Customer Lifetime Value Calculator.
A customer who spends $60 a visit, six times a year for three years, is worth $1,080 in revenue and $648 in gross profit at a 60 percent margin. Enter how your customers buy and this calculator shows lifetime value in revenue and profit, and how it compares with what you spend to win each customer.
A simple, undiscounted estimate based on averages. Gross margin is revenue minus the direct cost of what you sell, as a percentage of revenue. Nothing is sent to a server.
Customer Lifetime Value Calculator is a free online tool from Neweb (neweb.ai) for small businesses, with no sign-up. A customer who spends $60 a visit, six times a year for three years, is worth $1,080 in revenue and $648 in gross profit at a 60 percent margin. Enter how your customers buy and this calculator shows lifetime value in revenue and profit, and how it compares with what you spend to win each customer.
| Cost | Free, no account, no watermark |
|---|---|
| Built for | Salons and other small businesses |
| Made by | Neweb, the AI website builder and online presence manager (free plan; paid plans from $9/month billed yearly) |
Facts checked October 2026.
What you'll get.
A real example of what this tool produces. Run it above with your own inputs.
Customer lifetime value, often shortened to CLV or LTV, is the total a typical customer brings in over the whole time they buy from you. A coffee shop regular, a salon client, a gym member and a software subscriber are each worth far more than their first transaction, and knowing how much more changes decisions about marketing spend, loyalty offers and customer service.
This calculator handles both common models. For repeat-purchase businesses it multiplies average spend by purchases per year and years retained. For subscriptions and memberships it divides monthly revenue by monthly churn, the share of customers who cancel each month. Both are then multiplied by your gross margin to give lifetime gross profit, and compared with your acquisition cost if you enter it.
The tool is free and runs in your browser. It comes from Neweb, the AI website builder for small businesses (free plan, paid plans from $9/month billed yearly, $19 month-to-month). A website that makes rebooking and reordering easy is one of the simplest ways to raise the number this tool calculates.
How to use the customer lifetime value calculator
Choose your model: repeat purchases or subscription, and your currency.
For repeat purchases, enter the average spend, purchases per year and years a customer stays. For subscriptions, enter monthly revenue per customer and monthly churn.
Enter your gross margin. If you do not know it, the profit margin calculator works it out.
Optionally add your cost to acquire a customer: marketing spend divided by new customers in the same period.
Click Calculate CLV to see lifetime revenue, lifetime gross profit, the CLV to acquisition cost ratio and the payback period.
Why this matters for your business
It tells you what a customer is worth spending to win. If a client is worth $648 in gross profit, paying $60 in ads to win one is a bargain, even though it looks expensive against a $60 first visit.
Retention is often cheaper than acquisition. Adding one year to the average customer lifetime raises CLV as much as a big increase in new customers, usually for far less spend: reminders, rebooking links and good service.
It helps you pick which customers to target. Running the numbers per service or per channel often shows that one group is worth several times another.
Tips for better results
- Use gross profit, not revenue, when comparing with acquisition cost; revenue flatters the ratio.
- A CLV to acquisition cost ratio around 3 : 1 is a widely quoted rule of thumb for healthy growth; below 1 : 1 each new customer loses money.
- Estimate lifetime from your own records: how many customers from two or three years ago are still buying?
- Small changes in churn matter: cutting monthly churn from 5 to 4 percent lifts the average lifetime from 20 to 25 months.
- Make repeat purchases easy: an online booking link, a reorder button or a WhatsApp link with a pre-filled message from the WhatsApp link generator.
- Revisit the figure yearly; prices, margins and retention all drift.
Example
A real-world walkthrough
A hair salon in Dublin finds that a typical client spends €60 a visit, comes in six times a year and stays for about three years. With a 60 percent gross margin after products and stylist commission, the calculator shows €1,080 of lifetime revenue and €648 of lifetime gross profit.
The salon spends about €1,200 a month on ads and wins ten new clients, an acquisition cost of €120. The CLV to acquisition cost ratio is 5.4 : 1 and the cost is recovered in about 6.7 months. The owner decides she can afford to raise the ad budget, and adds an online rebooking link to every receipt to stretch the three-year lifetime.
Frequently asked questions
How do you calculate customer lifetime value?
For repeat-purchase businesses: average purchase value × purchases per year × years retained, then multiply by gross margin to get lifetime gross profit. For subscriptions: average monthly revenue per customer ÷ monthly churn rate, then multiply by gross margin. For example, $49 a month at 4 percent churn gives an average lifetime of 25 months and $1,225 of revenue; at an 80 percent margin the CLV is $980.
What is the difference between CLV and LTV?
None in practice. Customer lifetime value (CLV), lifetime value (LTV) and customer LTV all describe the same idea. Some teams use LTV for revenue and CLV for profit, so always state which one you mean. This calculator shows both: lifetime revenue and lifetime gross profit.
What is a good CLV to CAC ratio?
A ratio of about 3 : 1, where a customer is worth three times what it cost to acquire them in gross profit, is a commonly quoted target. Below 1 : 1 you lose money on each new customer. Well above 5 : 1 can mean you are under-investing in marketing and growing slower than you could. Treat these as rules of thumb; cash flow and payback time matter just as much for a small business.
How do I find my churn rate?
Divide the number of customers who cancelled during a month by the number you had at the start of that month, and multiply by 100. If you started with 200 members and 8 left, monthly churn is 4 percent. Average it over several months, because one month is noisy. For repeat-purchase businesses without subscriptions, estimate how long a typical customer keeps coming back instead.
Does this calculator discount future revenue?
No. It gives a simple undiscounted estimate, which is the standard quick version and is fine for comparing marketing options and setting budgets. Finance teams sometimes apply a discount rate to reflect that money in three years is worth less than money today; for lifetimes under three or four years at normal interest rates the difference is modest.
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