I built a free LTV (life time value) calculator that doesn't lie to you about your unit economics

Most free LTV calculators use the simple formula: ARPU (average revenue per user) × average customer lifetime. Plug in $99/mo and 18 months and you get $1,782.

But if your gross margin is 60%, you're only keeping $1,069 of that. The simple formula overstates your LTV by 40%. That's the difference between thinking your LTV:CAC (life time value to customer acquisition cost) ratio is 3:1 (healthy) and realizing it's actually 1.8:1 (losing money).

I kept running into this while building my own SaaS tools, so I built one that does it properly: beyondfolder.com/tools/ltv-calculator

It adjusts for gross margin by default. But it also has an advanced mode that adds:

- Expansion revenue (upsells, seat growth): this changes the math dramatically. At 2% monthly expansion with 5% churn, your effective net churn drops to 3%, which increases average lifetime by 67%.

- NPV-adjusted LTV for longer customer lifetimes where money in year 4 is worth less than money today

- LTV:CAC ratio and CAC payback period

- A scenario that shows what happens if you cut churn by 50%, in actual dollar terms

It also highlights which industry benchmark matches your inputs, so you can see how you compare to your segment.

Fifth free tool I've shipped (also have churn rate, CAC, revenue growth, and client qualification calculators at beyondfolder.com/tools). No signup needed.

If you try it, let me know if anything looks wrong or if there's a metric you'd want added.