What should it cost you to
acquire a customer?
Most companies misallocate their acquisition budget far more often than they overspend it. Put in your numbers to see the CAC range you can actually afford, where you sit against it today, and how much room you have.
Where your CAC sits vs. what you can afford
The band runs from an efficient 5:1 return down to break-even (1:1). Your marker shows today; the tick shows your target.
How a customer pays back their acquisition cost
Cumulative gross-profit contribution per customer over their lifetime, against what you spent to acquire them.
Does it pay back in year one?
A cash-timing lens on affordability: the most you can spend and still recover it inside your payback window, separate from the full-lifetime bands above.
How that lifetime value is built
Your biggest levers
What each improvement adds to the CAC you can afford. This is where growth is won.
Sensitivity: customer lifetime
Lifetime and CLV move together, and so does the CAC you can afford.
See what your real number should be.
Torch pressure-tests these economics with you and turns the headroom into a plan. Less agency, more thinking.
Estimates for planning discussion only, not financial advice. Lifetime value = revenue per customer × land-and-expand × gross margin × lifetime, on a gross-profit basis. Affordable CAC is the lower of the lifetime-ratio ceiling (default 3:1) and what a customer earns back inside the payback window (default 12 months), so the recommendation stays defensible; the band chart shows the lifetime ratios (5:1 efficient, 3:1 healthy, 1:1 break-even). Preset defaults come from 2024 to 2025 benchmarks (SaaS: Benchmarkit; MSP: ConnectWise/Service Leadership, Xurrent; services: Deltek, Eagle Rock CFO). They are starting points, so replace them with your own figures. Built by Torch.