Find out exactly how many months of cash runway you have before your startup runs out of money. Gross burn, net burn, runway, zero date, burn multiple, and default alive/dead, calculated live.
Built for indie SaaS founders, bootstrapped startups, pre-seed, seed, and Series A/B teams. 24-month cash projection, stage-aware benchmarks, multi-currency, and a 9-category expense breakdown so the number is defensible, not a guess.
Numbers update as you type. Net burn = gross burn − monthly revenue. Runway = cash ÷ net burn. The zero date is when cash hits $0 at today's burn.
At your current growth, revenue catches up with expenses before cash runs out.
Use it for board updates, investor decks, fundraising prep, or your own sanity check before payroll posts. Free, instant, and nothing leaves your browser.
Every burn rate calculator in the wild reduces to these six formulas. Get them right, monitor them weekly, and you will never be surprised by your own bank account.
Paul Graham coined "default alive" and "default dead" in 2015. It is the single most important question a startup can answer. The calculator above tells you which state you're in given today's numbers, but understanding the framework matters more than the answer.
Revenue exceeds expenses. Your runway is effectively infinite at today's burn. Reinvest carefully. Premature scaling is how profitable startups become unprofitable.
You're not profitable yet, but at your current growth rate, revenue catches up with expenses before cash runs out. Keep growth steady, don't over-hire, and you're fine.
At your current trajectory, cash runs out before revenue covers expenses. You have three levers: raise capital, accelerate growth, or cut burn. Doing nothing is the bad option.
“If a startup's growth rate continued at the same rate it had been, would the startup be alive when its money ran out?” If yes, you're default alive. If no, default dead. The trap: many startups assume growth will stay constant when it's actually decaying. Pessimistic growth assumptions are the only honest way to use this framework.
Median burn varies 50x across stages. A $5K/month bootstrapped indie and a $2M/month Series B run on the same physics, different absolute numbers. Use the band that matches you.
| Stage | Typical net burn / mo | Target runway | Burn multiple target |
|---|---|---|---|
Bootstrapped indie Solo or 1-3 people, no outside capital | $200.00 – $8,000.00 | 12–18 months | Aim for default alive: burn multiple < 1x or profitable |
Pre-seed Friends + family or accelerator, < $1M raised | $10,000.00 – $50,000.00 | 18–24 months | Burn multiple < 2x, focus on hitting seed milestones |
Seed $1M - $5M raised, finding PMF | $50,000.00 – $150,000.00 | 18–24 months | Burn multiple < 2x, ARR-to-burn ratio improving each quarter |
Series A $5M - $20M raised, scaling GTM | $200,000.00 – $600,000.00 | 18–24 months | Burn multiple < 1.5x, $1M+ ARR, NDR > 100% |
Series B+ $20M+ raised, growth-stage | $500,000.00 – $2,500,000.00 | 24–30 months | Burn multiple < 1x ideal, Rule of 40 above 40 |
Three real-world burn rate scenarios. Plug the inputs into the calculator above to see the math live.
Solo founder, $30K/yr ARR, $1.5K/mo expenses (hosting + tools + LLC accounting). $20K personal cash buffer.
Already profitable. Every dollar of new MRR is margin. Goal: keep burn flat while revenue compounds.
Two founders + one contractor. $400K from Y Combinator. $4K MRR, $35K monthly expenses. Need to hit $40K MRR before next raise.
Default dead at this trajectory. Either raise within 9 months or accelerate growth above 18% MoM to flip to default alive.
Team of 12, $8M Series A in the bank, $125K MRR, $400K monthly expenses, hiring continues.
Healthy runway. Burn multiple of 2.3x is acceptable but trending toward "suspect" territory. Investors will want to see this drop below 2x by Series B.
Once your runway is set, validate the unit economics that decide whether the burn is sustainable.
Everything else worth knowing about burn rate, runway, and the math that decides whether a startup survives.
A burn rate calculator measures how fast a startup is spending its cash. It computes two numbers: gross burn rate (total monthly operating expenses) and net burn rate (gross burn minus monthly revenue). Combined with cash on hand, it tells you exactly how many months of runway you have left and the calendar date when cash hits zero. Founders use it to decide when to fundraise, when to cut costs, and whether they are "default alive" or "default dead" in Paul Graham's framework.
Gross burn rate = total monthly operating expenses (salaries, contractors, hosting, software, marketing, sales, rent, legal, other). Net burn rate = gross burn minus monthly revenue. Cash runway in months = total cash on hand divided by net burn rate. If revenue is greater than expenses, net burn is zero, runway is infinite, and you are profitable.
Gross burn is everything going out the door each month: every dollar of operating expense regardless of revenue. Net burn is the actual cash you lose per month after subtracting incoming revenue. Net burn is the number that matters for runway because it represents the rate your bank balance shrinks. Most VCs and board members want to see both, with net burn driving runway calculations.
