Skip to main content
AI Biz Hub
Menu

Startup

Monthly Burn Rate Calculator

Get a clear picture of where cash goes — net burn rate from category buckets with runway and annual projection.

Your numbers

Start from an example

$
$
$
$
$
$
$

Result

Status: in range.Net burn
$23,000$/mo
Gross burn
$43,000
Status: in range.Runway
21.74 mo
Annual net burn
$276,000

Spend by category

Payroll
30,000
Facilities
5,000
Technology
3,000
Marketing
5,000

General business information, not legal, tax or financial advice. The result comes only from your inputs and the published method. How we check our numbers.

How to use it

  1. Enter your cash on hand, your monthly revenue, and your monthly costs in five buckets: payroll, facilities, technology, marketing, and other. Sort honestly (contractors with payroll, software with technology, rent with facilities) because the category breakdown is what turns a single burn number into an actionable one. Include everything that leaves the account each month; annualised contracts, payroll taxes and forgotten tool subscriptions are easy to miss.
  2. Read gross burn (total expenses), net burn (gross minus revenue), runway in months, annualised burn, and the per-category breakdown with each category's share of spend. Gross burn tells you the size of the machine; net burn tells you how fast cash actually drains. If revenue covers expenses, runway shows as effectively unlimited, which is the signal that you have crossed into self-sustaining territory.
  3. Use the category breakdown to find where the money actually goes rather than where you assume it goes. If payroll is 70% of burn, no amount of cancelling small software subscriptions will move runway meaningfully, and the real lever is headcount or revenue. A category that has crept above its expected share is usually the first place to look before a broad cost-cutting exercise.
  4. Translate net burn into decisions by testing what a 10% revenue increase does to runway versus a 10% expense cut. Often the expense cut is faster and more certain than the revenue bet, but this tool lets you compare them in months rather than arguing about them in the abstract. Watch for the runway figure crossing below six months: a fundraise or restructuring should be under way well before that.
  5. Re-run monthly from your actual close data and after any hire, contract, or pricing change. Track net burn and runway as a trend, because a single bad month can pull the cash-out date forward sharply. Pair this with the burn multiple tool to check whether the spend is buying efficient growth and the startup runway tool to model growth and burn-cut scenarios together.
All articles

More in Bootstrapped growth

See when cash runs out, what you need to break even, and how to grow without funding.

The Bootstrapped growth guide

Use it from code

The same calculation as a JavaScript module you can import. It runs where you import it, with no request, key or rate limit.

import { compute } from "https://aibizhub.io/engines/monthly-burn-rate-calculator.js";

Input and output contract, TypeScript types and the guide for agents.