Plan your SaaS marketing budget with confidence.
Feed in your business model, paid budget, CAC assumptions, organic traffic, and brand spend — and get a 3-year projection: customers, MRR, LTV:CAC, break-even, and how close you come to running out of cash. Everything stays in your browser.
Basic information about your company and budget
Information about your business model
Your monthly marketing budget
Your cost of acquisition
Your organic traffic assumptions
Unless you have a strong brand, you may not need this
We do not calculate CAC with your brand awareness budget — it only increases your overall expenditure.
Your 3-year projection
MRR vs. spend vs. cash
Detail Month-by-month breakdown Click to expand the full 36-month table.
| Month | New paid | New organic | Customers | MRR | Spend | Net cash flow | Cash balance |
|---|
The projection applies your assumptions mechanically: paid budget ramps to its cap, CAC drifts toward its floor, organic traffic compounds to its ceiling, churn applies monthly, and brand spend only adds expenditure. Re-run it with pessimistic numbers before betting the company on the optimistic ones.
The numbers behind the projection
Six metrics drive every SaaS marketing budget decision. Here is what each one means and how the calculator computes it.
Lifetime Value (LTV)
ARPU ÷ monthly churn rateThe total revenue you can expect from a single customer over the course of the relationship. At $49 ARPU and 5% churn, each customer is worth $980.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
acquisition spend ÷ new customersEverything you spend on marketing, sales, and advertising to win one customer. The calculator reports a blended CAC across your whole paid budget.
LTV : CAC ratio
LTV ÷ CACThe health check for your model. 3:1 is the classic target — below 1:1 you lose money on every customer; far above 5:1 you may be underinvesting in growth.
Conversion rate
conversions ÷ visitors × 100The share of website visitors who become paying customers. A good rate typically sits between 2% and 5%, but it varies significantly across industries.
Churn rate
customers lost ÷ customers × 100The percentage of customers who leave each month. Most B2B companies aim for 0–2% monthly churn; B2C companies try to stay near 5%.
Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
active customers × ARPUThe recurring revenue your customer base generates each month — the line the projection chart tracks against your marketing spend.
How the projection works
Each month for 36 months: your paid budget grows by its monthly increase until it hits the cap, CAC moves by its monthly change until it hits the floor, and budget ÷ CAC becomes new paid customers. Organic traffic compounds from kick-off toward its ceiling, converting at your rate. Churn removes a share of the customer base, MRR is customers × ARPU, and cash tracks billing — yearly billing collects twelve months upfront at signup and renewal, monthly billing collects as it goes.
How to read the results
- LTV:CAC near 3:1 means the model works; below 1:1, fix the funnel before scaling spend.
- The lowest cash point is the capital you actually need — not your starting budget.
- Two break-evens matter: when months turn profitable, and when the early burn is paid back.
- Churn moves the chart more than any other input — test 1% steps before testing budget changes.
How much should a SaaS spend on marketing?
There is no universal percentage — the right budget depends on stage, payback, and how much cash you can put at risk while the flywheel spins up.
Spend on learning, not scale: small paid experiments to test messaging, founder-led content, and conversations with early users. Big budgets before the funnel converts just buy expensive lessons.
Once a channel converts predictably, ramp it the way this calculator models: steady monthly increases toward a cap, watching that blended CAC stays well under LTV and payback stays inside a year.
Growth-stage SaaS commonly puts 30–50% of revenue into sales and marketing. The discipline that keeps it sane: CAC payback under 12 months and an LTV:CAC ratio that holds near 3:1 as you spend more.
Rules of thumb that survive contact with reality
Keep CAC payback under 12 months — under 6 if you bill monthly and capital is tight. Hold LTV:CAC near 3:1 while ramping. Treat channel caps seriously: every channel saturates, which is why the calculator caps paid budget and organic traffic. And fund brand awareness from profit, not from runway — it compounds slowly and can't be attributed cleanly.
When to increase the budget
Scale spend when three things hold at once: payback is comfortably inside your cash cycle, the ratio holds as spend grows (CAC isn't spiking), and the lowest-cash month in the projection still leaves margin for error. If CAC rises as you ramp, fix conversion before buying more traffic — a cheaper funnel beats a bigger budget.
Common questions around the marketing budget calculator
How the projection is built, what it assumes, and what happens to your data.
