Customer Lifetime Value Calculator
True LTV & CAC Ratio
Enter your revenue and cost data to find your exact True LTV, the minimum CAC your margin can support, and how your ratio benchmarks against 2026 SaaS standards.
What is Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)?
Customer Lifetime Value is the total net profit a single customer generates over the full length of their relationship with your business — not their lifetime revenue, but the bottom-line figure after your gross margin is applied. It is the number every acquisition budget should be anchored to.
Why it determines acquisition spend:
- If your True LTV is $1,530 and your CAC is $600, your ratio is 2.55:1 — below the 3:1 minimum for sustainable growth.
- Knowing your LTV is the only way to tell a sales team what deals are worth closing and a marketing team which channels are worth funding.
True Customer Lifetime Value
How to Use This Calculator
Every field maps to a real line item in your business model. Enter your actual numbers — not guesses — and the results update in real time. Here is what each section covers:
- Average Order Value: The revenue per transaction or monthly subscription fee. For SaaS, this is your MRR per seat. For e-commerce, it is your average cart value.
- Purchases Per Year: A monthly subscriber buys 12 times. A quarterly contract buys 4. An annual plan buys 1. This number sets your revenue frequency.
- Customer Lifespan: The average number of years a customer stays before churning. If you track monthly churn, divide 1 by that rate to get lifespan in months, then divide by 12.
- Gross Profit Margin: Revenue minus direct production costs (COGS), expressed as a percentage. SaaS businesses typically run 70–90%. E-commerce runs 30–60%.
- CAC: Total sales and marketing spend in a period divided by the number of new customers acquired in the same window. Include ad spend, sales salaries, agency fees, and tools.
Average LTV Benchmarks — 2026
The Bessemer Venture Partners 2026 State of the Cloud sets the standard benchmarks for SaaS unit economics. The LTV:CAC ratio is the single most cited metric for evaluating whether a business can grow efficiently. Owner-operators and e-commerce businesses use the same ratio logic, even if the gross margin inputs differ materially.
| Stage / Segment | LTV:CAC Target | CAC Payback |
|---|---|---|
| Early stage (under $2M ARR) | 2.5:1 minimum viable | Under 120 days |
| Growth stage ($2M–$10M ARR) | 3:1–4:1 | Under 90 days |
| Scale stage (above $10M ARR) | 3.8:1–5:1+ | Under 80 days |
| Enterprise SaaS | 4.5:1 median | 6–18 months |
| Top Quartile (all segments) | 4:1–6:1 | Under 12 months |
How to Improve Your LTV
When acquisition costs are fixed, improving your LTV is the only lever that widens the ratio. Research by Bain & Company — published in the Harvard Business Review — found that a 5% improvement in customer retention increases profits by 25%–95% depending on industry. Two areas produce the fastest return:
Retention and Churn Reduction
Churn is the dominant variable in the LTV formula. A customer lifespan of two years versus three years changes LTV by 50% — with no change in price or margin. Structured onboarding sequences, in-app health scoring, and proactive check-in cadences directly extend average lifespan. Shopify’s LTV analysis across high-volume e-commerce stores documents the same compounding effect: small improvements in retention produce disproportionate lifetime value gains.
Pricing and AOV Optimisation
A higher Average Order Value on the initial purchase improves LTV immediately without touching retention rates. Seat-based pricing tiers, usage-based add-ons, and professional services packages are the main SaaS levers. For e-commerce, post-purchase upsells and subscription bundles move the same number. If your churn is stable and your CAC is fixed, increasing your monthly fee is the highest-leverage LTV move available.
LTV vs. ARPU — What the Difference Means
ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) is a short-term cash-flow metric — useful for MRR forecasting and pricing analysis. LTV is a long-term profitability metric — the number that determines how much you can spend acquiring a customer before you are destroying margin.
A subscription business with $50/mo ARPU, 85% gross margin, and a three-year average lifespan has an LTV of $1,530 — not $50 and not $600. Using ARPU as a proxy for acquisition budget decisions leads to under-investment in channels that would have been profitable at the full lifetime view.
CPM (Cost Per Mile) in trucking and CAC in SaaS follow the same logic: both represent money going out per unit of output. The equivalent of RPM (Rate Per Mile) in the SaaS context is ARPU. The gap between the two — after margin — is your profit. That gap, scaled over customer lifespan, is your LTV.