first years. A young company may hire senior people who are meant to handle far more customers once the business grows. While volume is low, their whole salary sits on a small number of wins, and Skok noted that your CAC will be too high as a result. His fix is to take only a portion of those salaries and expenses in the early days, so the number gives a better view of CAC at scale.

The example below uses round inputs and is not a benchmark. For example, a company spends $600,000 on sales and marketing in a quarter and wins 40 new customers, so its fully loaded CAC is $600,000 / 40 = $15,000. Two of its hires were built to scale. In this example, after counting only part of their salaries, adjusted spend is $400,000, and $400,000 / 40 = $10,000 adjusted CAC.

Label it so nobody compares it with a fully loaded figure

The adjusted number answers a different question: what CAC might look like at scale. It does not describe what the company spends today. We think it should never appear on a slide without a label, and it should never sit in the same column as a fully loaded figure from another quarter or another company. Record the label with the number:

Metric: CAC (scale-adjusted, not fully loaded)
Period: Q_ 20__
Numerator: S&M spend with partial salary allocation
Roles adjusted: [role], [share of salary counted]
Reason: hire sized for future customer volume
Fully loaded CAC, same period: $______
Review date: when adjusted roles reach planned capacity

Always report the fully loaded figure next to the adjusted one. When the adjusted roles reach the volume they were hired for, drop the adjustment and go back to reporting fully loaded CAC only. If the adjusted share stays the same for several quarters, we read that as a sign the hires are not scaling as planned, not as a feature of the metric.

How long sales cycles change the CAC result

A CAC figure divides spend by customers won, but in business-to-business sales the two rarely land in the same period. A deal that closes in June was usually sourced and worked months earlier. Dividing June spend by June wins sets this quarter's budget against last quarter's pipeline.

The SaaS Metrics Board's timing guidance addresses this directly: expenses "should be measured for the time period preceding the new ARR by the length of the sales cycle." ARR is annual recurring revenue. Its first example sets the lag at one quarter: with a sales cycle of ~90 days, the Q2 figure uses "Q1 Sales & Marketing expense divided by Q2 New ARR." For shorter cycles, the same logic applies by month: with a cycle of ~30 days, it uses "Sales & Marketing for the previous month divided by New ARR for the current month."

Lagged CAC (period t) = Acquisition spend in period (t - lag) / New customers won in period t
lag = typical sales cycle length, rounded to your reporting period

Lagged versus unlagged, worked example

These are example inputs, not benchmarks. Suppose a team spends $600,000 in Q1, then cuts to $400,000 in Q2, and wins 40 new customers in Q2. The cycle runs about one quarter.

• Unlagged: in this example, Q2 spend of $400,000 divided by 40 Q2 customers gives a CAC of $10,000.
• Lagged: in this example, Q1 spend of $600,000 divided by 40 Q2 customers gives a CAC of $15,000.

In this example, the lagged CAC of $15,000 sits $5,000 above the unlagged CAC of $10,000. In our reading, the unlagged number looks better only because spend fell in the quarter the deals closed. If spend had risen instead, the unlagged figure would overstate CAC. Either way, the error tracks budget changes, not efficiency.

Picking the lag from your own data

1. Pull closed-won deals from your customer relationship management (CRM) system for the last several quarters.
2. Measure days from opportunity creation (or first sourced touch, if your attribution supports it) to close.
3. Use the median rather than the mean, so a few long enterprise deals do not stretch the lag.
4. Round to your reporting unit: for example, about 30 days means one month and about 90 days means one quarter.
5. Recheck the lag each time you change segment mix, since a move upmarket lengthens it.

Compare your cycle against sales cycle length benchmarks, and use the pipeline velocity calculator to see how cycle length interacts with win rate and deal size.

Two refinements help. Commissions can be the exception to lagging: the same guidance notes that if they are a large share of CAC, a more accurate calculation comes from "NOT lagging commission expenses and including them in the same period the new CARR is booked." CARR is contracted annual recurring revenue. And to smooth lumpy quarters, measure across a longer window: the board notes calculations can be "based upon data from the trailing 1, 3, 6 or 12 month period." We think a trailing window paired with the lag gives a steadier number than either alone.

Count only new customers in the denominator

A new-customer CAC divides acquisition spend by customers you did not have before. Renewals and expansion deals come from accounts already on the books. Put them in the denominator and the cost per new customer falls, even though acquiring a new logo cost exactly what it did last quarter.

The same split shows up in revenue ratios. Benchmarkit defines the New CAC Ratio as total sales and marketing expenses divided by new customer ARR (annual recurring revenue), and the Blended CAC Ratio as the same expenses divided by new customer ARR plus expansion ARR. The numerator is identical. Only the denominator moves.

Why the two ratios drift apart

Expansion is a large part of the denominator. In Benchmarkit's 2024 data, expansion ARR was 40% of total new ARR, and at companies above $50M it was over 50% of total new ARR. In that same year, the New CAC Ratio rose 14% while the Blended CAC Ratio fell 10%, which the report attributed to the higher share of expansion ARR. A team watching only the blended figure would have read that year as an efficiency gain. In our reading, that is the core risk: as the expansion share rises, the blended ratio can improve while the cost of winning a new customer gets worse.

Expansion is not free either. Benchmarkit's 2024 report found that the cost to generate $1 of expansion ARR from existing customers had increased and was a material factor in the higher Blended CAC Ratio.

Worked example

These are round example inputs, not benchmarks.

