Estimate what a customer is worth over the whole relationship — in revenue, in profit and against your CAC.
Customer lifetime value answers how much a customer is worth over the whole relationship, not just at the first purchase. The simplest useful model multiplies three numbers you already have: the average ticket, how often the customer buys in a year, and how many years they stay. A shop with a R$ 150 average ticket, four purchases a year and three years of retention is looking at R$ 1,800 of revenue per customer. The same three inputs work for a subscription, where the ticket is the monthly plan and the frequency is twelve.
Revenue is not what you keep, so the calculator takes an optional gross margin and applies it: at 30%, that R$ 1,800 leaves R$ 540 of gross profit per customer. That profit figure is the one that belongs next to the acquisition cost. Enter your CAC — everything spent on marketing and sales in a period divided by the customers won in it — and the tool shows the CLV:CAC ratio. The most quoted reference is 3:1, meaning each real spent to acquire a customer brings back three over the relationship. Below that there is rarely room left for the rest of the business, and far above it usually means acquisition is underfunded rather than that the company has found a ceiling. Treat 3:1 as a starting point and adjust it to your own margins, payback period and cost of capital.
This is deliberately a simple model, and it is worth knowing what it leaves out. It assumes a constant ticket, a constant frequency and a fixed retention time, when real cohorts churn gradually — a subscription business usually estimates lifetime as one divided by the monthly churn rate instead. It does not discount future revenue to present value, so a CLV spread over five years is worth less today than the number suggests. And it ignores the cost of serving the customer beyond the gross margin: support, shipping and returns all come out of it. Use it to size decisions and compare segments, not as an exact forecast. This is an educational calculation and not investment or financial advice. Everything is computed in JavaScript on your own device and none of your numbers are sent anywhere.
CLV = average ticket × purchases per year × years of retention. With a margin: profit CLV = CLV × margin ÷ 100. CLV:CAC = CLV (the profit one, when a margin is given) ÷ CAC.
Multiply the average ticket by the number of purchases per year and by how many years the customer stays. A R$ 150 ticket, 4 purchases a year and 3 years of retention gives R$ 1,800 per customer.
3:1 is the most quoted reference — each real spent acquiring a customer returns three over the relationship. Below 1:1 you lose money on every customer; well above 5:1 usually means you could be investing more in acquisition rather than that you have hit a ceiling.
Profit, whenever you know your gross margin. Comparing a revenue CLV with a CAC flatters the ratio, because that revenue still has to pay for the product itself. Fill in the margin and the calculator uses the profit CLV in the ratio automatically.
None in practice: LTV (lifetime value) and CLV (customer lifetime value) name the same metric, and teams use the two terms interchangeably.
No. The calculation runs entirely in JavaScript on your device. Nothing you type is transmitted, logged or stored.
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