Benchmarks > absolute numbers
A $5M business spending $1.9M on marketing sounds like a lot — but at 38% of revenue, it's normal for a growth-stage SaaS. The dollar number is meaningless without the ratio. Use this calculator to convert your P&L into percentages and compare against industry medians from OpenView, SaaS Capital, and KeyBanc surveys.
2026 SaaS benchmarks
Median public SaaS: GM 76%, S&M 41%, R&D 22%, G&A 13%, operating margin −5%. Top quartile: GM 82%, S&M 35%, R&D 25%, G&A 10%, operating margin 18%. The big lever isn't cutting costs — it's expanding gross margin via product mix and lifting NRR.
Related guides
Long-form playbooks on the same topic, written by the RevenueLab editorial team.
10 Common Revenue Modeling Mistakes (And the Sanity Checks That Catch Them)
The ten revenue-model mistakes I see in every founder spreadsheet — confused gross vs net, ignoring churn, fixed conversion rates, missing taxes — and the back-of-envelope checks that catch them in 30 seconds.
Read the guideHow to Use Revenue Calculators Without Fooling Yourself
A practical guide to using online revenue calculators well — what inputs to trust, what defaults to override, when to use a 0.7× safety multiplier, and how to triangulate between three tools instead of trusting one.
Read the guideRevenue Model Glossary: 40 Terms Every Operator Should Know (CPM, RPM, ARPU, LTV, CAC, ROAS…)
Plain-English definitions for the 40 revenue-modeling terms that show up across creator, SaaS, ecommerce, and ads — with the exact formula, a worked example, and the most common misuse for each.
Read the guideFAQ
How do I calculate marketing as a percentage of revenue?
Marketing spend ÷ revenue × 100. SaaS growth stage: 25–45%. Mature SaaS: 12–20%. Ecommerce: 8–18%. Services: 3–8%.
What's a good COGS percentage?
Industry-dependent. SaaS COGS = 15–30% of revenue (mostly hosting + support). Ecommerce 50–70%. Restaurants 28–35% on food + 30% labor.
Why do we use % of revenue instead of dollars?
Percentages normalize across business sizes and over time as you scale. A $2M marketing budget at $5M revenue is dangerous; at $50M it's lean.
How this calculator is built
Independently maintained
Written by Sam Doshi and the RevenueLab editorial team. We don't sell the data feeds this tool is built on.
Sourced from primary data
Benchmarks come from public AdSense / Stripe / IRS disclosures and reader-submitted data — never third-party "$X per view" claims. Full methodology.
Last reviewed
June 2026. We re-check every figure on the platform on a rolling quarterly cycle.
Editorial standards
See our editorial policy and disclaimer. Results are estimates, not advice.