AI SaaS acquisition and contribution calculator
Explore the assumptions behind acquisition cost, revenue and contribution.
Discuss your AI-company project
Choose a commercial motion, enter the costs and conversion rates for a comparable cohort, and inspect the implied customer count. Then separate committed subscription revenue from estimated usage and the delivery costs included in your contribution model.
This is a planning tool, not a forecast, market benchmark or accounting recommendation. The example values are invented. The tool runs locally in your browser; it does not connect to your CRM, advertising or billing accounts.
Interactive calculator
Choose the journey and enter your own assumptions. The definitions and worked example below remain available without JavaScript.
Calculate to view the illustration.
Scenario results
Expected counts can be fractional. Calculations use full precision; rounding is for display only.
Journey stages
Retained-cohort calculation
| Month | Retained customers | Contribution | Cumulative contribution |
|---|
Three routes, three explicit denominators
Sales-led: enquiries become booked demos, booked demos become attended demos, and attended demos become customers.
Product-led: signup accounts become activated accounts, and activated accounts become paying accounts.
Developer-led: organisations reach a first successful call, progress to production activation and become paying organisations.
These are simplified routes. Select the one that matches the business question; do not add their stages together and call the result a customer total. A person, account, seat and organisation may represent different units.
What the calculation separates
Media-only CAC uses media spend. Marketing CAC adds other included marketing costs. Fully loaded CAC adds the allocated sales acquisition costs you enter. The categories must be disjoint to avoid double counting.
Committed new MRR uses the entered subscription amount and implied customer count. Estimated variable usage revenue remains separate. Monthly contribution subtracts the entered inference, hosting, support and payment costs from subscription plus estimated usage revenue.
Simple payback divides fully loaded CAC by positive monthly contribution per customer. The retained-cohort illustration applies the selected churn assumption over the chosen horizon. Neither calculation includes expansion, reactivation, discounting or changing contribution unless a later model explicitly adds them.
Worked example
Assume R60,000 media, R40,000 other marketing and R50,000 allocated sales costs. Four hundred enquiries with 25% booking, 75% attendance and 20% conversion from attended demos imply fifteen customers.
The resulting media-only CAC is R4,000; marketing CAC is approximately R6,667; fully loaded CAC is R10,000. A R2,500 subscription and R500 estimated usage revenue, less R1,000 of included monthly delivery costs, imply R2,000 monthly contribution per customer.
Simple steady-state payback is five months. Under a 3% monthly churn assumption, cumulative cohort contribution first covers acquisition cost in month six. Those figures illustrate the model; they do not describe a Webvelopment client or expected market performance.
How missing or unusual inputs behave
Blank required fields are not treated as zero. Zero customers makes CAC undefined. Zero or negative contribution does not produce a finite positive simple payback. When recovery does not occur within the selected horizon, the result says so without claiming what will happen forever.
Expected customer counts can be fractional in a planning calculation. The model keeps full precision internally and rounds only for display. Changing the currency label does not perform exchange-rate conversion.
Keep your information private
The tool does not submit your inputs, save them to browser storage or add them to analytics. A local export is initiated only when you choose it. Do not enter personal information, credentials or confidential customer details; the calculation does not need them.
Interpret the result before making a decision
A lower CAC can reflect better conversion, a different cost boundary or a changed denominator. A higher revenue figure can reflect uncertain usage rather than committed recurring income. Inspect those explanations before presenting the result as an improvement.
Read the complete methodology or discuss commercial measurement to connect the calculation to an actual operating process.
Keep the right things connected.
AI SaaS customer acquisition cost: the formula is only the beginning
Calculate media, marketing and fully loaded CAC for AI SaaS, then separate recurring revenue, usage, delivery costs and cohort payback.
Commercial analytics and revenue operations for AI companies
Make the commercial numbers agree before asking them to guide growth.
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