CLV Calculator

How to use the CLV calculator step by step

1. Enter your average order value under Avg. order value (€).
2. Under Purchases per year, enter how often a customer orders from you per year on average.
3. Set the Customer lifespan (years) – how long a customer typically stays loyal to your store.
4. Add your Margin (%) after cost of goods and variable costs. Not sure? Our margin calculator helps you work out the value.
5. Finally, enter your Acquisition cost per customer (€) – for example, your ad budget divided by the number of new customers acquired.

You can change any value at any time – the results update instantly, without reloading the page.

How to read the three result values

The calculator shows you three tiles: CLV (revenue) is the total revenue per customer, CLV (profit) is the share that remains after costs, and CLV : CAC compares that profit to your acquisition costs. As long as the acquisition cost field is empty or zero, the third tile deliberately stays empty („–“), because no meaningful ratio can be formed without a CAC.

Below the tiles, a status note appears as soon as you enter acquisition costs: a neutral note reports a healthy ratio, a red note warns you about tight or unprofitable values. If the ratio falls below 1:1, the figure itself is additionally highlighted in red – every new customer then costs you more than they bring in as profit.

Practical tips: where to get realistic input values

Take the values from your own systems rather than guessing: you can find the order value and purchase frequency in your store platform’s analytics, and you can estimate the lifespan from the gap between the first and last order of your repeat customers. You should calculate acquisition costs separately per channel – customers from Google Ads often have a different value than customers from newsletters or referrals.

Recalculate regularly too, for example quarterly: seasonal effects, price changes, or new ad channels affect all five inputs. If you use the ROAS calculator alongside, you can compare ad performance with long-term customer value directly.