Free tool

Cost per lead calculator, with cost per customer too

This free cost per lead calculator divides what you spent by the leads it brought and, if you add the customers you won, shows the cost per customer and the share of leads that bought. Enter the spend in rupees for one channel and one period, such as a month of Meta ads or a Diwali campaign on Google. The sums run in your browser; nothing you enter is saved or sent.

Free, with no sign-up. It runs in your browser: nothing you type is sent or stored.

Ad spend (₹)

Leads

Customers won (optional)

Cost per lead

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Cost per customer

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Leads to customers

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How to use it

Step 1
Enter the spend
Everything you paid for the channel in the period: the ad bill, the marketplace package, the agency's fee. Use rupees, with or without GST, but the same way each time.
Step 2
Enter the leads
The number of enquiries that channel brought in the same period, each counted once.
Step 3
Add the customers won (optional)
How many of those same leads went on to buy. It can't be more than the number of leads.
Step 4
Read the three results
Cost per lead, cost per customer and conversion rate, worked out to two decimal places with Indian digit grouping.

How to calculate cost per lead

Cost per lead is spend divided by leads. Cost per customer, often called cost per acquisition, is the same spend divided by the customers those leads became. Conversion rate is customers divided by leads, times 100. All three only mean something when the spend and the counts cover one channel and one period.

Example: a Diwali campaign on Meta ads cost ₹45,000 and brought 180 leads, so cost per lead is ₹45,000 ÷ 180 = ₹250. Twelve of those leads bought, so cost per customer is ₹45,000 ÷ 12 = ₹3,750, and the conversion rate is 12 ÷ 180 = 6.67%. These figures are invented to show the sums; they are not a benchmark.

Why cost per customer tells you more

Cheap leads are only cheap if some of them buy. Example: in one month a business spends ₹30,000 on Meta ads and gets 200 leads, and puts the month's ₹30,000 share of its IndiaMART package against 60 leads. Meta looks far better at ₹150 a lead against ₹500. But the Meta leads produced 4 customers and the IndiaMART leads 6, so a Meta customer cost ₹7,500 and an IndiaMART customer ₹5,000.

That is why the calculator shows all three numbers together. Run it once for each channel, put the results side by side, and look at cost per customer before you move budget from one to another.

What to count as spend, and what counts as a lead

Spend is whatever it cost to get the enquiry: the ad platform's bill, a marketplace subscription spread across its months, the agency's fee for running the campaign, the printing of flyers. Salaries of the people who follow up belong to the cost of selling, not the cost of a lead, so leave them out. Whatever you decide, write it down so next month's figure is comparable.

A lead is one person or business who enquired, counted once. The buyer who filled in your form and also messaged you on WhatsApp is one lead, not two. Remove duplicates, test entries and spam before you count, or cost per lead will look lower than it really is.

Getting the lead count right in the first place

The spend is usually the easy half of the sum, because it sits on an invoice. The hard half is knowing how many leads each channel actually sent. Enquiries typed in by hand without a source, or captured by a website form that drops the campaign, end up in an "other" pile that no channel gets credit for, and every channel's cost per lead looks worse than it is.

Tag your links with UTM parameters, keep the source on every lead, and close every lead as won or lost. Then the three numbers in this calculator come from records rather than guesses.

Take the lead count from your CRM, not a spreadsheet

DigiPix Flow doesn't hold your ad spend, but it gives you the other half of the sum. Its reports count leads by source over the last 7 days, 30 days, a quarter or a year, from the records your team actually works, and any report exports to CSV.

See CRM reports

Frequently asked questions

What is the formula for cost per lead?

Total spend on a channel in a period, divided by the leads that channel produced in the same period. For example, ₹20,000 spent for 80 leads is ₹250 per lead.

What is a good cost per lead in India?

No single figure holds across businesses. It depends on what you sell, what a customer is worth to you and how many leads it takes to win one. Rather than chase someone else's number, compare your own channels with each other and watch your own figure month by month.

Is cost per lead the same as cost per acquisition?

No. Cost per lead is what each enquiry cost; cost per acquisition, or cost per customer, is what each paying customer cost. Some ad platforms use "acquisition" for any conversion you set up, including a form fill, so check which one a report means.

Should the spend include GST?

Either works as long as you do it the same way every month. Note beside the figure which one you used, so nobody compares a with-GST month against a without-GST one.

What if I don't know how many customers I won yet?

Leave that box empty. The calculator still gives cost per lead, and cost per customer and conversion rate appear once you add a customer count. If your sales take weeks to close, come back once those leads have had time to decide.

Does the calculator save my numbers?

No. The sums are done in your browser and nothing is stored or sent. Write your results down if you want to compare months.