How long does it take to recover your customer acquisition cost? This calculator gives you the payback in months and tells you whether your unit economics are healthy (under 18 months), at-risk (18-30), or broken (30+). Calibrated for B2B SaaS.
CAC payback (months) = CAC ÷ (ACV × gross margin ÷ 12 × (1 + expansion/2)). Expansion is halved because it ramps over the year rather than landing on day one.
Health tiers: under 12 months = healthy, 12-18 = good, 18-24 = at-risk, 24+ = broken. These are SaaS benchmarks; services businesses can support longer payback if expansion or retention is strong.
3-year LTV (estimated) assumes 90% gross retention and continued expansion. This is a rough estimate — your actual LTV depends on logo churn and net retention dynamics specific to your business.
If your payback is in the at-risk or broken zone, the fix is rarely about cutting CAC — it\'s about ICP refinement, sales motion efficiency, or pricing. See the AI-Native GTM Framework for the operational view.