CAC in SaaS averages $239 per customer for B2B companies, $205 when the customer arrived organically and $341 when they came from paid channels, according to First Page Sage client data from 2022 to August 2025. Cold paid campaigns run much higher: at one paying customer in ten leads, a customer costs about $920 from US Google search, $1,790 from Facebook and $3,760 from LinkedIn.
What is the average CAC for B2B SaaS?
The most quoted figure comes from First Page Sage, a marketing agency that publishes acquisition cost by industry from its own client work. For B2B SaaS it reports $239 blended, $205 organic and $341 inorganic, from data collected between January 2022 and August 2025. Organic CAC came in below paid CAC in almost every B2B industry they measured.
Treat that number as a floor rather than a forecast. It is an average across companies that already have working funnels, brand searches and repeat referrals. A SaaS company buying its first thousand clicks in a category where nobody knows its name will pay a lot more per customer, which is what the channel numbers below show.
SaaS customer acquisition cost by channel
Ad platforms report cost per lead, not cost per customer. To get CAC you divide by the share of leads that end up paying. That share depends on your product, price and sales motion, so the table uses one in ten as a round planning figure. If your rate is one in five, halve the CAC column; if it is one in twenty, double it.
| Channel | Median cost per lead | CAC at 1 in 10 | CAC at 1 in 5 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google search, US blended | $92 | $920 | $460 | PipeRocket median |
| Facebook ads | $179 | $1,790 | $895 | Metadata median, 2025 |
| Google search, non-brand | $207 | $2,070 | $1,035 | PipeRocket median |
| LinkedIn ads | $376 | $3,760 | $1,880 | Metadata median, 2025 |
| SoftwareHome listing | $288 a year, fixed | $288 at one customer a year, $144 at two | Published plan price | |
Google figures: PipeRocket, medians across 53+ B2B SaaS accounts, July 2025 to June 2026. Facebook and LinkedIn: Metadata, B2B advertisers, calendar 2025. We do not publish a conversion rate for our own listings, so the listing row shows what the cost would be per customer, not a promise of how many you get.
The detail behind each row sits on its own page: Google Ads cost per lead for SaaS companies, Facebook ads cost for SaaS and LinkedIn ads cost for SaaS. Each covers the minimum budget and the size of a fair test.
Notice the gap between the $239 average and the $920 to $3,760 range. Most of it is the lead to customer rate. Before you buy more leads, check what share of trials reach your pricing page and pay; a quick conversion audit of your signup and pricing pages often moves CAC more than any change of channel, because it lowers the cost of every channel at once.
How do you calculate CAC for SaaS?
Add up what you spent to win customers in a period and divide by the new paying customers in the same period. Count ad spend, listing and review site fees, tools used for acquisition, and the part of marketing and sales salaries spent on new business. Leave out the cost of serving existing customers.
CAC = acquisition spend / new paying customers
Channel CAC = cost per lead / share of leads that pay
Example: $6,000 on Google and a $288 listing in a quarter bring 50 leads and 6 customers. Blended CAC is $6,288 divided by 6, or $1,048. If two of the six came from the listing, that line cost $144 a customer and the search line $1,500.
How long until a SaaS customer pays back?
Payback months are CAC divided by the gross margin a customer brings each month. The table assumes 80% gross margin, normal for software, and the one in ten CAC from above. Twelve months or less is the usual target for a self funded company.
| Channel and CAC | $50 a month plan | $250 a month plan | $1,000 a month plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Facebook ads ($1,790) | 44.8 months | 9.0 months | 2.2 months |
| Google search, non-brand ($2,070) | 51.8 months | 10.4 months | 2.6 months |
| LinkedIn ads ($3,760) | 94.0 months | 18.8 months | 4.7 months |
| SoftwareHome listing, 1 customer a year ($288) | 7.2 months | 1.4 months | 0.4 months |
Green means the customer pays back within 12 months.
The pattern is plain. A $50 a month product cannot afford cold paid traffic at these rates; it needs organic search, comparison pages and fixed price listings. A $250 product can afford Facebook and Google if the lead to customer rate holds. Only products around $1,000 a month make LinkedIn pay back inside a year.
What is a good CAC for SaaS?
A good CAC is one that pays back within about a year and leaves a lifetime value to CAC ratio near three to one. In dollars that depends entirely on price. For a $250 a month product at 80% margin, $2,400 is the one year ceiling and a three to one ratio needs a customer to stay about three years.
If your blended CAC sits above that, there are two levers: raise the share of leads that pay, or shift budget to cheaper lines. Sizing those lines against total spend is covered in the SaaS marketing budget allocation benchmarks, which start from the 8% of ARR median.
Lowering CAC with lines whose price does not rise
Auction channels get more expensive as you scale: the fifth thousand dollars on LinkedIn buys worse clicks than the first. Fixed price lines do the opposite. Their cost is set before you spend it, so every extra customer lowers their CAC.
SoftwareHome is one of those lines. A listing puts your product in its category, next to the alternatives and comparison pages US buyers use when they are close to choosing, for $24 a month billed annually. A featured week above your category costs $299, which is cheaper than two non-brand Google leads and works as a test beside a campaign. Other fixed lines worth pricing are covered on our software review sites pricing comparison.