Marketplace model: GMV, take rate and contribution
Buyer cohorts, GMV, take rate, contribution per order. Build GMV from buyer cohorts with retention and frequency by tenure, take it to net revenue through the take rate and incentives, to contribution per order and EBITDA, and judge a buyer’s lifetime value against its acquisition cost.
Built in: Equity research and hedge funds, Venture capital, Product and technology
By Surojit Chakraverti, founder of L3VLUP and an investor running a long-short healthcare and technology equities strategy.
On this subject: marketplace model: gmv, take rate and contribution.Updated 2 October 2026
Who builds it, and for whatThe model an internet analyst builds for a marketplace (food delivery, ride-hailing, travel, resale, local services) and the one a growth or venture investor builds before a round. It answers what subscription metrics cannot: how much of every dollar spent on the platform it keeps, what an order leaves after the costs that come with it, whether buyer cohorts spend more or less as they age, and whether the contribution a buyer brings repays what it cost to acquire them.
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| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Assumptions | |||||||||
| 2 | $m unless stated. Buyers and orders in millions. Annual periods; FY0 is the base year. | |||||||||
| 4 | Year | Unit | FY0 | FY1 | FY2 | FY3 | FY4 | FY5 | Notes | |
| 5 | Year number | # | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | FY0 = 0. Sets cohort tenure and annual growth. | |
| 7 | Buyers | |||||||||
| 8 | New buyers acquired | m buyers | 2.00 | 2.40 | 2.80 | 3.20 | 3.60 | |||
| 9 | Buyer retention, tenure year 2 | % | 50.0% | % of the cohort’s buyers acquired still active. Year 1 = 100%. | ||||||
| 10 | Buyer retention, tenure year 3 | % | 42.0% | |||||||
| 11 | Buyer retention, tenure year 4 | % | 38.0% | |||||||
| 12 | Buyer retention, tenure year 5 | % | 36.0% | |||||||
| 13 | Orders per active buyer, tenure year 1 | orders per buyer | 4.00 | Year acquired; reflects a part year. | ||||||
| 14 | Orders per active buyer, tenure year 2 | orders per buyer | 10.00 | |||||||
| 15 | Orders per active buyer, tenure year 3 | orders per buyer | 12.00 | |||||||
| 16 | Orders per active buyer, tenure year 4 | orders per buyer | 13.50 | |||||||
| 17 | Orders per active buyer, tenure year 5 | orders per buyer | 14.50 | |||||||
| 18 | FY0 base: active buyers | m buyers | 5.00 | Buyers active at the end of FY0. | ||||||
| 19 | FY0 base: annual retention | % | 90.0% | Share of the prior year’s FY0 base buyers still active. | ||||||
| 20 | FY0 base: orders per active buyer | orders per buyer | 15.00 | Annual. | ||||||
| 22 | Basket, take rate and incentives | |||||||||
| 23 | Average order value, FY1 | $ per order | 32.00 | |||||||
| 24 | Average order value growth, annual | % | 2.0% | |||||||
| 25 | Gross take rate | % | 15.0% | Commission charged to sellers, % of GMV. | ||||||
| 26 | Buyer incentives, % of GMV | % | 2.5% | Promotions; deducted from gross commission revenue. | ||||||
| 28 | Variable costs, CAC and fixed costs | |||||||||
| 29 | Payment processing, % of GMV | % | 2.2% | |||||||
| 30 | Refunds, trust and safety, % of GMV | % | 0.5% | |||||||
| 31 | Customer support and operations per order | $ per order | 0.40 | |||||||
| 32 | Customer acquisition cost (CAC) | $ per new buyer | 30.00 | Marketing per new buyer; all marketing is attributed to new buyers. | ||||||
| 33 | Technology, product and G&A, FY1 | $m | 150.0 | Fixed costs. | ||||||
| 34 | Fixed cost growth, annual | % | 5.0% | |||||||
| 35 | Discount rate, buyer LTV | % | 12.0% | Annual; contribution discounted at year end. | ||||||
Select a cell to see its row, its schedule and the type of cell. Font colours: blue for inputs, black for formulas, green for links to other sheets. Scroll sideways to see every period.
