Free calculator
CAC calculator
Enter what you spent to win customers and how many new ones you got. You get CAC with and without non-ad costs, and how many orders a customer has to place before they have paid for themselves.
Results Example figures. Change any field.
CAC
Paid CAC (ad spend only)
First-order gross profit after CAC
Orders to pay back CAC
The formula
How it’s calculated.
CAC = (ad spend + other acquisition costs) ÷ new customers
Worked example
$20,000 of ads plus $5,000 of agency and creative costs, bringing in 250 new customers, is a CAC of 25,000 ÷ 250 = $100; on ads alone it is $80. An $80 first order at a 55% margin leaves $44, so the first order is $56 short, and it takes 100 ÷ 44 = 2.3 orders to earn the CAC back.
How to reduce CAC on Shopify →Paid CAC and fully loaded CAC.
Paid CAC counts ad spend only, which is roughly what ad dashboards show. Fully loaded CAC adds the agency retainer, creative production and tools you pay for to win customers.
Use paid CAC to compare channels, and fully loaded CAC to decide whether acquisition pays at all.
Count new customers in your store. Not in the ad platform.
The bottom of the fraction should be first-time buyers in Shopify, not the conversions an ad platform claims. Platforms count returning buyers and credit one order to several channels, which makes CAC look lower than it is.
Upstack Attribution reports new-customer CAC against Shopify orders for every channel.
See how Upstack Attribution reports it →More calculators
Related calculators.
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CPA calculator
Cost per order, cost per new customer, and the most an order lets you pay.
CPA = ad spend ÷ orders
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LTV calculator
Lifetime value in revenue and gross profit, LTV:CAC, and CAC payback.
LTV = order value × orders per year × years as a customer × gross margin
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MER calculator
Marketing efficiency ratio, new-customer MER, and how much revenue the platforms claim.
MER = total revenue ÷ total ad spend
Questions
CAC questions.
How do you calculate customer acquisition cost?
Add up what you spent to win new customers in a period and divide by the number of new customers in that period. For paid CAC, count ad spend only; for fully loaded CAC, add agency, creative and tool costs.
What should be included in CAC?
Everything you spend to acquire customers: ad spend, agency and freelancer fees, creative production and the tools you use for acquisition. Leave out costs that serve existing customers, such as retention email.
What is a good CAC?
One your customers repay. Compare it with first-order gross profit to see whether you make money on the first purchase, and with lifetime gross profit (LTV) to see whether you make money overall. A common rule of thumb is an LTV:CAC of 3:1 or better.
What is the difference between CAC and CPA?
CPA is ad spend per conversion and counts returning customers too. CAC counts new customers only and usually includes non-ad costs, so it is the truer cost of growth.
Get these numbers from your own store.
Upstack Attribution reports ROAS, MER, new-customer CAC, LTV and CM1 to CM4, reconciled against the revenue in Shopify.
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