What’s the difference between UAC and CAC?

UAC is cost per acquired user at the top of the funnel. CAC includes broader sales and overhead to acquire a paying customer.

Which costs should I include in spend?

Include media costs, platform fees, agency or creator fees, and content or production costs for organic channels.

User Acquisition Cost (UAC) Calculator

Q: How do I pick the right benchmarks?

Benchmarks vary by industry and region. Use your historical medians, peer data, or reputable reports, and update the fields in the calculator.

Calculate your channel-level UAC in seconds. Enter your spend and acquired users for each channel, then compare results against editable benchmarks. Use the insights to re-allocate budget, improve landing pages, and reduce acquisition costs with targeted analytics.

What is UAC? User Acquisition Cost is simply cost ÷ new users. Track it by channel to understand where money works hardest. Benchmarks below are placeholders—adjust them for your industry and geography.

Currency

Displayed symbol uses this code.

Channel	Spend	New Users	UAC	Benchmark	Δ vs Benchmark
Paid Search (Google, Bing)	USD		—	USD Per acquired user	—
Paid Social (Facebook, TikTok, etc.)	USD		—	USD Per acquired user	—
Display / Programmatic	USD		—	USD Per acquired user	—
Affiliate / Partnerships	USD		—	USD Per acquired user	—
Influencer / Creator	USD		—	USD Per acquired user	—
Organic Search (SEO)	USD		—	USD Per acquired user	—
Organic Social	USD		—	USD Per acquired user	—
Referrals	USD		—	USD Per acquired user	—
Email / CRM	USD		—	USD Per acquired user	—
Content Marketing (Blog/Video)	USD		—	USD Per acquired user	—
Total / Blended	—	—	—	—	—

How to Reduce User Acquisition Cost with Analytics

Start by benchmarking each channel, then drill into the outliers. Segment campaigns by audience, creative, and landing page to find pockets of waste. Track the full path to first purchase or signup and compare cohorts over time. When you find low-performing segments, either fix the bottleneck or shift budget to the winners.

Audit tracking: ensure events, UTMs, and conversions are accurate and deduplicated.
Improve landing pages: test headlines, proof, and load speed; measure uplift in CPA/UAC.
Tighten targeting: exclude poor audiences; expand lookalikes where UAC is below benchmark.
Invest in lifecycle: email/CRM can halve blended UAC by lifting retention and referrals.
Re-allocate spend fast: move budget daily toward channels beating their benchmarks.

UAC focuses on cost per acquired user at the top of the funnel. CAC typically includes broader sales/overhead costs to acquire a paying customer. Use UAC for channel optimization; use CAC for unit economics.

Include media costs, platform fees, agency/creator fees, and content/production costs for organic channels. Keep it consistent month to month so trends stay comparable.

Benchmarks vary by industry, geo, and ASP. Use your historical medians, peer data, or reputable reports. Update the fields above or override via shortcode attributes.

Benchmarks shown here are editorial placeholders. Replace with your own or pass overrides through the shortcode.

How to Reduce User Acquisition Cost with Analytics

What’s the difference between UAC and CAC?

Which costs should I include in spend?

How do I pick the “right” benchmarks?