Customer lifetime value.
Calculator for SaaS and subscription products. Enter ARPA, churn, gross margin, and CAC. Get three CLV variants (simple, gross-margin, discounted NPV), the LTV:CAC ratio, CAC payback period, and benchmark health checks. Updates as you type. Inputs persist in your browser. Five preset scenarios for quick comparisons.
also see: freelance rate calc
· quick scenarios (overwrite the inputs)
· your inputs
pick the period your ARPA and churn are measured in.
per month, in your currency
fraction of customers leaving per month, as a percentage
revenue you keep after cost of serving (hosting, support, payment fees, etc.)
total sales + marketing spend ÷ new customers acquired
time value of money, per month. Typical SaaS: ~10% annually = ~0.8% monthly.
· your numbers
CLV (gross margin)
$1,980
ARPA × margin × lifespan
LTV:CAC
4.95:1
3:1 is the SaaS benchmark
CAC payback
5.1 mo
< 12 months is capital-efficient
· clv variants (all in your reporting currency)
- Simple CLV
- $2,475
- ARPA × lifespan. Top-line revenue per customer over their life.
- Gross-margin CLV
- $1,980
- The number that's actually profit. Use this for LTV:CAC.
- Discounted CLV (NPV)
- $1,650
- Net present value, after discounting for time value of money.
- Avg customer lifespan
- 25 months
- 1 ÷ churn rate, the implied average customer life.
· health checks
- warnMonthly churn 4.0%
On the high side. Each point you trim has a much larger CLV impact than equivalent ARPA increases.
- goodGross margin 80%
SaaS-class margin. Most of every revenue dollar lands as gross profit.
- goodLTV:CAC 4.95:1
The classic 3:1 SaaS benchmark or better. Acquisition is paying back well.
- goodCAC payback 5.1 months
Under a year. Capital-efficient: you recycle acquisition spend fast.
The formulas, in one paragraph
Average customer lifespan is 1 divided by churn rate (a 4% monthly churn implies an average customer life of 25 months). Simple CLV is ARPA times that lifespan. Gross-margin CLV is ARPA × margin × lifespan, which is the profit-per-customer number that matters for decisions. Discounted CLV is ARPA × margin ÷ (churn + discount_rate), the net present value of the future cash flows. LTV:CAC ratio is gross-margin CLV divided by CAC. CAC payback period is CAC divided by gross profit per period (ARPA × margin).
The benchmarks worth knowing
- Monthly customer churn: Under 2% is best-in-class SaaS. 2-4% is healthy SMB SaaS. 4-7% needs attention. Over 7% means fix retention before scaling acquisition.
- Gross margin: 75-85% for pure SaaS, 50-75% for SaaS with services or heavy infrastructure, 30-60% for AI-heavy products and marketplaces. Under 30% means re-examine pricing or cost of serving.
- LTV:CAC ratio: 3:1 is the classic benchmark. Under 1:1 means losing money per customer. Over 5:1 may mean under-investing in growth (you could acquire more profitable customers if you spent more).
- CAC payback period: Under 12 months is capital-efficient (you recycle acquisition spend fast). 12-24 months is typical B2B SaaS. Over 24 months requires patient capital.
FAQ
What is customer lifetime value (CLV / LTV)?
CLV is the total revenue (or profit) you can expect from a single customer across the entire relationship. It's the single most important number in subscription economics because every other lever (what you can spend to acquire a customer, how patient your investors need to be, whether the product is genuinely healthy) derives from it. The 'simple' CLV is ARPA × average customer lifespan. The version that actually matters for decisions is gross-margin CLV: ARPA × margin × lifespan. That's the profit per customer, which is what your LTV:CAC ratio uses.
What's the difference between CLV, LTV, and LTV:CAC?
CLV and LTV are the same thing, just different names; SaaS uses both interchangeably. LTV:CAC is the ratio of LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost. The accepted benchmark for healthy SaaS is 3:1 or better, meaning every $1 you spend acquiring a customer returns $3 in lifetime gross profit. Under 1:1 means you're losing money on every customer (CAC exceeds LTV); 1:1 to 3:1 means you're acquiring profitably but tightly; over 3:1 means you have room to invest more in growth.
Should I use simple, gross-margin, or discounted CLV?
Use gross-margin CLV (ARPA × margin × lifespan) for almost every decision. Simple CLV ignores the cost of serving customers and overstates the value. Discounted CLV (NPV) is more accurate for long-lifespan enterprise contracts where time value of money matters, but for typical monthly SaaS the discount factor is small enough that gross-margin is fine. LTV:CAC ratio benchmarks (3:1) assume gross-margin CLV, so that's what to use for benchmarking.
How do I calculate churn rate for the input?
Take the number of customers you lost in a period and divide by the number of customers you had at the start of that period. If you had 100 customers on January 1 and 96 on January 31 (and didn't gain any in January for this isolated calculation), your monthly churn is 4 ÷ 100 = 4%. For SaaS, monthly churn is the standard reporting cadence. If you only have annual data, the calculator's period toggle handles annual inputs. Be careful: revenue churn (dollars lost) is different from customer churn (logos lost); this tool uses customer churn.
My churn is 4% per month. Is that good?
Mixed. For SMB SaaS, 4% monthly is typical but on the high end of healthy. For mid-market or enterprise, 4% is concerning. For B2C subscriptions, 4% is excellent. The calculator's health checks compare your inputs against industry-typical ranges and flag what's high or low. The shorthand: monthly churn under 2% is best-in-class, 2-4% is healthy SMB SaaS, 4-7% needs attention, over 7% means fix retention before scaling acquisition.
What gross margin should I assume for SaaS?
Pure SaaS targets 75-85% gross margin: the cost of serving an additional customer is mostly hosting + a sliver of support. AI-heavy products (LLM-call passthrough, GPU inference) often run 30-60% margin because compute costs are real. Marketplaces typically run 40-60%. If your gross margin is under 40% for a 'software' business, the calculator will flag it: at that level, CLV stays low and CAC payback becomes hard regardless of churn.
How is CAC payback calculated?
CAC payback period = CAC ÷ (ARPA × gross margin). It's the number of periods to recover acquisition cost from gross profit per customer. Under 12 months is capital-efficient (you recycle ad spend fast). 12-24 months is typical B2B SaaS, manageable with patient capital. Over 24 months gets risky: customers can churn before you've recovered the cost of acquiring them, which means net losses per customer at scale.
Is anything I input stored or sent anywhere?
No. The calculator runs entirely in your browser. Inputs are kept in your browser's LocalStorage so they're there when you come back, but that data stays on your device. No network request is made when you type, switch scenarios, or change the period. No analytics event captures your numbers. The only thing the page sends to Briskly is the standard analytics ping (a page view), with no input values attached.
Pair tool: the CAC calculator does the other half of SaaS unit economics: customer acquisition cost by channel, blended vs paid CAC, plus the LTV:CAC ratio and payback period computed against your CLV inputs.
Building a freelance business instead of SaaS? See the freelance rate calculator for working backwards from a target salary. For modeling AI API costs, the AI cost calculator covers per-model projections.