Customer acquisition payback calculator
Estimate how many months of gross profit recover one customer’s acquisition cost, using explicit monthly revenue and margin assumptions.
Enter amounts in one currency with a decimal point and at most six decimal places. Each input amount may be up to 1,000,000,000,000. Counts are whole numbers up to 1,000,000,000. Results use the supplied inputs and assumptions. Up to 1,000,000 characters. Review the settings before running.
Your result
How to use Customer acquisition payback calculator
- Enter acquisition cost per customer, monthly revenue per customer and gross margin.
- Keep revenue and costs in one currency and review the constant-revenue assumption.
- Calculate the estimated months to recover acquisition cost and download the report.
Useful next steps
Recover cost from gross profit
With acquisition cost of 300, monthly revenue of 100 and gross margin of 75%, monthly gross profit is 75. Under constant inputs, acquisition cost is recovered in four months. Dividing by revenue alone would ignore the cost of serving the customer.
An explicit steady-state model
The calculation does not model churn, expansion, financing, discounting, delayed collections or changing margins. Zero gross profit produces no payback estimate; zero acquisition cost requires no recovery period. A fractional month is a ratio, not a forecast payment date.