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CAC Payback Period Calculator

Find how many months a customer takes to repay their acquisition cost, from monthly revenue, margin and running costs.

Inputs

Support, payment fees or hosting that scale with each customer.
Only changes how amounts are shown.

Result

Months to pay back
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Monthly contribution
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In years
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Enter CAC, monthly revenue and gross margin.

Runs in your browser; nothing you enter leaves this page.

How it works

The formula

Each month a customer contributes their revenue times your margin, less any monthly cost to serve them. The payback period is the acquisition cost divided by that contribution.

months = CAC ÷ (monthly revenue × margin − monthly cost)

When it never pays back

If the monthly contribution is zero or below, the cost is never recovered and the tool says so instead of showing a number.

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