IT Downtime and DDoS Attack Cost Calculator 2026
Calculate hourly and total downtime costs including revenue loss, productivity impact, SLA penalties, and recovery expenses. Accounts for time-of-day sensitivity and industry-specific factors.
Downtime Parameters
Configure your downtime scenario
Get hourly and total cost estimates
Downtime Cost by Company Size
| Company Size | Hourly Cost Range | Annualized Cost |
|---|---|---|
| SMB (<$50M) | $8K - $74K | $120K - $540K |
| Mid-Market ($50M-$500M) | $74K - $360K | $540K - $2.6M |
| Enterprise ($500M-$5B) | $360K - $1.2M | $2.6M - $8.8M |
| Large Enterprise ($5B+) | $1.2M - $5.6M | $8.8M - $40M |
Sources: ITIC 2025 Hourly Cost of Downtime Survey, Gartner 2025. Annualized figures assume 3-8 significant outages per year.
Industry Downtime Cost Comparison
| Industry | Avg Hourly Cost | Peak Hourly Cost | Avg Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Financial Services | $495K | $1.2M | 1.8 hrs |
| E-commerce / Retail | $195K | $840K | 2.4 hrs |
| Healthcare | $636K | $1.4M | 3.1 hrs |
| Manufacturing | $260K | $520K | 4.6 hrs |
| SaaS / B2B Tech | $350K | $780K | 1.2 hrs |
| Media / Streaming | $280K | $650K | 0.8 hrs |
| Government | $145K | $290K | 6.2 hrs |
| Energy / Utilities | $410K | $890K | 5.1 hrs |
DDoS Attack Cost Analysis
Avg DDoS Duration
1.2 hrs
Cloudflare 2025
Avg Mitigation Cost
$40K
per incident
Revenue Impact
$120K
per hour during attack
DDoS Protection Cost
$3K-15K
per month, enterprise
DDoS attacks increased 46% in 2025 (Cloudflare Radar). The average attack lasts 1.2 hours but volumetric attacks targeting financial services can persist for 6+ hours. DDoS protection ($3K-$15K/month for enterprise) pays for itself after preventing a single significant attack. The cost of unprotected DDoS includes not just direct revenue loss but SLA penalties, customer support surge costs, and incident response time.
Peak vs Off-Peak Cost Multiplier
Peak Hours
1.5x
Black Friday, market open, product launch
Business Hours
1.0x
Standard weekday business hours
Off-Peak
0.4x
Evenings, early morning
Weekend
0.3x
Saturday, Sunday
An e-commerce outage on Black Friday can cost 3-5x more per hour than the same outage on a Tuesday morning. Financial services firms face peak costs during market hours, while B2B SaaS companies see relatively flat costs across business hours. Use the calculator above to model time-of-day sensitivity for your organization.
Downtime Cost FAQ
What is the average cost of IT downtime per hour?
For enterprises, the average is $300,000+ per hour (ITIC 2025). However, this figure masks enormous variation: a small SaaS startup might lose $8,000 per hour while a large financial institution could lose $5.6 million. The right number for your organization depends on revenue, IT dependency percentage, and industry.
How does downtime cost differ from breach cost?
Downtime cost is primarily driven by revenue loss and productivity loss, which occur in real-time. Breach costs include long-tail expenses like regulatory fines, customer notification, and reputation damage that unfold over months. A single incident can incur both costs simultaneously.
What are SLA penalties for downtime?
SLA penalties typically scale with downtime duration. A 99.9% SLA allows 8.76 hours of downtime per year. Exceeding this triggers credits of 10-30% of monthly fees. Some enterprise contracts include direct financial penalties of $10K-$100K per hour of unplanned downtime beyond SLA thresholds.
How much does DDoS protection cost?
Enterprise DDoS protection ranges from $3,000 to $15,000 per month depending on bandwidth capacity and response SLA. Cloud-based solutions (Cloudflare, AWS Shield, Akamai) start at $3K/month, while dedicated scrubbing centers for large organizations run $10K-$15K/month.
What is the ROI of reducing MTTR by one hour?
For a $500M company with 80% IT dependency, reducing MTTR by one hour saves approximately $45,000-$120,000 per incident. With 5 significant outages per year, that is $225K-$600K in annual savings. Investments in observability, automated remediation, and on-call processes drive MTTR reduction.
How do you calculate productivity loss during downtime?
We use the formula: affected employees x average loaded cost per hour ($75 for a typical knowledge worker) x downtime hours x productivity impact factor. Not all employees lose 100% productivity during an outage, so we apply an industry-specific factor (e.g., 90% for financial services, 60% for manufacturing with mixed manual/IT processes).