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CLV Calculator: Customer Lifetime Value and LTV to CAC

What a customer is worth over the whole relationship.

Business Calculators Free, no sign-up Runs in your browser

The share of customers who leave each year.

Optional.

Optional. Discounts future profit back to today.

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Lifetime value
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Lifetime revenue
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LTV to CAC
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CAC payback
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Expected lifetime
YearRevenueGross profitCumulative profit
A LTV to CAC ratio around 3 is the usual rule of thumb for a healthy subscription business: enough margin to fund growth without paying so little for customers that you never find any.

About the Customer Lifetime Value Calculator

CLV Calculator works out what a customer is worth over the whole relationship, in gross profit rather than revenue. Order value times frequency gives yearly revenue, the margin turns that into profit, and the lifetime multiplies it out.

Lifetime can be entered directly or derived from a churn rate, and the second is usually the more honest input because churn is something you can measure. The expected lifetime is the reciprocal of the churn rate: lose a quarter of your customers each year and the average one stays four years. That relationship is why a small reduction in churn moves lifetime value so much.

The LTV to CAC ratio is the figure investors ask for, and around three is the usual benchmark for a subscription business. Below that, growth consumes cash faster than customers repay it; far above it, you are probably under-investing in acquisition and leaving customers to a competitor who will pay more for them.

This is arithmetic, not financial advice. It tells you what the numbers do; it cannot tell you whether a decision is right for your circumstances. Fees, taxes and local rules vary, so check anything that matters against the actual offer and speak to someone qualified before committing.

Everything is worked out inside your browser. Nothing you enter is uploaded, logged or stored, which matters for the financial calculators in particular: the figures you put into them are nobody else's business.

Looking for something this does not cover? FreeToolsZone.org is more free browser-based tools, organised by job, and it is worth a look if customer lifetime value calculator is only part of what you are working on.

How to use the Customer Lifetime Value Calculator

  1. Choose lifetime fromThe fields below change to match what you pick, so only the figures that matter to your case are asked for.
  2. Enter average order value, orders per year and gross margin (%)Decimals are fine, and thousands separators are accepted and ignored.
  3. Read the lifetime value, lifetime revenue and ltv to cacThe figures update as you type. The Calculate button is there if you would rather press something, but nothing waits for it.
  4. Copy or check the resultCopy the summary with the copy button, or open the table to check it row by row.

Features

  • Shows lifetime value, lifetime revenue, ltv to cac, cac payback and expected lifetime together, so you are not running it twice
  • A results table you can read across
  • Updates as you type, with no button to press and no page reload
  • Copy the result in one click
  • Free, no sign-up, and it runs entirely in your browser

Who uses this tool

The customer lifetime value calculator is used by writers, developers, students, marketers and anyone else who needs the job done once without installing software. Common cases include:

  • Setting a maximum acquisition cost
  • Showing what a reduction in churn is worth
  • Comparing the value of two customer segments
  • Working out how long acquisition takes to pay back

Frequently asked questions

Should CLV use revenue or profit?

Gross profit. Revenue-based lifetime value overstates what a customer is worth by the entire cost of serving them.

How do I get lifetime from churn?

Divide one by the churn rate. Twenty per cent yearly churn implies an average lifetime of five years, which is what the churn option does.

What does the discount rate do?

It reduces profit arriving in later years to its value today, which matters for long lifetimes. Leave it at zero for a simple undiscounted figure.

If the customer lifetime value calculator is not quite what you need, these other free tools solve closely related problems, and there are 19 more in business calculators.

Churn Rate Calculator

Customer and revenue churn with retention and lifetime.

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CPA Calculator

Cost per acquisition with the break-even figure.

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ROAS Calculator

Return on ad spend with profit and break-even ROAS.

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Checked and rebuilt on 2026-10-14. The method this calculator uses is described in the section above, and corrections go through the contact page.