Metric guide · Growth efficiency
Blended CAC
Short answer
Blended customer acquisition cost, or blended CAC, is the average cost of acquiring one new paying customer. It is calculated as total sales and marketing spend in a period divided by the number of new paying customers in that period. Blended means organic and paid customers are counted together.
The formula
Blended CAC = total sales and marketing spend ÷ new paying customers
Unit: US dollars. Better when it goes down.
Enter CAC, revenue per customer and gross margin to see months to payback and LTV to CAC.
Open the calculatorHow to calculate it
- Sum sales and marketing spend for the period, including ad spend, tools, agencies and the salaries of people in those roles.
- Count new paying customers in the same period. Trials and free signups do not count.
- Divide spend by new paying customers.
- Calculate paid CAC separately, using only ad spend and customers attributed to paid channels, if you need to judge ad efficiency.
Mistakes that distort it
Using ad spend alone understates the true cost of acquisition. Blended CAC should include everything spent to acquire customers.
The denominator is paying customers. Cost per trial and cost per install are useful, but they are different metrics.
Spend and new customers must cover the same period. For long sales cycles, some teams lag spend by one period and should say so.
Where Sondola reads it from
Sondola reads this metric from Meta Ads, Apple Ads, Stripe and RevenueCat, with the source and period on every reading. Each reading keeps where it came from, the period and the date it was recorded, and you can download all of it at any time.
See all 34 integrations →Questions
Why is blended CAC lower than paid CAC?
Blended CAC spreads spend across organic customers as well as paid ones, which lowers the average. Paid CAC isolates what ads cost per customer they brought in.
Should free-trial users be counted in CAC?
No. Count a customer when they make their first payment. Otherwise CAC falls whenever trials rise, even if none convert.
Related metrics
Written by the Sondola team. Benchmarks name their source, basis and date. Changes to how Sondola counts a number are on the corrections page.
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