Burn Rate Calculator

Gross Burn Rate is simply Monthly Expenses on its own — total cash going out regardless of revenue. Net Burn Rate subtracts Monthly Revenue from that figure, so it reflects the actual pace at which cash reserves are shrinking. A company with high expenses but strong revenue can have a low or even negative net burn rate (meaning it's cash-flow positive) while still having a high gross burn rate.

That simple division is only accurate when revenue and expenses stay flat month over month, which is rarely true for a growing company. This calculator instead projects cash forward 36 months, compounding Monthly Revenue Growth and Monthly Expense Growth each month, so a startup whose revenue is growing faster than its expenses will show meaningfully more runway than the flat-rate division would suggest — and the reverse is true if expenses are outgrowing revenue.

Once Monthly Revenue reaches or exceeds Monthly Expenses, Status switches to "Profitable," Net Burn Rate falls to zero or below (meaning cash is no longer being drawn down, or is actually growing), and Months to Breakeven reports zero since breakeven has already been reached. Runway effectively becomes unbounded in that case, since there's no ongoing net cash drain to exhaust the balance.

It's a projection built by compounding your entered Monthly Revenue Growth rate forward until revenue catches up to (currently growing) expenses, so it's only as reliable as those two growth-rate assumptions holding steady for months or years at a stretch — which real companies rarely do. Treat it as a planning scenario to stress-test against optimistic and conservative growth assumptions, not a forecast to raise money on by itself.