Four questions the calculator answers
- Where will I be? Your ARR at the deadline if nothing changes, and how far that is from your target.
- How fast will I get there? The months until you reach your target, and the pipeline and spend you need to get there on time.
- Can I afford to grow? The most you can spend per month while keeping a 3:1 LTV:CAC ratio, compared with what you spend today.
- How much cash will it take? Total acquisition spend until you hit the target at your current pace, and on the plan that hits it on time.
How the calculator works
Each month you add new ARR from your pipeline and lose a share of your existing ARR to net churn. Every result comes from that one rule.
| Metric | Formula | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| New customers | Qualified pipeline × win rate | Customers you add each month at your current pace. |
| Net churn | Monthly churn − monthly expansion | The share of your ARR you actually lose each month. |
| New ARR added | New customers × ARPA × 12 | Gross ARR your acquisition brings in every month. |
| ARR next month | ARR × (1 − net churn) + new ARR added | Churn applies to your whole base, so it grows as you grow. |
| Growth ceiling | New ARR added ÷ net churn | The ARR where churn cancels out everything you add. |
| LTV | ARPA × gross margin ÷ net churn | Gross profit a customer brings in over their lifetime. |
| CAC | Acquisition spend ÷ new customers | What each new customer costs you. |
| CAC payback | CAC ÷ (ARPA × gross margin) | Months until a customer has paid back their acquisition cost. |
| Pipeline needed | The monthly pipeline that lands on your target ARR exactly at the deadline | Solved from the same ARR formula, working backwards. |
| Affordable spend | LTV × new customers ÷ 3 | The most you can spend per month and still keep a 3:1 LTV:CAC. |
Why SaaS growth slows down: the growth ceiling
Churn is a percentage of your whole customer base, so the bigger you get, the more ARR you lose each month. If you add the same amount of new ARR every month, growth slows until what you lose matches what you add. That level is your growth ceiling.
With the default numbers, you add $33,000 of ARR a month and lose 5% of your base to net churn, so ARR can never pass $660,000. A $500,000 target is reachable, but it takes just over 12 months because growth has already started to slow. Cutting net churn to 4% raises the ceiling to $825,000 and gets you there in under 9 months instead.
How to reach your ARR target faster
- More qualified pipeline. The most direct lever. Find the channels that fit your motion in our list of 150 ranked acquisition channels.
- Higher win rate. Closing more of the pipeline you already have adds customers without extra spend. Better landing page conversion and sharper targeting both help.
- Lower churn, more expansion. These raise your growth ceiling, which matters more the closer you get to it.
- Cheaper acquisition. A lower cost per opportunity means the same budget buys more pipeline. See our guide to lowering CAC, and check your per-customer numbers with the SaaS unit economics calculator.
Want the full model with scenarios and backsolving? Download the SaaS growth model template for Google Sheets, or see how our SaaS go-to-market team builds the pipeline to hit your number.
