Mobile app ROAS & CAC calculator
Turn ad spend and funnel conversion rates into CPI, cost per trial, CAC, LTV, ROAS and payback. Nothing leaves your browser.
CPI
$2
Cost per trial
$17
CAC (per paying user)
$48
LTV per subscriber
$52
Projected revenue
$1,092
ROAS
109%
Payback
7.3 months
Break-even CPI
$2.18
Marginal: you recover spend, but with little room for store fees, churn or slower conversion.
Projection, not measurement. Enter your own conversion rates; blended averages hide which campaigns lose money.
How the numbers connect
- Trials = installs × install→trial rate.
- Paying users = trials × trial→paid rate.
- CAC = spend ÷ paying users.
- LTV = revenue per paid month × expected paid months.
- ROAS = paying users × LTV ÷ spend. Payback = CAC ÷ monthly revenue.
The weak link is almost always the middle of the funnel. Two campaigns with the same CPI can differ 3× in CAC because one brings users who abandon onboarding. See the conversion tracking guide and mobile ad attribution.
FAQ
- What is a good ROAS for a subscription app?
- Break-even is 100% over the subscriber lifetime. Most teams want 150%+ so store fees, churn and slow payback do not erase the margin. Judge it per campaign, because a blended number hides losers.
- How is CAC different from CPI?
- CPI divides spend by installs. CAC divides spend by paying subscribers. With a 12% trial rate and 35% trial-to-paid, a $2 CPI becomes roughly a $48 CAC, which is the number that has to be beaten by LTV.
- Which LTV should I use?
- Revenue per paid month after store fees, times the average number of months a subscriber keeps paying. Use observed retention from RevenueCat or your billing data rather than a guess.
- Why does the calculator project revenue instead of measuring it?
- Inputs are assumptions. To measure real ROAS per campaign you need spend, onboarding funnel and revenue joined together, which is what OnRamp does.
Want real ROAS per campaign instead of a projection?
OnRamp joins Apple Search Ads, Google, Meta and TikTok spend with your onboarding funnel and RevenueCat revenue.
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