What's the overall direction of acquisition cost?

MetricBlended customer acquisition cost, total sales and marketing spend divided by all new customers

Unitcurrency per acquired customer, indexed or absolute

Single line: all S&M spend divided by all new customers. Smooths channel noise. Build from total marketing + sales spend divided by new customers per period. The single number boards focus on. Example: $42 blended to $58 (deteriorating, investigate channel mix).

CAC

Customer acquisition cost. Fully loaded sales and marketing spend in a period divided by new customers won in that period.

S&M

Sales and marketing. All go-to-market cost: salaries, commission, media spend and tooling.

B2B SaaS, approx. 1,000 companies, 2024 full-year data reported in 2025, blended CAC defined as all sales and marketing cost including salary over all new customers acquired; consumer and ecommerce comparators use media-inclusive spend over new buyers · Blended CAC and the new CAC ratio are different metrics that answer the same question, and the ratio version is the better trend line because it normalizes for deal size drift. Any blended CAC series that mixes new and expansion customers will trend down for the wrong reason. The 40 to 60% inflation figure from Phoenix Strategy Group and the 222% eight-year surge attributed to SimplicityDX are aggregate claims from smaller panels and sit well above the roughly 10% since 2022 that Benchmarkit measures, so the wide numbers should be flagged, not averaged in.

Category split omitted: Blended CAC is only published split by ARR band or ACV in Benchmarkit; the second sources available for a category split are aggregators reusing the same panel, so the split is not independently corroborated.

The blended line rises steadily while new customer count is flat, so the curve is being driven entirely by spend rather than by mix or deal size, and no single channel on the companion chart explains it.

Blended CAC $1,100 to $1,540 across four quarters, new customers 420 per quarter throughout, S&M spend up 40%, and the new CAC ratio moving from $1.90 to $2.70 per $1 of new ARR.

• Chart the new CAC ratio rather than absolute blended CAC as the headline; the ratio normalizes for ACV drift and the published distribution is tight enough to place yourself honestly, with median $2.00 and fourth quartile $2.82 (Benchmarkit 2025).
• Decompose the rise into price, volume and mix before acting; if blended CAC rose because a higher-ACV segment now takes a larger share of new logos, the correct read is that payback should be checked per segment and the blended line is not the problem.
• Hold headcount flat for one full quarter and let media flex, since most of the CAC denominator is salary rather than media in B2B SaaS; this isolates whether the inflation is auction-driven or structural without cutting demand generation.
• For DTC, replace blended CAC with spend over revenue as the board metric; the Triple Whale customer median MER was 41% in 2025, which is a P&L-legible number, whereas blended CAC moves with AOV and cannot be compared across quarters when product mix shifts.

1. Benchmarkit2025 SaaS Performance Metrics Benchmarks · 2025 · approx. 1,000 B2B SaaS companies Median new CAC ratio $2.00 of S&M spend per $1 of new ARR in 2024, up 14% YoY, fourth quartile $2.82; CAC payback highly correlated to ACV band benchmarkit.ai ↗
2. Aleph x BenchmarkitCAC Payback Period Benchmarks for SaaS, 2026 SaaS & AI Performance Benchmarks · 2026 · n=342 SaaS and AI-native software companies, full-year 2025 actuals Median CAC payback 16 months, top quartile 6 months or fewer, bottom quartile 24 months or more, worst case in sample 48 months getaleph.com ↗
3. CO ConsultingCustomer Acquisition Cost Benchmarks by Industry (2026 Data) · 2026 · aggregation of First Page Sage, Benchmarkit and KeyBanc/Sapphire datasets Median CAC payback for private SaaS reported near 20 months in the 2024 KeyBanc Capital Markets and Sapphire Ventures SaaS Survey; First Page Sage LTV:CAC by industry runs 2.5:1 to 5:1 christopholivierconsulting.com ↗
4. Phoenix Strategy GroupCAC Benchmarks by Channel for 2025 · 2025 · aggregated channel CAC benchmarks across B2B and B2C campaigns Paid search CAC $802 B2B, Facebook $230, LinkedIn $982, organic search $290 to $942, referral $150 for B2B SaaS, outbound sales $1,980; CAC up 40 to 60% between 2023 and 2025 phoenixstrategy.group ↗
5. The Zulu MethodSaaS LTV:CAC Ratio Benchmarks 2026 · 2026 · Benchmarkit 2025, Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey and SaaS Capital 2026 spending survey of 1,000+ companies Private B2B SaaS spends about 8% of ARR on marketing at the median per SaaS Capital 2026; median company spends $2.00 in S&M per $1 of new ARR thezulumethod.com ↗
6. The SaaS LibrarySaaS Metrics 2026: ARR, MRR, NRR, CAC and LTV Benchmarks · 2026 · Benchmarkit 2025 and ChartMogul 2025 retention report covering 2,500+ software businesses Median private B2B SaaS LTV:CAC 3.6:1 per Benchmarkit 2025, above the commonly cited 3:1 floor thesaaslibrary.com ↗
7. OptifaiB2B SaaS LTV Benchmarks by Segment and LTV:CAC Ratio · 2026 · n=939 companies, Q2 2025 to Q1 2026 Median B2B SaaS LTV:CAC 3.2:1; LTV by segment SMB $15K to $40K, mid-market $80K to $200K, enterprise $300K to $1M+ optif.ai ↗
8. Triple WhaleWhat Is Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER)? · 2025 · Triple Whale customer base, full-year 2025 Median MER for Triple Whale customers in 2025 was 41%, expressed as ad spend over total revenue triplewhale.com ↗
9. First Page SageAverage Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) By Industry: B2B Edition · 2026 · 29 B2B industries, client data January 2022 to August 2025, US Splits every industry into organic CAC (SEO and organic social) and inorganic CAC (PPC/SEM and paid social); paid exceeds organic in 26 of 27 listed industries firstpagesage.com ↗