Free Startup Runway Calculator

Last updated: 2026-10-07

Quick answer: Runway is the single most important number in a startup: how many months you can keep operating before the money runs out. This free startup runway calculator goes beyond cash ÷ burn — enter your cash, monthly expenses, and revenue, add optional growth rates, and get your net burn rate, exact runway in months, projected cash-out date, a month-by-month cash projection, and what-if scenarios showing exactly how cuts or growth extend your life. Everything runs in your browser; your financials never leave your device.

Runway is the single most important number in a startup: how many months you can keep operating before the money runs out. This free startup runway calculator goes beyond cash ÷ burn — enter your cash, monthly expenses, and revenue, add optional growth rates, and get your net burn rate, exact runway in months, projected cash-out date, a month-by-month cash projection, and what-if scenarios showing exactly how cuts or growth extend your life. Everything runs in your browser; your financials never leave your device.

How to Use the Startup Runway Calculator

1. Enter your current cash balance — the actual money in the bank, not committed or contracted revenue.
2. Enter your monthly expenses (gross burn): payroll, rent, software, marketing — everything going out.
3. Enter your monthly revenue. Net burn = expenses − revenue, and that's the number that sets your runway.
4. Optional: open 'Growth scenarios' and add monthly expense/revenue growth rates to model hiring plans or compounding growth.
5. Click Calculate Runway: you get net burn, runway in months, your cash-out date, a month-by-month projection, and what-if scenarios.

Why Use Our Startup Runway Calculator?

• Beyond cash ÷ burn — growth-aware projection, not the naive static formula most blog calculators use.
• Cash-out date — your runway translated into an actual calendar month, so the deadline feels real.
• What-if scenarios — see exactly how many months a 10%, 20%, or 30% expense cut buys you, or how much cash you need for 18 months.
• Month-by-month table — watch cash decline (or recover) period by period with growth applied.
• 100% private — runs entirely in your browser; financial numbers never leave your device.

Common Use Cases

• Timing your fundraise: Start raising with 12+ months of runway left — fundraising takes 3–6 months, and negotiating with 4 months left destroys leverage.
• Board and investor updates: Bring one defensible number to the meeting instead of a spreadsheet tab nobody opens. Net burn and runway are what the board actually asks about.
• Hiring decisions: Model a new hire as expense growth: see instantly whether that engineer costs you 2 months of runway or 6.
• Pricing and growth experiments: Test 'what if revenue grows 10%/mo instead of 5%' — compounding revenue is the fastest runway extender there is.
• Indie and bootstrapped founders: No investors, no safety net: knowing your exact cash-out date is the difference between a planned pivot and a panic.

Startup Runway Calculator vs Alternatives

• Spreadsheet models: Flexible and free — but you build the formulas, maintain them, and explain them to every cofounder. This gives the same answers in one click.
• VC blog calculators: Most compute cash ÷ burn and stop. They ignore growth, give no cash-out date, and offer no what-if scenarios — the parts that actually drive decisions.
• Finance platforms (Pilot, Carta, etc.): Excellent for funded companies with a finance function — and priced like it, with onboarding. Overkill for a quick runway check.
• Asking your accountant: Accurate, but slow and expensive for a number you should be checking monthly, not quarterly.

If you have a finance team, use their model — it's built on your real books. For everyone else — founders, operators, indie hackers — this page gives the decision-grade runway number, the cash-out date, and the what-if math in seconds, free.

Frequently Asked Questions