Metrics · Purchase / Paid Conversion
CAC Payback Period
Number of months to recover the cost of acquiring a customer through gross margin contribution. Early-stage SaaS median: 15-18 months. Best-in-class: under 12 months. Consumer SaaS targets under 6 months due to higher churn risk. Enterprise SaaS with multi-year contracts can sustain 24-30 month payback given low churn. Venture-backed growth companies often intentionally run longer payback periods when LTV:CAC is favorable.
How to calculate it
cac / (arpu_monthly × gross_margin_pct)Unit is months (lower is better). Payback is typically discussed in SaaS investor/CFO circles. Primary data from HubSpot State of Marketing and Bessemer Venture Partners State of the Cloud reports. Include gross margin in the formula — gross margin payback is more accurate than revenue payback.
Per-industry distribution (2)
Each row shows the cited p25 / p50 / p75 for CAC Payback Period in that industry. Click an industry to open the full benchmark page.
| Industry | p25 | p50 | p75 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SaaS (B2B Software)(derived) | 10.0 | 16.0 | 24.0 | HubSpot State of Marketing 2024 (derived) |
| Ecommerce (D2C Retail)(derived) | 4.0 | 8.0 | 18.0 | HubSpot State of Marketing 2024 (derived for ecommerce) |
Primary source
State of Marketing Report (2024) · HubSpot · 2024
Annual survey of 1,400+ marketing professionals globally. Covers email marketing benchmarks (open rate, CTR, CTOR), lead generation and lead-to-SQL conversion rates, content marketing performance, and B2B pipeline metrics. Cross-referenced with HubSpot platform data from 100,000+ customers. B2B and agency respondents skew.