Cloud Migration Cost Savings Calculator
Estimate your annual savings, one-time migration cost, and payback period from moving off on-prem. Adjust the inputs to match your environment — the numbers update live.
Migrating should pay for itself
Across the whole range below, three years of savings cover the migration cost.
$176,790
30% lower run-rate in year one
$280,888
Range $112.9K to $448.9K, after migration cost
6 mo
To recoup migration
Breakdown
- Current annual TCO
- $580,000
- Projected cloud annual TCO (year one)
- $403,210
- of which data egress
- $2,160
- One-time migration cost
- $93,800
Directional estimate, not a quote. Our assumptions:
- At on-demand prices, cloud infrastructure costs 45% of your current infra spend at 0% utilization, rising to 140% at 100%. A 1-year commitment takes 15% off that, and a 3-year one 30%.
- Managed services cut ops labor to 75% of today's.
- Egress costs $90 per TB, about the major clouds' list price.
- The cloud bill grows 8% a year as usage sprawls. The 3-year figure discounts future years at 8%, and its range allows for the cloud bill landing 15% either side of the estimate.
- Software licensing is not modelled.
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Frequently asked questions
How much can you save by migrating to the cloud?
It depends mostly on how over-provisioned your current estate is. Lightly used servers can be right-sized away, so a mostly idle estate can save a lot. A busy, well-run estate on hardware you own often costs more in the cloud, especially at on-demand prices. Reserved instances or savings plans narrow that gap, while data egress and cloud spend growth widen it. This calculator estimates both directions and tells you when migrating won't pay back.
What goes into cloud-migration total cost of ownership (TCO)?
TCO includes recurring costs (compute, storage, networking, and the staff time to run it) plus the one-time cost of the migration itself — planning, landing-zone setup, rehosting or replatforming each server, and moving and validating data.
How long until a cloud migration pays for itself?
Payback is the one-time migration cost divided by your monthly savings. Over-provisioned estates can recoup it within a year or two. Busy estates may never recoup it, and the calculator says so. Cloud bills also tend to grow as usage sprawls, so the 3-year figure here allows for that and discounts future years.
Is this estimate a quote?
No. It's a directional estimate built on the assumptions listed under the results, which is why it shows a range. It leaves out software licensing (Windows Server and SQL Server costs often change on the move), compliance work, and the value of moving faster. A real assessment accounts for your specific workloads. Book a free consultation if you want one.
Want a real answer for your estate?
We'll look at your actual workloads and tell you what moving would cost, what it would save, and whether it's worth doing at all. See how we work, or book a free strategy call.