Comprehensive Series A burn rate benchmarks for 2025. Understand burn multiples, efficiency metrics, team scaling, and when to raise Series B.
Series A marks the transition from product-market fit validation to scaling proven business models. Unlike earlier stages where capital efficiency is paramount, Series A companies intentionally increase burn to capture market share, build competitive moats, and race toward Series B metrics. However, the 2025 funding environment demands disciplined scaling—growth with efficiency rather than growth-at-all-costs.
According to Carta's 2024 Series A Report, median monthly burn rates range from $200,000 to $400,000, with best-in-class companies maintaining burn multiples (capital burned per dollar of new ARR) under 2.0x while scaling aggressively. This represents a fundamental shift from 2021, when Series A companies often burned $300K-$600K/month with minimal efficiency scrutiny.
Typical Monthly Burn: $200,000-$350,000
B2B SaaS companies at Series A typically scale to 20-40 employees, balancing product development with aggressive go-to-market investment. The burn breakdown for a typical B2B SaaS Series A company:
Companies on the higher end ($300K-$350K/month) are typically enterprise-focused with field sales teams, solutions engineers, and higher CACs. Lower-burn companies ($200K-$250K) often have product-led growth models with inside sales teams.
Typical Monthly Burn: $250,000-$450,000
Enterprise SaaS requires 40-60% higher burn than SMB SaaS due to field sales teams, solutions engineering, implementation services, and longer sales cycles. A typical enterprise Series A allocates 45-55% of burn to GTM (versus 35-40% for PLG SaaS).
Additional costs include: customer success managers for white-glove onboarding, implementation consultants, partnerships and channel teams, and enterprise marketing (events, ABM, analyst relations).
Typical Monthly Burn: $300,000-$500,000
Consumer companies show wide variance, almost entirely driven by user acquisition costs. Successful consumer Series A companies have typically validated organic growth channels but invest heavily in paid acquisition to accelerate growth.
A consumer Series A burn might include: $100K-$200K/month in paid user acquisition, $80K-$150K/month in engineering and product, $40K-$80K/month in content and community, $30K-$50K/month in operations and analytics.
Social and community products with strong viral coefficients (K-factor above 0.5) burn on the lower end, while transactional consumer apps burn higher to drive frequency.
Typical Monthly Burn: $250,000-$500,000
Marketplace burn rates reflect two-sided acquisition costs and geographic expansion. Smart marketplace operators focus spend on the constrained side (typically supply) while using lower-cost channels for the abundant side.
Burn allocation: $80K-$180K/month on supply-side acquisition and account management, $50K-$100K/month on demand generation, $70K-$120K/month on engineering and product, $30K-$60K/month on operations and trust/safety.
Typical Monthly Burn: $280,000-$500,000
Fintech Series A companies burn higher due to regulatory compliance, fraud prevention, customer acquisition in crowded markets, and larger engineering teams for security and infrastructure.
Typical burn breakdown: $100K-$180K/month on engineering (10-18 engineers including security, backend, compliance automation), $80K-$150K/month on growth and customer acquisition, $30K-$60K/month on compliance, legal, and risk, $40K-$80K/month on operations and support.
Typical Monthly Burn: $300,000-$600,000
AI companies face elevated burn rates from compute costs, specialized ML engineering talent (20-40% salary premiums), and research-intensive product development. According to NFX, AI infrastructure companies should plan for 30-50% higher burn than equivalent SaaS companies.
Unique AI cost drivers: $50K-$150K/month in cloud compute (training, inference, experimentation), $120K-$220K/month in ML engineering talent, $40K-$100K/month in GTM (often technical founders selling to technical buyers).
Typical Monthly Burn: $350,000-$700,000
Hardware Series A companies show the highest burn rates due to manufacturing scale-up, inventory, supply chain, and regulatory compliance. Most hardware companies raise larger Series A rounds ($8M-$15M) specifically to fund these capital-intensive operations.
Cost structure: $120K-$250K/month in engineering (hardware, firmware, software, industrial design), $80K-$200K/month in manufacturing and supply chain, $50K-$120K/month in inventory and tooling, $40K-$80K/month in sales and marketing.
Burn multiple has emerged as the defining efficiency metric for Series A companies in 2025. It measures capital efficiency by dividing net burn by net new ARR.
Burn Multiple = Net Burn / Net New ARR
Example 1: Efficient SaaS Company
Example 2: Inefficient Scaling
The second company burned 60% more capital but generated half the ARR growth, resulting in dramatically worse efficiency that will hurt Series B prospects.
There are only two paths to better burn multiples:
The best companies do both simultaneously—they prune inefficient spend while doubling down on proven growth channels.
