Startup Runway Calculator
Know exactly how long your cash lasts. Enter what's in the bank, your monthly expenses, and any revenue — we'll show your net burn, months of runway, and the month you run out.
Enter your cash and monthly expenses to see your runway.
What is startup runway?
Runway is the number of months your company can keep operating before it runs out of money, assuming your income and spending stay roughly the same. The formula is simple — cash ÷ (monthly expenses − monthly revenue) — but it's the single most important number a founder tracks, because it's the countdown clock behind every hire, every ad spend, and every fundraising decision.
How much runway should you have?
Most investors want to see 12–18 months of runway after a raise so you have time to hit the milestones that unlock the next round. Dipping under six months is a red flag: you're now raising, cutting burn, or growing revenue under pressure. If you're heading into a raise, a longer runway gives you leverage to say no to a bad term sheet.
Extend your runway with free growth
The cheapest way to add runway is to spend less acquiring users. A permanent, dofollow directory listing keeps sending you organic traffic long after launch day — for free. List your startup on Launchory, plan the rest of your spend with our launch budget calculator, and browse finance & fintech tools that help founders manage burn. New here? Start with our startup launch checklist.
Frequently asked questions
What is the exact runway formula this calculator uses?
Runway (months) = cash in bank ÷ net monthly burn, where net monthly burn = monthly expenses − monthly revenue. Example: $250,000 in the bank, $40,000/mo in expenses and $8,000/mo in revenue gives a net burn of $32,000/mo and 250,000 ÷ 32,000 ≈ 7.8 months of runway. If revenue is at or above expenses, net burn is zero or negative and the calculator tells you your runway is effectively unlimited at the current rate — it does not divide by zero or a negative number.
How many months of runway is actually safe before you raise?
Investors generally want to see 12–18 months of runway right after a round closes, and the reason is arithmetic, not superstition: a priced round typically takes 3–6 months from first pitch to wired funds. If you start raising with 6 months left, you can run out of cash mid-process. Start the conversation with 9–12 months on the clock so a slow raise does not become an existential one.
What should I count as "monthly expenses"?
Everything that leaves the bank account every month at a predictable-ish rate: salaries and contractor pay, rent, cloud hosting, SaaS subscriptions, ad spend, and any loan or lease payments. Leave out one-time costs like incorporation or a logo redesign — those belong in a launch budget, not a monthly burn rate. Our launch budget calculator keeps that one-time vs recurring split explicit if you want to build the expenses number from scratch.
Is this a flat snapshot, or does it account for revenue growth?
It is a flat snapshot on purpose: it assumes this month's cash, expenses and revenue hold steady and projects forward from there. That is deliberately conservative for a raise conversation — a real trajectory with growing revenue or step-changes in headcount will move the date, so treat the result as "runway at today's rate," re-check it monthly, and rebuild it after any hire, price increase, or big new contract rather than trusting one calculation for a whole quarter.
What does a "cash-flow positive" result mean?
It means your monthly revenue is equal to or greater than your monthly expenses, so net burn is zero or negative — you are not spending down the bank account at all. The calculator reports this as effectively unlimited runway at the current rate rather than showing a months figure, since dividing cash by a burn of zero or less has no meaningful answer.
How much do I need to raise to get to 18 months of runway?
Amount needed = target months × current net monthly burn, minus whatever cash you already hold. At a $32,000/mo net burn (the example above) and $250,000 already in the bank, reaching 18 months needs 18 × 32,000 = $576,000 total, so the raise itself would need to cover the $326,000 gap. Run your own numbers through the calculator first — burn rate almost always moves in the months between deciding to raise and closing, so use a current figure, not an old one.
Should the out-of-cash date change how I hire?
It should set the outer boundary, not the plan. Every new hire's fully-loaded cost (salary, taxes, benefits, tools) moves next month's expenses number and therefore shortens the runway date the moment they start — plug the new number back into the calculator before you sign an offer, not after, so you know exactly how many months the hire costs you.
Does anything I type here get saved or sent to your servers?
No. This calculator runs entirely in your browser — the cash, expenses and revenue you enter stay in local page state and are never sent to Launchory or anywhere else. Refresh the page and the fields reset; there is nothing to opt out of because nothing was collected.
What is the cheapest way to extend runway without cutting headcount?
Cut spend on acquiring users before you cut people. Free, durable channels — a startup directory listing, guest content, community launches — keep sending traffic without adding to monthly burn, unlike paid ads which stop the moment you stop paying. A verified, dofollow Launchory listing is one concrete example: it is a one-time setup cost of zero dollars, not a recurring line in your budget.