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CAC Payback Period Calculator
Calculate how many months of gross profit are needed to recover customer acquisition cost.
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Inputs
Results
CAC payback
Gross profit/customer
Churn-adjusted payback
Payback readout
Lifetime gross margin ceiling: $2,667.
Payback is inside a common healthy operating range for many subscription models.
Use gross profit, not top-line revenue, for the cleanest payback view.
How to use this tool
Formula used
CAC payback = Customer acquisition cost / Monthly gross profit per customer.
Use when
Use when deciding whether acquisition spend recovers quickly enough for your cash position.
Use with gross margin and churn to compare acquisition channels with different revenue quality.
Be careful when
Do not use top-line revenue when margin differs across plans or segments.
Do not compare payback across cohorts unless CAC, revenue and churn windows are defined consistently.
Worked example
A $600 CAC with $100 monthly revenue at 80% gross margin creates $80 monthly gross profit, so simple payback is 7.5 months.