Calculate Member LTV in Seconds

03/ tenure and the ratio

Tenure is the inverse of churn.

That average tenure is the inverse of your churn rate, so a 12.5% annual churn rate implies an average membership length of eight years.

The 2026 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report puts the sector median renewal rate at 82%.

Subtract the cost to acquire a member and you have net lifetime value.

Divide gross lifetime value by acquisition cost and you get the LTV-to-acquisition ratio, a quick health check that membership specialists put at a minimum of 3:1: GlueUp’s published guidance rather than a research finding.

Below that, acquisition is eating too much of each member’s value; comfortably above it, you can usually afford to grow faster.

05/ a worked example

These are not abstract figures.

The membership sector’s most-cited worked example comes from Marketing General’s Tony Rossell. An average member pays roughly $175 in dues at an 80% renewal rate (a five-year tenure), plus about $50 a year in non-dues spend.

That gives a lifetime value near $1,125, against an average acquisition cost of just $24.

That same study found per-member ancillary spend sits at roughly a fifth of total member value, which is why we set this tool’s ancillary default conservatively rather than at the much larger organisation-level non-dues share of 40–60%.

You can pressure-test the other side of the equation with our churn cost calculator and acquisition vs retention comparator.

07/ how we calculate this

How we calculate this.

Average tenure is the inverse of churn (1 ÷ churn rate). We treat an LTV:CAC ratio of 3:1 as the minimum healthy benchmark, in line with membership-sector guidance — not just generic SaaS rules of thumb.

09/ interpret the result

Revenue value is different from profit

This member LTV calculator adds subscription and ancillary revenue across the entered tenure. Its net figure then subtracts acquisition cost. It does not subtract the cost of providing the membership, events, training or support. Treat the result as lifetime revenue after acquisition cost, rather than the surplus available to spend.

The notes to Gupta and colleagues’ CLV research describe margins across products and distinguish an as-yet-to-be-acquired customer, whose acquisition cost is included, from an existing customer’s remaining value. This research concerns customer-value modelling. It does not supply a membership-sector margin or endorse a particular acquisition budget.

For a fictional membership with £300 annual revenue, five years of tenure and £150 acquisition cost, the calculator gives £1,500 gross lifetime revenue and £1,350 after acquisition cost. If delivering the membership costs £100 per year, a separate contribution calculation is (£300 − £100) × 5 − £150 = £850.