• For example, a quarter's sales and marketing spend is $600,000 and new customer ARR is $400,000, so the New CAC Ratio is 600,000 / 400,000 = 1.5.
• In this example, the same quarter brings $400,000 of expansion ARR, so total new ARR is $400,000 + $400,000 = $800,000.
• In this example, with spend of $600,000 over total new ARR of $800,000, the Blended CAC Ratio is 0.75.
• In this example, the team won 40 new customers, so CAC per new customer is $600,000 / 40 = $15,000.

The blended ratio is half the new ratio here. Nothing about new-logo acquisition changed between the two lines. Only the denominator did.

A reporting check

New-customer CAC        = Acquisition spend / New customers won (exclude renewals, upsells, cross-sells)
New CAC Ratio           = Sales & marketing spend / New customer ARR
Blended CAC Ratio       = Sales & marketing spend / (New customer ARR + Expansion ARR)
Expansion share         = Expansion ARR / (New customer ARR + Expansion ARR)
Report all four side by side. Flag any quarter where Blended improves while New worsens.

Tag each closed-won record in the CRM as new logo or existing account before the quarter closes, so the split does not depend on a manual cleanup. To size the new-logo pipeline that a CAC target implies, use the reverse funnel calculator.

What is a good CAC for B2B SaaS?

A good CAC for business-to-business SaaS is a ratio, not a dollar figure. Benchmark studies therefore report the New CAC Ratio defined earlier: sales and marketing expense per $1.00 of new customer annual recurring revenue (ARR).

The ratio benchmarks

Benchmarkit put the 2024 median at a median of $2.00 of Sales and Marketing expense to acquire $1.00 of New Customer ARR. The same study found the 4th quartile of companies are spending $2.82 at median for the same dollar. In the prior year's study, the median remain fairly level at a median of $1.76.

That study also gave a goal. It recommended targeting a New CAC Ratio goal of $1.50 or lower for companies with an ACV greater than $10K, where ACV means annual contract value. The 2025 study said the ratio should be evaluated in context of the company attribute most correlated to the metric's performance, which is Annual Contract Value (ACV).

Check your number against the median

Suppose, as an example and not a benchmark, that sales and marketing expense was $600,000 and new customer ARR was $400,000, so the New CAC Ratio is 600,000 / 400,000 = $1.50. That sits at the recommended goal and under the 2024 median.

Read the ratio next to spend and growth

Ownership shifts what counts as normal. Benchmarkit reported that Sales and Marketing as % of Revenue is 47% for VC-backed vs 33% for PE-backed companies, meaning venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) backing. In our reading, a VC-backed company spending more per dollar of new ARR is buying growth on purpose, and the ratio should be judged against its growth rate.

Growth has been slowing. Benchmarkit found Growth Rates continue to decline with a median of 26%. The KeyBanc Capital Markets and Sapphire Ventures survey reported ARR growth is expected to slightly decelerate to ~19% in 2024 after companies already experienced growth deceleration in 2023 from ~22% to ~21%. We think a rising CAC ratio alongside falling growth is the pattern to flag in a board review.

For the time-based view of the same spend, see our CAC payback benchmarks.

How the CAC result feeds CAC payback and LTV:CAC, and the checks to run before you report it

The CAC figure is an input, not the end of the calculation. Two ratios sit downstream of it, and both inherit any error in its numerator or denominator.

CAC payback in months

The SaaS Metrics Board defines CAC payback as the number of months it takes for gross profit from new customer ARR to repay the sales and marketing expense that acquired those customers. It differs from a CAC ratio because it takes gross margin into account and is expressed in months. The standard's own sample, for a 90 day sales cycle, came out at a 25 month CAC payback period.

CAC payback (months) =
  Fully loaded S&M spend to acquire new customers
  / (New-customer ARR x Subscription gross margin %)
  x 12

For example, on the round inputs used above (not a benchmark), fully loaded spend of 600000 across 40 new customers gives a CAC of 15000 per customer. To convert that into months, take new-customer ARR from your billing system and subscription gross margin from your income statement, then apply the formula. Use the same lagged spend window you used for CAC.

The standard adds two items to the numerator. Customer Success expense counts when Customer Success time supports new customer acquisition, allocated by time spent. For product-led businesses, freemium or free trial expenses, including hosting, may be counted as acquisition cost.

LTV:CAC with lifetime from churn

Customer lifetime is the inverse of churn. Run the arithmetic in the same time unit as your churn rate.

Customer lifetime (months) = 1 / monthly churn rate
  e.g. 1 / 0.03 = 33 months

LTV = ARR per customer / 12 x gross margin % x lifetime (months)
LTV:CAC = LTV / fully loaded CAC

David Skok wrote that he introduced the goal of greater than 3 for a healthy SaaS business. The same article states that the numbers are only meaningful and reliable once the growth process is repeatable and scalable. Our LTV:CAC ratio calculator runs this on your inputs, and the CAC payback benchmarks page gives reference points.

Checklist before you report

[ ] One numerator per figure: blended, paid or fully loaded, labeled
[ ] Same numerator used in CAC, payback and LTV:CAC
[ ] Spend lagged by the sales cycle, matched to the ARR period
[ ] Denominator holds new customers only, no expansion accounts
[ ] Payback uses subscription gross margin, not revenue
[ ] Churn and lifetime in the same time unit
[ ] Channel CAC reported only with a written attribution rule
[ ] Trailing period (1, 3, 6 or 12 months) stated on the slide

What this page does not cover

This page does not set a CAC target for your company or explain how to build an attribution model, and it leaves out post-sale costs such as onboarding and ongoing customer success. The worked numbers are illustrative inputs, not benchmarks. Nothing here is financial or accounting advice.