Independent Downtime Cost Research
What does an outage actually cost your business?
An hour of downtime costs the median enterprise $300,000+. This is the calculator the vendors don't want you to build - 8 inputs, real industry data, no lead capture.
Cost of Downtime Right Now
Small Business
$0 ▮
in 0s · Ponemon 2022
Mid-Size Company
$0 ▮
in 0s · Ponemon 2022
Large Enterprise
$0 ▮
in 0s · ITIC 2024
Counters show cost accumulating since page load. Full per-minute benchmarks
Cost of Downtime Calculator
Cost of Downtime Calculator (2026)
8 inputs. Defensible output. Take it to your CFO.
Your Business
Churn risk is the hidden lever; SLA commitments trigger credits; B2B trust erosion
This outage would cost you
Cost Breakdown
Includes 8% regulatory/compliance multiplier for SaaS
Annual SLA Exposure
Expected downtime/year
8.8 hrs
(526 min) at 99.9% SLA
Annual downtime exposure
$78.3K
per year at this rate
Industry Benchmark Comparison
SaaS average (ITIC 2024)
$80.0K/hr
Your calculated rate
$8.9K/hr
Your cost is below the SaaS benchmark - typical for lower revenue density.
SLA credits won't cover this.
See how AWS, Azure, and GCP credit rules work against you.
How we calculate this
Formula: Total = (Lost Revenue + Productivity Loss + Recovery Cost + Reputation Cost) x Compliance Multiplier
Lost Revenue uses your annual revenue divided by hours per year, adjusted by an industry-specific at-risk percentage (e.g., 98% for finance, 65% for SaaS).
Productivity Loss is affected employees x fully-loaded hourly cost x industry productivity-loss percentage.
Recovery Cost is estimated at 8% of direct costs (overtime, vendor escalation, post-mortem labor).
Reputation/Churn Cost is modeled as a percentage of lost revenue based on customer LTV sensitivity by industry.
Sources: ITIC 2024, Uptime Institute 2025, Ponemon 2022. Full methodology.
Cost by Sector
Industry Benchmarks
Common Blind Spots
Why downtime costs more than you think
SLA credits don't cover it
Your AWS SLA credit for a 7-hour outage is 30 cents on a $3/month VM - not your $50,000 revenue loss.
See the mathReputation cost compounds
Customer churn from a public outage costs 3-5x the immediate revenue loss over the following quarter.
Full formulaProductivity loss is silent
Knowledge workers lose 40-60% of effective output during an IT outage - even when systems come back online quickly.
Employee cost modelFrequently Asked