Beyond burn multiple, investors scrutinize unit economics:
CAC payback measures how long it takes to recover the cost of acquiring a customer. Companies with sub-12 month paybacks can fund growth from revenue, while 18+ month paybacks require continuous external capital.
LTV:CAC ratios above 5:1 often signal you're leaving growth on the table—you could afford to spend more on customer acquisition and still maintain healthy economics.
Series A companies typically grow from 8-15 employees (post-seed) to 25-50 employees by Series B. The optimal path depends on your primary constraint:
Target Team Size: 20-35 employees
Target Team Size: 25-45 employees
Target Team Size: 25-40 employees
Median Burn: $300,000-$500,000/month
SF maintains the highest Series A burn rates. A 30-person team in SF burns $220K-$350K in salaries alone (fully loaded with benefits and taxes), versus $150K-$250K for equivalent remote or Tier 2 market teams.
Median Burn: $280,000-$450,000/month
NYC tracks 5-15% below SF, with similar GTM costs but slightly lower engineering salaries in non-fintech sectors.
Median Burn: $220,000-$380,000/month
Tier 2 markets offer 20-30% lower burn for equivalent headcount and traction, extending runway and improving capital efficiency metrics.
Median Burn: $180,000-$320,000/month
Remote-first Series A companies can scale to 30-40 employees while maintaining burn rates equivalent to 20-25 person SF teams. This geographic arbitrage translates directly to better burn multiples and longer runways.
Series A companies should target 18-24 month runways, with 20-24 months considered best practice in 2025.
Reaching Series B metrics ($5M-$10M ARR, strong growth, proven go-to-market) takes 12-18 months for most companies. Series B fundraising adds another 4-6 months, meaning you should start raising with 10-12 months of runway remaining.
Twenty-four month runways provide buffer for market changes, go-to-market experimentation, and timing optimization. Companies that raise Series B with 12+ months of remaining runway achieve significantly better terms than those raising with under 6 months.
Runway (Months) = (Total Series A Capital × 0.94) ÷ Average Monthly Burn
The 0.94 multiplier accounts for one-time expenses (legal, executive recruiting, office setup) consuming approximately 6% of the round.
Note that burn will likely start at $200K-$250K and ramp to $350K-$400K as you hire, averaging around $313K.
If burn is growing 25%/quarter but ARR is only growing 15%/quarter, you're scaling costs without scaling revenue—a recipe for poor burn multiples and Series B challenges.
Burn multiples above 3.0x indicate fundamental inefficiency. You're burning $3+ to generate $1 of new ARR, which is unsustainable without dramatic improvement.
If you have fewer than 12 months of cash remaining and haven't started Series B fundraising, you're in danger zone. Start fundraising immediately or implement cost reductions to extend runway.
If CAC is increasing quarter-over-quarter or LTV is decreasing (due to churn), your unit economics are moving the wrong direction. Scaling spend on broken unit economics accelerates failure.
Only scale headcount in GTM functions where you've proven repeatable success. Don't hire five SDRs until you've proven one SDR can hit quota consistently.
Allocate budgets by function (Engineering, Sales, Marketing) with clear ROI expectations. Marketing should know their allowable CAC; Sales should know their quota targets.
Track actual burn against budgeted burn monthly. Variance of more than 10% requires explanation and potentially course correction.
Improve conversion rates, reduce CAC, and increase ACV before hiring more salespeople or increasing ad spend. A 20% improvement in conversion can have the same impact as doubling your marketing budget.
Fractional CFOs, CMOs, or CROs cost 50-70% less than full-time executives and provide strategic value without burning cash on full compensation packages until you reach appropriate scale.
Start Series B fundraising when you hit these milestones:
Target Burn: $200K-$300K/month
Runway: 18-24 months
Smaller Series A rounds require disciplined burn management. Plan for 20-30 employees, focus on capital-efficient growth, and target $5M-$7M ARR for Series B.
Target Burn: $280K-$380K/month
Runway: 20-24 months
Standard Series A sizing in 2025. Scale to 30-40 employees, invest in proven growth channels, target $7M-$10M ARR for Series B.
Target Burn: $350K-$550K/month
Runway: 24-30 months
Larger Series A rounds support aggressive scaling in winner-take-all markets. Build 40-60 person teams, dominate go-to-market, target $10M-$15M ARR for Series B.
Use ICanPitch's burn multiple and efficiency calculator to model different scaling scenarios, benchmark your metrics against top performers, and plan your path to Series B with confidence. Get data-driven insights on optimal burn rates, team composition, and fundraising timing for your specific market and stage.
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