Cost per lead calculator
CPL per channel, weighted properly — and the ceiling your close rate puts on it.
Total spend ÷ total leads, weighted by spend — not the average of the rows above.
Runs entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored. Updated 2026-09-30.
Cost per lead is spend divided by leads: CPL = spend ÷ leads. $6,000 that produced 179 leads is a cost per lead of about $33.52.
The number only means something next to two others: how many leads become customers, and what a customer is worth. A $90 lead that closes at 10% is cheaper than a $30 lead that closes at 2%. The table below gives CPL per channel and the spend-weighted total; the panel under it turns your close rate and profit per customer into the highest CPL that still pays, and shows the customer acquisition cost your current CPL implies.
CPL = marketing spend ÷ leads
A cheap lead is not a cheap customer
In the seed numbers Meta produces leads at $20 and Google Ads at $50. If Meta's leads close at 2% and Google's at 10%, the customers cost $1,000 and $500: the channel with the cheaper lead is twice as expensive per customer. Cost per lead ranks channels correctly only when their leads close at similar rates, which is rare across channels and common within one.
So track the close rate per channel, and judge channels on cost per customer — the CAC calculator does that from spend and customers directly.
Define the lead before you count it
A form fill, a demo request and a newsletter signup are all "leads" in some ad accounts, and they are worth very different amounts. Mixing them lowers CPL and makes it meaningless. Count one kind of lead per metric, and if the ad platform's conversion action counts several, separate them before comparing channels.
Platform-reported leads also depend on attribution settings, and two platforms can claim the same lead. The CRM's count of leads by source, each counted once, is the one to divide by when you compare channels.
CPL, CPA and CAC
CPL is a special case of cost per acquisition where the conversion is a lead; the CPA calculator covers the general case. CAC sits at the end of the funnel: it is CPL divided by the lead-to-customer rate, plus whatever sales costs you choose to include. The second panel above makes that step: at $33.52 per lead and an 8% close rate, each customer costs about $419 in media.
Computing this from your own accounts
Every calculator on this page takes numbers you typed. The version that keeps working is the one that reads them from the accounts themselves — which is what TableBI is: connect Google Ads, Meta Ads, GA4 or Search Console once, and cpa() becomes a macro you can query from your terminal.
# connect once, then the metric is a standing query tablebi connect google_ads tablebi connect meta_ads # beta: your own or test ad accounts tablebi ask "WITH w AS (SELECT MAX(date) AS anchor FROM metrics) SELECT platform, cpa(SUM(cost), SUM(conversions)) AS cpa FROM metrics, w WHERE date > w.anchor - 30 GROUP BY platform ORDER BY cpa DESC" # pin the answer to a URL that refreshes itself tablebi pin --title "cost per lead calculator by channel" → https://you.tablebi.com/d/dsh_…
The pinned answer is a live URL that refreshes on its own — here is one running now. No hosted model does the reasoning; your own Claude Code or Codex drives the CLI, which is why there is no inference bill attached to it.
Questions people ask about cost per lead calculators
How do I calculate cost per lead?
Divide spend by the number of leads over the same period. $6,000 that produced 179 leads is a cost per lead of about $33.52.
What is a good cost per lead?
One below your break-even CPL: lead-to-customer rate times gross profit per customer. At an 8% close rate and $1,200 of gross profit per customer, a lead can cost up to $96 before customers stop paying for themselves.
How do I calculate CPL across several channels?
Add up spend across channels and divide by total leads. Averaging each channel's CPL gives a small channel the same weight as a large one and usually misstates what the budget paid per lead.
What is the difference between CPL and CAC?
CPL is the cost of a lead; CAC is the cost of a paying customer. CAC equals CPL divided by the share of leads that become customers — $33.52 per lead at an 8% close rate is about $419 per customer.
Related calculators
CPA calculator
Cost per acquisition per channel, weighted properly across them, and the target CPA your margin can pay.
Customer acquisition cost calculator
Paid CAC per channel, blended CAC across the business, and what the ratio to LTV says.
Customer lifetime value calculator
CLV on gross margin, not revenue — for stores and for subscriptions — and the acquisition cost it can carry.
Marketing budget calculator
A budget as a share of revenue, next to one built from the customers you need — and the gap between them.
All of them are listed on the free marketing calculators page.