# Customer Acquisition Cost Calculator

URL: https://www.paydude.io/resources/tools/cac-calculator
Type: Free interactive calculator
Summary: Calculate fully loaded customer acquisition cost, and see how much of your growth is bought versus organic. Blended CAC alone hides the answer.

Blended CAC divides all your spend by all your customers. It is the friendliest number and the least actionable — it improves whenever organic grows, which tells you nothing about whether your paid channels work.

## Summary

Blended CAC includes customers you did not pay to acquire. Paid CAC is what actually decides whether to spend more. Fully loaded means salaries and tools, not just ad spend. Match the period: spend leads the customers it produced.

## The three versions

**Same month, three CAC figures**

| Version | Formula | What it answers |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Blended | All S&M spend ÷ all new customers | What growth costs on average |
| Paid | Ad spend ÷ customers from ads | Is the channel working? |
| Paid, loaded | All S&M spend ÷ customers from ads | What paid growth truly costs |

The loaded paid figure is the one to fund decisions on. It asks what an additional paid customer costs once the team running the channel is included — which is the actual question when someone proposes raising the budget.

## What to include

- **Ad spend** across every paid channel.
- **Salaries** for everyone in sales and marketing, including commission.
- **Tools and agencies** — CRM, automation, contractors, creative.
- **Not** product, engineering, or customer success for existing accounts.

> **Match the period, or the number is fiction:** If your sales cycle is three months, this month's customers came from spend three months ago. Dividing this month by this month produces a number that moves for no real reason. Lag the spend to match.

## The organic trap

Blended CAC falls when organic grows, which feels like efficiency and is not. If half your customers arrive through word of mouth, blended CAC is roughly half the loaded paid figure — and the moment organic plateaus, blended CAC climbs toward the paid number without a single thing having changed in your marketing.

Track both. Blended tells you what growth costs today; paid tells you what the next customer will cost.

**Keep more of what each customer pays** Lower payment fees improve every downstream metric, CAC payback included. — [See pricing](https://www.paydude.io/pricing)

## Frequently asked questions

### What should be included in CAC?

All sales and marketing costs for the period: ad spend, salaries and commission, tools, agencies and creative. Exclude product and engineering, and exclude customer success work on existing accounts — that is retention, not acquisition.

### What is a good CAC?

There is no absolute answer. CAC is only meaningful against LTV and against payback period. A $2,000 CAC is excellent for a $500/month enterprise product and fatal for a $20/month consumer one.

### Should I use blended or paid CAC?

Both, for different questions. Blended tells you what growth costs on average today. Paid tells you what the next bought customer costs, which is the number that should drive budget decisions.

### How does the sales cycle affect the calculation?

Substantially. If it takes three months to close, this month's customers came from spend three months ago. Comparing same-period spend and customers produces a number that swings with timing rather than performance.