Pick your industry, enter your cac payback period, and see exactly where you sit in the 2-industry distribution. Higher is better — top quartile starts at 10.0.
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.