Download
Marketplace model: GMV, take rate and contribution: the workbook
Excel workbook with working formulas, no macros and no external links. Work with it above first; it is the same model as the preview.
What the base case says
- GMV, FY5
- $3,863.9m
- Net revenue, FY5
- $483.0m
- Net take rate, FY5
- 12.5%
- Contribution margin, % of GMV, FY5
- 8.6%
- EBITDA, FY5
- $43.7m
- Cohort GMV retention, tenure year 2
- 125.0%
- Payback year (tenure year)
- 3
- Buyer LTV / CAC
- 1.6x
Read from the workbook as served, every input at its default. Periods: FY0, FY1, FY2, FY3, FY4, FY5. The figures are invented and move with whatever you type in.
What this model is
A five-year model (FY1 to FY5) of a two-sided services marketplace, built from annual buyer cohorts: new buyers, retention and order frequency by tenure year.
Orders x average order value gives GMV; gross commission revenue less buyer incentives gives net revenue; variable costs give contribution; marketing and fixed costs give EBITDA.
The Buyer Economics sheet follows one cohort per buyer acquired to show GMV retention, lifetime value against acquisition cost, and payback.
Seats: Equity research and hedge funds, Venture capital, Product and technology.
Careers that do this work: growth equity, venture capital, equity research, corp dev / m&a, bizops / strategy & ops.
How the schedules connect
Every row in the workbook is tagged with the schedule it belongs to; the inspector above shows the tag when you click a row. These are the schedules this model is made of and where each one lives.
Cohort GMV
Buyer cohorts, retention, frequency, orders, GMV
Assumptions, rows 8–20 · Cohorts, rows 6–12 · Cohorts, rows 15–23 · GMV, rows 6–9
Take rate
From GMV to net revenue
Assumptions, rows 23–26 · GMV, rows 12–15
Contribution margin
What an order leaves after the costs it brings
Assumptions, rows 29–34 · Contribution, rows 6–12 · Contribution, rows 15–19
Buyer economics
One cohort: GMV retention, LTV to CAC, payback
Assumptions, row 32 · Assumptions, row 35 · Buyer Economics, rows 6–13 · Buyer Economics, rows 16–19
What you should be able to explain
- Why GMV is not revenue, and why the net take rate after incentives is the number that matters.
- How a cohort’s GMV can grow while its buyer count falls, because the buyers who stay order more often.
- What contribution per order includes (processing, refunds, support) and why marketing and fixed costs sit below it.
- How operating leverage turns a loss-making marketplace profitable: contribution grows with orders while fixed costs grow slowly.
- Why buyer LTV to CAC is measured on contribution, over a stated horizon, not on GMV or revenue.
What a reviewer looks for
- Treating GMV as revenue, or the headline commission as the take rate.
- Booking buyer incentives as marketing, which flatters the take rate.
- Reporting cohort buyer retention without frequency, so a healthy cohort looks like a leaking one.
- LTV on revenue rather than contribution, or over an unlimited horizon.
- A single retention rate for every year of tenure, which hides how buyer behaviour changes as a cohort ages.
Conventions this workbook uses
Stated on the cover sheet too. A model is only as trustworthy as the decisions it tells you it made.
- Annual periods. Buyers acquired in a year are counted as active for the whole year; their tenure-year-1 order frequency reflects joining part-way through it.
- Retention is the share of a cohort’s buyers acquired that is still active in each tenure year (tenure year 1 is the year acquired, at 100%). Frequency is orders per active buyer by tenure year. Their product is orders per buyer acquired; its ratio to tenure year 1 is the cohort’s GMV retention at a constant order value.
- Buyers active at the end of FY0 are carried as one group with a single annual retention rate and order frequency.
