Average Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) by Industry in 2026
Customer acquisition cost varies by more than 13x across industries — from $86 for B2B eCommerce to $1,143 for Higher Education, and from $66 for B2C eCommerce to $591.50 for Aviation, according to First Page Sage’s B2B CAC benchmark report and its B2C companion report, both last updated in 2026. The spread comes down to sales cycle length, number of stakeholders, and how regulated the buying process is — and it’s a useful reality check for any company benchmarking its own acquisition spend against a generic industry number.
B2B Customer Acquisition Cost by Industry
First Page Sage’s B2B dataset draws on its own client accounts from January 2022 through August 2025, split into organic CAC (SEO and organic social) and inorganic CAC (PPC/SEM and paid social), combined at a 75% organic / 25% inorganic weighting:
| Industry | Organic CAC | Inorganic CAC | Combined CAC |
| eCommerce | $87 | $81 | $86 |
| Pharmaceutical | $196 | $160 | $187 |
| Construction | $212 | $486 | $281 |
| Entertainment | $190 | $468 | $260 |
| HVAC Services | $211 | $549 | $296 |
| Solar Energy | $235 | $707 | $353 |
| Cybersecurity | $345 | $512 | $387 |
| Environmental Services | $229 | $761 | $362 |
| PCB Design & Manufacturing | $330 | $658 | $412 |
| IT & Managed Services | $325 | $840 | $454 |
| Transportation & Logistics | $436 | $732 | $510 |
| Engineering | $459 | $672 | $512 |
| Medical Device | $501 | $755 | $565 |
| Business Consulting | $410 | $901 | $533 |
| Automotive | $491 | $893 | $592 |
| Commercial Insurance | $590 | $600 | $593 |
| Biotech | $532 | $855 | $613 |
| Aerospace & Defense | $526 | $918 | $624 |
| Aviation | $588 | $967 | $683 |
| Software Development | $680 | $841 | $720 |
| Manufacturing | $662 | $905 | $723 |
| Legal Services | $584 | $1,245 | $749 |
| Oil & Gas | $710 | $1,003 | $783 |
| Financial Services | $644 | $1,202 | $784 |
| Real Estate | $660 | $1,185 | $791 |
| Education | $862 | $1,985 | $1,143 |
B2B SaaS is tracked separately at a combined CAC of $239 (organic $205 / paid $341) across 29 SaaS sub-industries First Page Sage covers in a dedicated report. Source: First Page Sage, B2B CAC by Industry, last updated January 26, 2026.
B2C Customer Acquisition Cost by Industry
The consumer-facing dataset draws on 103 agency B2C clients from 2021–2025:
| Industry | Organic CAC | Paid CAC | Combined CAC |
| eCommerce | $64 | $68 | $66 |
| CBD | $87 | $72 | $79.50 |
| Entertainment | $82 | $106 | $94 |
| HVAC Services | $83 | $98 | $90.50 |
| Electrical Contractors | $98 | $121 | $109.50 |
| Home Services | $90 | $116 | $103 |
| Automotive | $178 | $234 | $206 |
| Medical Device | $131 | $126 | $128.50 |
| Medical Practices | $120 | $176 | $148 |
| Financial Services | $146 | $173 | $159.50 |
| SaaS | $135 | $197 | $166 |
| Real Estate | $103 | $226 | $164.50 |
| Higher Education & College | $134 | $177 | $155.50 |
| Home Builders | $151 | $197 | $174 |
| Construction | $201 | $294 | $247.50 |
| Solar Energy | $206 | $288 | $247 |
| Hotels & Resorts | $208 | $247 | $227.50 |
| Legal Services | $189 | $457 | $323 |
| Addiction Treatment | $357 | $506 | $431.50 |
| Aviation | $475 | $708 | $591.50 |
Source: First Page Sage, B2C CAC by Industry, last updated July 3, 2025.