Cash runway in months = total cash on hand ÷ monthly net burn rate. If you have $500,000 in the bank and lose $25,000 per month after revenue, your runway is 20 months. If your net burn changes month to month due to growth or one-time costs, model the next 12 to 24 months by projecting revenue forward at your growth rate and subtracting expenses each month, then track when cumulative cash hits zero.
Burn multiple = net burn divided by net new ARR added in the same period. It was popularised by David Sacks and is a Bessemer-favoured efficiency metric. A burn multiple under 1x is amazing (capital-efficient growth). 1x to 2x is good. 2x to 3x is okay. 3x to 4x is suspect. Above 4x is bad: you are burning a lot of cash for very little growth. Late-2025 and 2026 expectations have tightened: top-quartile SaaS startups now target a burn multiple under 1.5x.
Default alive means at your current revenue, growth rate, and expense level, you will become profitable before cash runs out. Default dead means you will run out of cash first. Coined by Paul Graham, it is the single most important question a startup can answer. Bootstrapped and indie founders should aim for default alive within 18 months. VC-backed startups are expected to be default alive within their funded runway window or have a clear plan to fundraise before zero date.
The current consensus given lengthening fundraising cycles is 24 to 30 months for VC-backed startups, 18 to 24 months for seed-stage, and 12 to 18 months minimum for bootstrapped indie SaaS. Once runway drops below 12 months you should be actively fundraising or cutting costs. Below 6 months is the danger zone: VCs will see desperation and offer worse terms.
Every dollar your business spends each month: salaries (founder included if paid), contractor and freelancer payments, hosting and infrastructure (cloud, CDN, third-party APIs), software subscriptions (dev tools, GTM stack, internal apps), marketing spend, sales commissions, office rent and utilities, legal and accounting fees, insurance, equipment, and a buffer for misc operating costs. The calculator splits these into nine categories so nothing gets missed.
Zero date is the calendar date your bank balance hits $0 at your current net burn rate. Your runway in months × 30.4 days from today gives you the date. Zero date is more visceral than "10 months of runway". It tells you exactly when payroll bounces. Investors expect founders to know their zero date down to the month, especially in pitch meetings.
Five proven levers: (1) audit your software stack (most startups run 25+ paid SaaS tools and use 8 of them), (2) right-size hosting (many startups overpay 2-3x for unused capacity on AWS), (3) freeze hiring or convert FTE to contractors, (4) renegotiate contracts and ask vendors for startup discounts, (5) accelerate revenue with pricing increases, expansion to existing accounts, and a stricter ICP. Cutting marketing is usually the wrong first move because it kills future revenue.
For investor decks, board updates, and cap-table purposes: yes, always. Use a market salary even if you are paying yourself less, because anyone evaluating the business will model what it actually costs to run. For personal bootstrapped tracking ("how long can I survive?") many indie founders zero out their own salary and treat runway as personal-cash months. Be explicit which model you are using.
Growth shrinks net burn each month, which extends runway. If you are at $10,000 MRR with 10% MoM growth, in 12 months you are at $31,000 MRR. Your net burn drops dramatically over that window. The 24-month projection chart in this calculator compounds revenue forward at your growth rate so you can see whether revenue catches up with expenses before cash runs out (default alive) or after (default dead).
With compounding revenue: months to break-even = log(monthly expenses ÷ current MRR) ÷ log(1 + monthly growth rate). If you have no growth, break-even is infinite. Only cost cuts or pricing changes will get you there. The calculator shows months to break-even alongside runway months, so you can see whether you reach profitability before zero date.
Benchmark ranges are calibrated against published 2025-2026 data from Pilot.com, Mercury, Carta, OpenView Partners, SaaS Capital, Bessemer State of the Cloud, ChartMogul, Founder Reports, and Y Combinator portfolio aggregates. We split into five stages (bootstrapped indie, pre-seed, seed, Series A, Series B+) because median net burn changes by 10-50x across stages and a single benchmark would be useless.
Yes. No signup, no email gate, no upsell. Built by FoundStep, the project management tool for solo developers and indie founders who want to actually ship products. We make money on FoundStep subscriptions, not on capturing your financial data. Nothing you type in this calculator leaves your browser.
Use your browser print-to-PDF for a board-ready hard copy or screenshot the results panel for slide decks. We deliberately do not store your numbers. There is no account, no database, no analytics on the input fields. If you want a saved budget that updates over time, copy the totals into your accounting tool, Notion, or spreadsheet of choice.
FoundStep is the project management tool that won't let indie devs procrastinate. Validate your idea in 7 questions. Lock your scope. Ship, or kill it.