Customer LTV calculator
Three numbers you already have (order value, order frequency, retention) turn into the one number that governs how much you can afford to spend on acquisition. Free, no signup.
Net revenue divided by orders, over the last 12 months.
Total orders divided by unique customers for the same 12 months.
Share of last year's customers who bought again this year.
Revenue minus product and fulfillment costs. Turns revenue LTV into the profit number you can spend against.
Fill in AOV, order frequency and retention to see your LTV.
By the Numbers computes LTV per cohort and per segment from your real order history, no inputs to keep updated. See the customer reports
How to read your result
The headline figure is what one customer is worth across their whole relationship with you. Add gross margin and it becomes the spendable version: the money that survives product cost, shipping and fees. Use the profit number for every budget decision, because revenue LTV will tell you that you can afford a customer you cannot.
Retention is doing the heavy lifting in this formula, which is why small changes to it swing LTV so hard. Moving annual retention from 25 to 35 percent stretches the average customer lifespan by almost half. The practical levers behind that are covered in improving customer retention on Shopify and increasing repeat purchase rate.
One store-wide average also hides a lot. Customers acquired on discount behave nothing like customers acquired on brand search, and a single blended LTV blurs both into a number that describes neither. LTV by cohort is the next step once this figure stops surprising you, and the full method lives in our guide to Shopify customer lifetime value.
When you have the number, take it straight to the LTV to CAC ratio. LTV on its own is trivia. Against acquisition cost it is a budget.
LTV questions, answered
How do you calculate customer lifetime value?
Multiply average order value by how many orders a customer places per year, then by how many years they stay. Lifespan comes from retention: a store keeping 30 percent of customers year to year has an average lifespan of 1 divided by 0.7, about 1.4 years. A $68 AOV at 1.8 orders a year over 1.4 years is roughly $175 of revenue LTV.
Should LTV be revenue or profit?
Profit, whenever you are using it to decide what to spend. Revenue LTV flatters every acquisition decision because it ignores product cost, shipping and payment fees. Multiply revenue LTV by gross margin to get the number you can spend against, which is what this calculator shows once you enter a margin.
What is a good LTV for a Shopify store?
LTV only means something next to acquisition cost. A $90 LTV is excellent at a $20 CAC and fatal at a $120 CAC. Work out LTV first, then check it against what you pay to win a customer before deciding whether it is good.
How is this different from predicted LTV?
This calculator gives you a historical average across all customers, which is enough to size acquisition budgets. Predicted LTV models each cohort separately and projects forward, so a strong January cohort is not dragged down by a weak one. By the Numbers does that continuously from your order history.
LTV is not a spreadsheet exercise.
By the Numbers recalculates lifetime value per cohort and per segment as orders land, so the number in front of you is the current one.
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