COST CALCULATOR
What a minute of downtime costs you
Turn a company revenue figure and payroll into a dollar cost for one minute of downtime, split into lost sales and idle labor, with sources and worked examples.
YOUR NUMBERS
The whole company's yearly revenue, from the most recent annual report.
100 when every sale needs the system that is down, lower when only part of the business depends on it.
Around the clock for a store with customers in every time zone, business hours for a company that only sells during the working day.
Staff idled by the outage, not the whole company.
Loaded applies the 1.45 figure, this site's stand-in for benefits, payroll tax, and overhead on top of wages.
How long the outage ran, or is expected to run.
2,080 work hours a year (52 weeks x 40 hours) · 60 minutes in an hour (the clock) · 8,760 hours in a calendar year (365 days x 24 hours) · 1.45 loaded cost multiplier (a round figure between the private-industry ratio (1.43) and the civilian ratio (1.46), BLS March 2026)
WORKED EXAMPLES
Every row uses the formula above with the figures shown; press Try it to load a row into the calculator.
| Scenario | Annual revenue | Share of revenue that stops | When revenue comes in | People who cannot work | Average salary | Cost basis | Length of the outage | Cost per minute | Revenue lost | Payroll idled | Cost per hour | This outage | Load into the calculator |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Default: a mid-size online store | $5,000,000 | 100 | Around the clock | 25 | $65,000 | Loaded | 60 | $28.39 | $9.51 | $18.88 | $1,703.59 | $1,703.59 | |
| A small software team, business hours | $2,000,000 | 60 | Business hours | 8 | $95,000 | Loaded | 45 | $18.45 | $9.62 | $8.83 | $1,106.73 | $830.05 | |
| An automated checkout, nobody idled | $40,000,000 | 80 | Around the clock | 0 | $0 | Base salary | 20 | $60.88 | $60.88 | $0.00 | $3,652.97 | $1,217.66 | |
| A large manufacturer, a long outage | $180,000,000 | 100 | Business hours | 150 | $80,000 | Loaded | 180 | $1,581.73 | $1,442.31 | $139.42 | $94,903.85 | $284,711.54 |
An outage that stops a $5 million online store for one minute costs $28.39 by default on this page: $9.51 in sales that do not happen plus $18.88 in wages paid to twenty five people who cannot do their jobs while the system is down. An hour of that same outage runs $1,703.59, which is closer to the number a manager actually has to explain the next morning than the per minute figure is.
The question behind this page usually comes from one of three places. An incident review needs a dollar figure for what just happened, so the postmortem says more than "it was down for a while." A vendor conversation needs a service level agreement credit that means something to this specific business, not a boilerplate percentage of a monthly bill. A budget request for redundancy, a second region, or an on call rotation needs a cost to weigh against the spend, since a fix that costs more than the outages it prevents is not worth building. A blog post quoting a single average cost of downtime answers none of these, because that average belongs to whichever company got surveyed, not to the one asking.
The math behind the number
Two costs run at the same time while a system is down, and this page adds them. The first is lost revenue: take the share of annual revenue that actually depends on the system that failed, and spread it across the hours the business earns revenue in a year, in minutes. The second is idle payroll: take the headcount that cannot work, multiply by their average salary and a cost basis, and spread that across the standard 2,080 hour work year, also in minutes. Add the two per minute figures together and the result belongs to this business and this outage, not to an industry average.
Choosing around the clock or business hours
The revenue hours input decides how a year of revenue gets divided into minutes, and getting it wrong matters more than getting the salary figure exactly right. A store with customers in every time zone earns close to evenly across all 8,760 hours in a calendar year, so a sale at three in the morning counts the same as one at three in the afternoon. A company that only sells during the working day earns the same annual total inside roughly a quarter of those hours, so each working hour, and each minute of downtime inside it, carries a much bigger share of the year's revenue. A business that picks the wrong side of this choice will understate or overstate its downtime cost by close to a factor of four.
Two outages, two very different bills
A software company doing $2 million a year, where six in ten dollars of revenue run through the system that just failed, sells on business hours and has eight people idled at an average $95,000 salary loaded to 1.45. A 45 minute outage there costs $830.05: $432.69 in lost sales against $397.36 in wasted payroll, a labor line nearly as large as the revenue line because the team is small and well paid relative to how much the business brings in.
A manufacturer doing $180 million a year, selling only during business hours, with 150 staff idled at an $80,000 average salary loaded to 1.45, faces a very different split on a three hour outage. That outage costs $284,711.54: about $259,615 in lost orders against about $25,096 in idle payroll. A company that size earns most of its revenue in a narrow set of hours, so it loses far more to stalled sales than to the wages of the people waiting for the system to come back.
Common mistakes
A few mistakes turn up often once a figure like this gets used in a real conversation.
- Reusing a vendor's average cost of downtime instead of running the numbers for this business, which has its own revenue and its own headcount.
- Leaving the revenue share input at 100 percent out of habit when only part of the business actually depends on the system that failed.
- Dropping idle payroll from the total because nobody was fired, when the company still paid for hours that produced nothing.
- Picking business hours for a company that actually earns around the clock, which understates every minute of downtime by roughly a factor of four.
What the figure does not include
This total is a floor, not the whole bill. It leaves out two things on purpose: customers who quietly leave after a bad outage, and any refunds or credits issued to keep the ones who stayed. Neither has a steady per minute rate, since both depend on how visible the outage was and how the company responded, not on how long a clock ran. Add a separate estimate for that risk when a decision needs one. This page answers what happened to sales and payroll while the system was down, not what happens to trust afterward.
For the meeting scheduled to review the outage, the live meter at dollarspersecond.com prices exactly that room while it runs, a smaller number worth setting next to the outage total above.
The constants
| Constant | Value | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Work hours a year | 2,080 | OPM, Computing Hourly Rates of Pay Using the 2,087-Hour Divisor |
| Minutes in an hour | 60 | arithmetic |
| Hours in a calendar year | 8,760 | arithmetic |
| Loaded cost multiplier | 1.45 | BLS, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, March 2026 |
Sources
Questions
Do I need to use the company's entire revenue figure?
No. Use the share of revenue that actually depends on whatever went down. A checkout outage on an online store can stop nearly all of it, while the same outage at a subscription business barely touches revenue that already renewed. The revenue share input holds that judgment call, and a considered guess beats defaulting to 100 percent whenever only part of the business runs through the system that failed.
Why count payroll if the outage did not cost anyone their job?
Because the company kept paying wages for hours that produced nothing. Idle payroll is a real expense even without a layoff attached to it. This calculator keeps it as its own line, separate from lost revenue, so a manager can see how much of the total came from stalled sales and how much came from staff who simply had nothing to work on.
Can this number set a service level agreement or justify a redundancy budget?
It is a reasonable floor for both. An SLA credit or a failover investment should be checked against what an outage actually costs this specific business, not a vendor's marketing figure for outages in general. Treat the per minute total as the minimum case, since it leaves out reputation and refund costs that a longer or more visible outage tends to add on top.
Why does the total leave out reputation damage and refunds?
Because neither one moves at a steady rate the way lost sales and idle payroll do. A short outage might cost nothing beyond this total, while a public one might drive cancellations that dwarf it, and no formula on this page can tell those two cases apart in advance. Add a separate estimate for that risk once the numbers here are in hand.