CAC Rises 10x or More From SMB to Enterprise
Industry is only one axis of variation — customer segment size within the same industry moves CAC just as dramatically. In B2B SaaS specifically, CAC increases by more than 10x moving from an SMB buyer to an enterprise buyer, driven by more stakeholders per deal, longer procurement cycles, and security/compliance review requirements that simply don’t exist at the SMB level:
| Customer Segment | Typical B2B SaaS CAC |
| SMB | $200 – $700 |
| Mid-Market | $1,200 – $2,000 |
| Enterprise (>$100K ACV) | $5,000 – $250,000+ |
This is a big part of why a single “SaaS CAC” figure is close to meaningless without knowing which segment a company actually sells into — a company moving upmarket from SMB to mid-market should expect CAC to roughly double to triple before any change in channel mix, purely as a function of deal complexity.
Organic Acquisition Is Cheaper Almost Everywhere
Across both datasets, organic CAC is lower than paid CAC in nearly every industry — First Page Sage calls this “nearly always” the case. The gap is smallest in commoditized, high-intent categories like eCommerce (B2B: $87 organic vs. $81 paid — one of the few categories where paid is actually cheaper) and largest in regulated or high-consideration categories: B2C Legal Services runs $189 organic versus $457 paid (2.4x), and B2B Education runs $862 organic versus $1,985 paid (2.3x). The pattern suggests that categories with long research phases and high-stakes decisions reward content and organic search investment more than they reward paid acquisition — buyers self-educate before they’re willing to click an ad. It also means a channel mix decision has a direct, measurable cost consequence: shifting budget from paid to organic in a high-consideration category is one of the few CAC-reduction levers with data behind it rather than just intuition.
What Actually Drives the 13x Spread
Three factors explain most of the variation in this data. Sales cycle length and stakeholder count push costs up in Education ($1,143), Real Estate ($791), and Financial Services ($784) — all categories with multiple decision-makers and long consideration windows. Regulatory complexity adds a further premium in Legal Services ($749) and Financial Services, where compliance and due diligence extend the sales process regardless of marketing spend. On the low end, high transaction volume and short consideration windows keep eCommerce, Pharmaceutical, and CBD acquisition costs down — these are categories where the buying decision is fast and largely price- or availability-driven rather than trust-driven. Comparing B2B and B2C CAC for the same industry is also instructive: B2C SaaS runs $166 combined versus B2B SaaS at $239, and B2C Real Estate runs $164.50 versus B2B Real Estate at $791 — a reminder that “SaaS CAC” or “Real Estate CAC” in isolation is close to meaningless without knowing which buyer you’re actually acquiring.
A Methodology Caveat Worth Reading
This is the most-cited CAC-by-industry dataset in marketing, republished across dozens of sites, so it’s worth being clear about what it actually measures. It comes from one agency’s own client base rather than a random or representative sample of each industry, it’s weighted 75% organic to 25% inorganic — which will understate CAC for companies that lean more heavily on paid channels than First Page Sage’s typical client — and it excludes email marketing and event-driven acquisition entirely. Treat these numbers as a directionally useful benchmark for cross-industry comparison, not as a precise number to plug into your own unit economics without adjusting for your channel mix.
Where This Leaves Companies Deciding How to Spend
Two practical reads follow from this data. First, a CAC number only means something next to your own numbers on the same channel mix — a company running 80% paid media shouldn’t benchmark itself against a dataset weighted 75% organic, or it will look artificially expensive. Second, the industries with the widest organic-versus-paid gap (Education, Legal Services, Financial Services) are exactly the categories where an outside specialist’s ability to build durable organic assets — content, SEO, reputation — compounds into a real cost advantage over time, rather than just buying the next click. That’s a different conversation than “which agency runs the cheapest ads,” and it’s the one this data actually supports.
Sources
- First Page Sage — Average Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) by Industry: B2B Edition, last updated January 26, 2026.
- First Page Sage — Average Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) by Industry: B2C Edition, last updated July 3, 2025.
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