LTV Calculator: Customer Lifetime Value for SaaS and Ecommerce
Calculate customer lifetime value four ways from the same inputs: simple, with expansion, capped and discounted, and from your own cohort retention curve. Works for subscriptions and repeat purchases, with LTV to CAC and the month CAC is paid back.
Press Calculate.
What this LTV calculator does differently
Customer lifetime value has one definition and several formulas, and they disagree, often by a factor of two or more on the same inputs. The calculators that rank pick one formula and return one number. This one shows the common methods side by side, so you can see how much of the answer comes from the assumption rather than the data.
| The SaaS CFO | Gusto | Elementor | This tool | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Formula shown | No, in a separate download | Margin / churn | Value x frequency x lifespan | Every method, with your numbers |
| Gross margin | Not stated | Yes | No | Yes |
| Expansion revenue | Not stated | No | No | Yes |
| Horizon and discounting | Not stated | No | No | Yes |
| Your retention data | No | No | No | Paste a cohort curve |
| LTV to CAC and payback | No | Described, not calculated | No | Both, with a chart |
| Subscription and repeat purchase | Subscription | Subscription | Repeat purchase | Both |
Calculator pages as fetched on 1 November 2026. Anything not shown or described on the page is not counted. Gusto’s worked example also uses two different user counts and two different costs of revenue.
Why the LTV methods disagree
Simple LTV, monthly gross margin divided by monthly churn, assumes every customer pays the same amount forever, leaving at a steady rate. It is the textbook formula and a reasonable first estimate.
LTV with expansion divides by net revenue churn, customer churn minus the growth in revenue from the customers who stay. Expansion makes LTV larger, and as it approaches churn the formula runs to infinity, which is a sign it has stopped describing anything real.
Capped, discounted LTV adds up the margin month by month for a fixed horizon, with expansion, and discounts future months at your cost of capital. At 1% monthly churn, the simple formula counts an average customer life of 100 months, over eight years, at full value. Capping and discounting stops a low churn rate quietly claiming revenue that may never arrive.
Cohort LTV replaces the assumed churn rate with your own retention curve. Real retention usually falls fastest in the first months and then flattens, which a single churn rate cannot show. Paste the share of a starting cohort still paying at each month and the calculator uses that shape, extending the curve beyond your data at its last observed churn rate.
Subscription and repeat-purchase businesses
For a subscription, value builds monthly: revenue per account, gross margin, and the churn and expansion of the accounts. For a shop or marketplace, customers come back in purchases rather than months, so the repeat-purchase mode works by year: average order value, orders per customer per year, margin, and the share of this year’s customers who buy again next year.
Many repeat-purchase calculators multiply order value by frequency by lifespan and stop. That is lifetime revenue, not value: a 45% margin business keeps less than half of it, and money in year five is worth less than money now. The calculator shows that figure next to the margin-based one so the gap is visible.
LTV to CAC, and payback
LTV is most useful against what it cost to win the customer. Enter a fully loaded CAC (the CAC calculator breaks it down by channel) and the calculator shows LTV to CAC and the month or year in which the customer’s cumulative discounted margin pays the CAC back. Payback is the more practical of the two, because it says how long the cash is tied up, and it depends far less on assumptions about year five.
How to calculate LTV with this tool
- Choose the modelSubscription for recurring revenue, repeat purchase for orders.
- Enter revenue and marginRevenue per customer per month, or order value and orders per year, and your gross margin.
- Enter churn and expansionMonthly customer churn and expansion, or the share of customers who buy again next year.
- Paste a cohort, if you have oneMonth and the percentage of the starting cohort still paying, from your billing data.
- Set the horizon and discount rateFive years and 10% is a common starting point. Use your own cost of capital if you know it.
- Add CACA fully loaded CAC gives LTV to CAC and the payback month.