What's a good CAC for ecommerce?

There is no universal number. CAC only matters relative to AOV and LTV. A $40 CAC is great on a $200 AOV supplements brand and terrible on a $25 AOV candle. The target is LTV:CAC at 3:1 or better and CAC payback under 6 months. Those ratios matter more than the raw dollar amount.

How often should I recalculate CAC?

Monthly for reporting. Weekly for active optimization. Daily CAC is noise. The customer you acquired today may attribute to a click from three weeks ago. Use a 7-day or 14-day rolling window for operational decisions and a full 30-day window for strategy and planning.

Why is my CAC going up?

Four common drivers: creative fatigue (your best-performing ads have hit their audience), audience saturation (you are re-serving the same people), seasonal auction pressure (Q4 pushes CPMs up 30-80 percent), or incrementality decay (you were over-crediting paid for organic demand). Check creative diversity and frequency first.

Does CAC include free trials or discounted first orders?

Include any cost that was spent to acquire the customer. If you gave a 20 percent off first-order code, that discount is effectively a CAC subsidy. Some operators track it as reduced AOV rather than added CAC, which is fine as long as you are consistent. The only wrong answer is double-counting or ignoring it.

Ad Performance · Free Tool

CAC Calculator

Customer acquisition cost is the honest number behind every ad dashboard. Divide total marketing spend by new customers and you know what growth actually costs you.

CAC = Total Marketing Spend ÷ New Customers Acquired

Total marketing spend ($)

New customers acquired

Average order value ($)

12-month LTV (optional) ($)

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How to use this CAC Calculator

CAC is the ground truth of your acquisition program. Platform ROAS lies. Attribution dashboards argue with themselves. CAC does not. Add every dollar you spent (ads, creator fees, tools, agency retainers) and divide by the customers you actually acquired. What is left is what growth cost you.

Use fully-loaded CAC for decisions, not paid media CAC. Paid media CAC divides platform spend by customers and ignores the rest of your marketing stack. Fully-loaded CAC includes contractors, software, creative production, and anything else that exists to bring customers in. It is a higher number. It is also the real one.

Compare CAC to two things: AOV and LTV. CAC below AOV means first-order profitability is on the table. CAC below one-third of LTV means the business compounds. Most DTC brands die at the ratio where CAC creeps above AOV and LTV has not been proven yet. Fix CAC before you try to grow your way out.

Frequently Asked Questions

There are two valid methods. Blended CAC divides all marketing spend by all new customers (paid plus organic). Paid CAC divides paid spend by paid-attributed customers. Blended is honest for business decisions because it captures the full cost of acquisition. Paid CAC is useful for channel-level optimization. Report both.

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