Downtime Cost Calculator
Estimate what an outage costs: lost revenue from your revenue per hour, outage length and share of sales affected, plus the staff time spent fixing it. For example, 2 hours down at US$500 an hour.
- Free
- No signup required
- Instant calculation
This outage costs about $214
$114 lost revenue + $100 staff time
| Amount | |
|---|---|
| Revenue per hour | $114 |
| Lost revenue (1 h × 100%) | $114 |
| Staff time (2 × 1 h) | $100 |
| Total | $214 |
| Each extra minute | $3.57 |
Not included: refunds, SLA credits, lost customers and reputation. Finding out about an outage 30 minutes sooner saves about $107.
Examples
Online store down during checkout
A Shopify or WooCommerce store earning US$2,000 an hour has checkout broken for 90 minutes, affecting all sales: 2,000 x 1.5 x 100% = US$3,000 lost. Two staff at US$35 an hour for 1.5 hours add US$105.
SaaS dashboard down, API still up
A SaaS business making US$5,000,000 a year (about US$571 an hour) has its dashboard down for 2 hours, affecting an estimated 25% of revenue: 571 x 2 x 25% = about US$285. Three engineers at US$80 an hour add US$480, more than the lost revenue.
Lead generation site offline overnight
A services business that gets about RM300 of value per hour from enquiries has its WordPress site down for 8 hours: 300 x 8 x 100% = RM2,400 of enquiries potentially lost.
Justifying monitoring
If one unnoticed hour of downtime costs US$500, finding out within minutes instead of an hour later saves far more than a year of monitoring costs.
How downtime cost is calculated
Downtime cost = (revenue per hour x hours down x share affected) + (people x hourly cost x hours down)
Lost revenue is your revenue per hour multiplied by the hours the outage lasted and the share of revenue it affected (100% if nothing could be sold, less for a partial outage).
If you enter annual revenue, revenue per hour is annual revenue divided by 8,760 (the hours in a 365-day year). This assumes revenue is spread evenly across every hour.
Staff cost is the number of people working on the outage multiplied by their hourly cost and the outage length.
Lost revenue by annual revenue (USD, revenue spread evenly over 8,760 hours, 100% affected)
| Annual revenue | 1 hour down | 4 hours down | 24 hours down |
|---|---|---|---|
| $100,000 | $11 | $46 | $274 |
| $500,000 | $57 | $228 | $1,370 |
| $1,000,000 | $114 | $457 | $2,740 |
| $5,000,000 | $571 | $2,283 | $13,699 |
| $10,000,000 | $1,142 | $4,566 | $27,397 |
| $50,000,000 | $5,708 | $22,831 | $136,986 |
| $100,000,000 | $11,416 | $45,662 | $273,973 |
Common mistakes when estimating downtime cost
Assuming revenue is spread evenly
Most businesses earn more at some hours than others. An outage during a sale or business hours costs more than the average, and one at 3 a.m. less. Use revenue for the hours that were actually affected when you know it.
Counting all revenue as lost
Some customers come back later and buy anyway. Set the share affected below 100% when only part of the site was down or when buyers are likely to return.
Leaving out staff time
Engineers fixing the outage and support staff answering tickets are real cost, even if they are salaried. Include everyone pulled away from their normal work.
Ignoring the time before anyone noticed
An outage costs money from the moment it starts, not from when someone sees it. If nobody noticed for an hour, that hour counts too.
Check something else
- Uptime SLA CalculatorTurn an uptime percentage into allowed downtime per day, week, month, quarter and year, or downtime into a percentage.
- Website Down CheckerCheck if a website is down for everyone or just you, with status code, response time and final URL.
- HTTP Status Code CheckerCheck the HTTP status code any URL returns, with response time and every redirect on the way.
- Website Response Time TestMeasure how long a website takes to respond, split into DNS, connect, TLS, server wait and download.
Frequently asked questions
How do I calculate revenue per hour?
Divide annual revenue by 8,760, the number of hours in a year. For a business that only sells during opening hours, divide by those hours instead, for example 52 weeks x 40 hours = 2,080.
What share of revenue should I enter as affected?
100% if nothing could be bought or used. Less if only part of the site was down (for example the blog but not checkout), or if many customers will simply come back and buy later.
Which costs are not included?
Lost future customers, SLA credits and refunds, wasted ad spend and damage to reputation. They are real but hard to estimate, so the result is best read as a minimum.
Can I use a currency other than USD?
Yes. Pick MYR, SGD, EUR, GBP or another currency from the selector. The calculation does not convert between currencies, so enter every amount in the currency you choose.
How can I reduce the cost of downtime?
Shorten outages. Get alerted as soon as the site fails instead of hearing from customers, have a clear person on call, and keep a record of past incidents so you fix the causes that repeat.
Make every outage shorter
You cannot prevent every outage, but you can stop them running for hours unnoticed. TinyPing checks your site every 5 minutes and alerts you when:
- the site returns an error or times out
- a page stops showing the text it should, such as your checkout button
- the site comes back up, so you know how long it was down
US$6.99 a month or US$47 a year per 50 monitors, team members free. 7-day free trial, no card needed.
Want alerts in team chat? Follow the guide for Slack or Google Chat.