How do you calculate the cost of downtime?

Add lost revenue per hour, lost productivity per hour and recovery costs, then multiply by downtime hours. The calculator does this from your revenue, staff numbers and uptime.

What is the average cost of IT downtime?

It varies enormously by business — from a few hundred to millions per hour. Your own figure, based on revenue and affected staff, is more useful than an industry average.

What are RTO and RPO?

Recovery time objective (RTO) is how quickly a system must be back; recovery point objective (RPO) is how much data you can afford to lose, measured in time.

How much should I spend on preventing downtime?

Compare the yearly saving from higher uptime with the yearly cost of the resilience measures. The calculator shows the saving at your target uptime.

Downtime Cost Calculator — Cost of IT Outage per Hour

Downtime cost calculator: what an hour of outage costs your business

The cost of downtime per hour is lost revenue (revenue per operating hour × the share that stops during an outage) plus lost productivity (affected staff × hourly cost × share of work they cannot do) plus recovery costs. Multiply by expected downtime hours a year for the annual cost. Reputation damage and SLA penalties come on top and are often larger for customer-facing systems.

Free, no sign-up · By Infikey Technologies · Updated 5 October 2026

Use the calculator

Lost revenue per hour

$228

Lost productivity per hour

$1,050

Cost per minute

$21.31

Downtime per year at current uptime

43.8 hours

Annual downtime cost (incl. recovery)

$67,990

Annual cost at target uptime

$13,598

Potential saving per year

$54,392

How this calculator works

Metric	Formula
Lost revenue per hour	`annual revenue ÷ operating hours × revenue affected %`
Lost productivity per hour	`employees affected × hourly cost × work lost %`
Downtime hours per year	`operating hours × (1 − uptime %)`
Annual cost	`cost per hour × downtime hours + recovery cost × incidents`

Worked example

With these inputs:

Currency: USD ($)
Annual revenue: 5,000,000
Revenue that stops during an outage: 40%
Operating hours: 24/7 (8,760 hours a year)
Employees affected: 50
Loaded cost per employee hour: 35
Work they cannot do during an outage: 60%
Recovery cost per incident: 2,000
Current uptime: 99.5%
Incidents per year: 6
Target uptime: 99.9%

Cost per hour of downtime: $1,278. An hour of downtime costs about $1,278. At 99.5% uptime that is about $67,990 a year.

Lost revenue per hour	$228
Lost productivity per hour	$1,050
Cost per minute	$21.31
Downtime per year at current uptime	43.8 hours
Annual downtime cost (incl. recovery)	$67,990
Annual cost at target uptime	$13,598
Potential saving per year	$54,392

Open this example in the calculator

The hidden costs of downtime

Customers who leave for a competitor and do not return.
SLA credits and contractual penalties.
Data loss and the cost of re-entering or restoring it.
Missed deadlines, overtime and staff stress after recovery.
Damage to reputation, reviews and search rankings when the site is unavailable.

How to reduce downtime cost

Detect faster: external uptime monitoring and alerts on what users experience.
Recover faster: tested backups, documented runbooks and clear on-call roles.
Prevent single points of failure: multiple instances across availability zones and managed databases with failover.
Deploy safely: automated tests, staged rollouts and one-click rollback.
Agree recovery targets (RTO and RPO) for each system and test them.

Open this calculator with your numbers

Every option can be set in the web address, so you can bookmark a scenario or send it to a colleague. AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity can use the same parameters to open this calculator with your numbers and the result already on the page.

Parameter	What it sets	Accepted values
`currency`	Currency	one of USD, INR, AED, GBP, EUR
`revenue`	Annual revenue	number from 0 to 100000000000 (in the chosen currency), default 5000000
`revenue_share`	Revenue that stops during an outage	number from 0 to 100 (%), default 40
`hours`	Operating hours	one of 24x7, extended, business
`employees`	Employees affected	number from 0 to 1000000, default 50
`hourly_cost`	Loaded cost per employee hour	number from 0 to 10000 (in the chosen currency), default 35
`productivity_loss`	Work they cannot do during an outage	number from 0 to 100 (%), default 60
`recovery`	Recovery cost per incident	number from 0 to 100000000 (in the chosen currency), default 2000
`uptime`	Current uptime	number from 90 to 99.999 (%), default 99.5
`incidents`	Incidents per year	number from 0 to 1000, default 6
`target_uptime`	Target uptime	number from 90 to 99.999 (%), default 99.9

Example: https://infikeytechnologies.com/tools/downtime-cost-calculator?currency=USD&revenue=3000000&revenue_share=90&hours=24x7&employees=15&hourly_cost=30&productivity_loss=50&recovery=2000&uptime=99.5&incidents=8&target_uptime=99.95

Also available as plain text for AI assistants and a free JSON API (OpenAPI spec).

Last reviewed 5 October 2026 by the Infikey Technologies team.

Disclaimer

This calculator is provided free for general information and planning only. Results are estimates based on the inputs you enter and the assumptions described on this page, reference data such as published prices may change, and actual costs and outcomes will differ. Nothing on this page is financial, legal, tax, investment or other professional advice. Infikey Technologies Private Limited, Infikey Technologies LLC and their directors, employees and affiliates make no warranty, express or implied, about the accuracy, completeness or suitability of this tool or its results, and accept no liability for any loss or damage, direct or indirect, arising from its use or from reliance on its results. Verify all figures independently and seek professional advice before making any decision. Use of this tool is at your own risk.