MEASUREMENT WORKSHEET / SOFTWARE ECONOMICS

Customer Acquisition Cost Calculator

Calculate total acquisition spending and CAC from marketing, sales, tooling or agency costs, and new customers in a consistent period.

All calculator worksheets
01 / Enter your assumptions

Use USD for money. All fields are required. Calculate updates the results; reset restores the illustrative defaults. Inputs stay in your browser.

USD spent on acquisition marketing in the selected period.
USD acquisition-related sales costs for the same period.
USD not already included in marketing or sales.
Use a positive whole number of newly acquired paying customers, not leads.

02 / Results

Illustrative default results. Change inputs and select Calculate.

Total acquisition spend
$15,000.00
Customer acquisition cost
$300.00

Formula

Total acquisition spend = marketing spend + sales spend + tooling / agency spend. CAC = total acquisition spend ÷ new customers.

Worked example

For an illustrative period, $8,000 marketing + $6,000 sales + $1,000 tooling / agency spend = $15,000 total acquisition spend. Dividing by 50 new customers gives a CAC of $300.00. These are example inputs, not a benchmark or an observed company result.

Interpret the result

CAC describes acquisition spending per new customer under the boundary you selected. It is not revenue, profit, lifetime value, or a payback period. A lower number is not automatically better if the period, customer definition, or included costs changed. Zero spending with positive new customers returns zero CAC; it does not prove acquiring those customers required no effort.

Assumptions and input rules

Use the same reporting period for each spending line and count customers consistently. Include salaries, commissions, and allocated costs where appropriate to your documented definition. If agency costs already appear in marketing, do not enter them again. New customers must be an integer greater than zero, and spending must be finite and nonnegative. Reset returns the example period and its calculated results.

Limitations

A long sales cycle can separate the period of spending from the period when customers sign. Blended CAC can conceal channel differences, organic demand, expansion activity, and acquisition quality. This worksheet does not attribute individual customers to campaigns, estimate lifetime value, or adjust for cancellations and refunds. Keep your accounting convention alongside the result and compare like-for-like cohorts before drawing a conclusion about efficiency. For a channel analysis, repeat the calculation with a defensible allocation instead of dividing the same shared expense across several channels without reconciliation.