DTC Growth Score & LTV
Enter your unit economics and get your customer lifetime value, your LTV to CAC ratio, how fast you recover acquisition cost, and a single 0 to 100 score that tells you whether your DTC brand is built to scale profitably.
Your numbers
Use real figures where you have them. Everything updates live.
Retention — sharpens the score
Results
Know your LTV ceiling? The next question is whether your store and retention actually earn it.
Book a growth auditWhat is a DTC Growth Score?
A DTC Growth Score is a single 0 to 100 rating of how profitably a direct-to-consumer brand can grow, built from four numbers that decide it: your LTV to CAC ratio, your gross margin, your repeat purchase rate, and how many months it takes to earn back acquisition cost. This calculator scores each one against DTC benchmarks, weights them, and gives you one figure plus a letter grade. A high score means you can spend to acquire customers and come out ahead. A low score means growth burns cash, and the breakdown shows you which of the four is dragging it down.
How customer lifetime value is calculated
Lifetime value here is gross profit, not revenue. The formula is average order value times gross margin, times orders per year, times customer lifespan in years. So an $85 order at 55% margin, bought 2.2 times a year for 2.5 years, is worth about $257 in gross profit per customer. Revenue-based LTV numbers look bigger, but they overstate what a customer is actually worth, because they ignore the cost of the product you shipped.
What is a good LTV to CAC ratio?
The widely used benchmark is 3 to 1. Below roughly 1 to 1 you lose money on every customer you buy. Between 1 and 3 you make money but you may be underinvesting or running thin. At 3 to 1 the economics are healthy, and much above 4 or 5 to 1 often means you are underspending on acquisition and leaving growth on the table.
The four things the score measures
- LTV to CAC ratio is the heaviest weight, because it decides whether acquisition makes or loses money.
- Gross margin sets the ceiling on everything, since every dollar of LTV starts as margin.
- Repeat purchase rate is the DTC growth engine, because repeat orders add value you already paid to acquire.
- CAC payback captures cash reality, since a brand that waits a year to recover CAC grows slower than its ratio suggests.