Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

A vendor metric for the all-in cost to acquire one new customer, including sales, marketing, and onboarding.

CAC includes salaries, paid acquisition, content, partnerships, and onboarding services. Vendors track CAC payback period (months to recover CAC from gross profit), which usually ranges from 12 to 24 months for a healthy SaaS business. Buyer-side relevance: vendors with very long CAC payback periods are under pressure to extract more revenue per customer, often via aggressive renewal pricing or upsell motions.