B
Evidence Grade B
Graded
accuracy verified by the review judge
Safe to Cite
Current
5
5 -- cac payback period for Bootstrapped SaaS companies (2026)
Median CAC payback period for bootstrapped/pre-revenue SaaS companies is 4.8 months.
Attribution:
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Lighthouse Research Team
Last verified:
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Source verified
Evidence graded
Value
5
Unit
Duration Months
Data Vintage
2026
Entity
Evidence Quality
B
Strong, reliable evidence
Sourced from a well-regarded research firm or industry leader with transparent methodology and a reasonably large sample.
Single source - not yet corroborated
Score breakdown
Extraction
75
Source Trust
60
Citation Chain
20
Independence
30
Methodology
45
Freshness
95
Source
Benchmarkit
Primary
Tier B
https://foundrycro.com/blog/cac-payback-benchmarks-2026/ ↗
Source Article
CAC Payback Period Benchmarks 2026 + Free Multi-Method Calculator | Foundry CRO
The short version:
- The "good CAC payback equals under 12 months" rule is incomplete. The right target depends on your cost of capital, not a universal benchmark. Bootstrapped companies, venture-backed startups, and public SaaS each have different thresholds.
- Median B2B SaaS CAC payback is 15 to …
Original Research
Benchmarkit
· Original study ↗
Methodology
Stage benchmark from Benchmarkit 2025 SaaS Benchmarks / SaaS Capital Research
Methodology documented
Segmentation
Industrymarketing
Cite this stat
Plain Text
Bootstrapped SaaS companies: 5 cac payback period. Source: Benchmarkit (2026). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/bootstrapped-cac-payback-2026
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<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/bootstrapped-cac-payback-2026" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>5</strong> -- cac payback period for Bootstrapped SaaS companies<br><small>Source: Benchmarkit (2026) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/bootstrapped-cac-payback-2026" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>
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