- Gross take rate = seller commission / GMV. Net take rate = net revenue / GMV, where net revenue = gross commission revenue - buyer incentives. Incentives are deducted from revenue, not counted as marketing.
- Contribution = net revenue - payment processing - refunds and trust and safety - customer support and operations. Payment processing and refunds are % of GMV; support is a cost per order. Marketing and fixed costs are deducted below contribution.
- Marketing = new buyers x customer acquisition cost (CAC) per new buyer; all marketing is attributed to new buyers.
- Buyer lifetime value (LTV) is contribution per buyer acquired over five tenure years at FY1 order value and margins, discounted at year end at the LTV discount rate, with no value after tenure year 5. Payback is the tenure year in which undiscounted cumulative contribution reaches CAC. LTV, CAC and payback are all on a contribution basis.
Build it yourself
The starter workbook
The cohort build has been cleared: active buyers and orders for each acquisition cohort and the FY0 buyer base on the Cohorts sheet, and orders, average order value and GMV on the GMV sheet. Rebuild it from the Assumptions sheet. The Checks sheet shows when cohort orders sum to total orders.
Blanks: Cohort GMV. Free with any account. Compare with the worked model when you are done: download above.
The path around this model
Understand it, drill it, read the build, then apply it to a real company.
Build · Lab · ~12 min
Marketplace Economics
Turn GMV into net revenue and contribution per order, read a cohort’s GMV retention from retention and frequency, and find the payback year on a buyer.
Build · Lab · ~12 min
Unit Economics
Build an LTV:CAC you could defend under questioning, and answer payback as its own question.
Build · Lab · ~25 min
SQL Cohort Drill
Write the cohort, retention and rolling-active queries interviews ask for, and read each result without misreading it.
Read · Guide · 11 min
SaaS Operating Models: ARR, Sales Capacity, Billings and the Metrics That Follow
Read · Guide · 7 min
Equity Research Interview Questions: The Coverage Mindset
Read · Guide · 11 min
Financial Modelling Best Practices: The Conventions That Make a Model Auditable
Apply · Skill
Company Profile
Build a banker-grade one-pager on any company, fast.
Apply · Skill
Model Audit
Find the errors in a financial model before someone senior does.
Vocabulary: Gross Merchandise Value (GMV), Take Rate, Contribution Margin, Cohort GMV Retention, Two-Sided Marketplace, LTV to CAC.
Questions about this model
What is the difference between GMV and revenue?
GMV (gross merchandise value) is everything buyers spend through the platform. Revenue is the part the marketplace keeps: its commission from sellers less the incentives it pays buyers to win orders. Here the commission (the gross take rate) is 15% of GMV and incentives 2.5%, so the net take rate is 12.5%: $2.4 billion of FY1 GMV is $302 million of net revenue.
How can a cohort’s GMV grow while buyers leave?
Because the buyers who stay order more often. Half of a cohort is still active in its second year, but they order ten times a year instead of four, so the cohort spends 25% more in its second year than its first. That is GMV retention above 100%, the signature of a marketplace that has become a habit.
When does the marketplace make money?
When contribution outgrows marketing and fixed costs. Contribution rises with every order; technology and overheads grow 5% a year. EBITDA is a loss of about $3 million in FY1, turns positive in FY3 and reaches 9% of net revenue by FY5 as fixed costs are spread over more orders.
Is a buyer worth what it costs to acquire?
Only just, at these terms. A buyer costs $30 to acquire and brings $47.52 of discounted contribution over five years, a lifetime value to acquisition cost of 1.6x, repaid on undiscounted contribution in the third year. A marketplace investor would want more, and the levers are frequency, incentives and the cost per new buyer.
What does it cost?
Nothing to preview: the whole workbook is on this page, and a free account works with it online, every formula included. Every starter workbook downloads with a free account. L3VLUP Plus ($4.99/month) keeps one worked model each billing month, yours for good, and L3VLUP Pro ($25/month) keeps every one.
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