What is downtime actually costing you?
Most businesses underestimate this badly, because they only count total outages and forget the slow mornings, dropped WiFi, and dead phones. Put in your own numbers below — the math is shown, nothing is saved, and you don't have to give us an email to see the answer.
Your numbers
Wages plus payroll taxes and benefits — not just salary.
Count slow systems and WiFi drops, not just full outages — that's where the real total hides.
Only if an outage actually stops you taking orders or serving customers. Leave at 0 if not.
What it's costing you
Per year
$34,200
Per month
$2,850
Per outage hour
$570
- Lost productivity (yr)
- $34,200
- Lost revenue (yr)
- $0
15 people × $38/hr × 4 hrs/month = $2,280/month
Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent unless you choose to email it to yourself below.
No industry averages, just your numbers
Plenty of downtime calculators quietly bake in a scary "industry average cost per minute" to inflate the result. This one doesn't — every figure above comes from what you typed, and here's exactly what it does with it:
Lost productivity
employees × hourly cost × downtime hours — people you're paying who can't work
Lost revenue
revenue per hour × downtime hours — only if the outage actually stops sales
Annual figure
monthly total × 12
These are kept separate on purpose. Productivity cost is money you've already spent on idle staff; lost revenue is money that never arrived. Blending them into one number is how calculators end up with totals nobody believes. What this deliberately leaves out: overtime to catch up, missed deadlines, and the customer who quietly goes elsewhere — so treat the result as a floor, not a ceiling.
Want this emailed to you?
We'll send your figures along with a short note on where the hours usually come from. No obligation, and we won't chase you if you'd rather we didn't.
How do you calculate the cost of IT downtime?
The core formula is: employees affected × average hourly labor cost × hours of downtime. That gives the productivity cost of an outage. If an outage also stops you taking orders or serving customers, add the revenue you'd have earned during those hours. This calculator shows both separately rather than blending them, because productivity cost is money already spent on idle staff while lost revenue is money that never arrived.
What should I use for average hourly cost?
Use fully loaded cost, not just salary — wages plus payroll taxes and benefits. A quick approximation is annual salary ÷ 2,080 working hours, then +20–30% for employer overhead. The calculator has a helper that converts an annual salary for you.
Does downtime only mean total outages?
No — and this is where most estimates come in far too low. Total outages are rare; the bigger drain is usually routine degradation: slow machines, dropped WiFi, a phone system that fails during business hours, waiting on a password reset, or files that won't sync. Count those hours too. If you're not sure, ask a few staff how much time they lose in a typical week.
Is this calculator saving my numbers?
No. The calculation runs entirely in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere. Your figures are only transmitted if you choose to email the result to yourself using the optional form above.
Most of that number is preventable
A free assessment tells you which of those hours are fixable, and what it would take — whether or not you hire us.