Calculators
Server Total Cost of Ownership Calculator
Compare the monthly total cost of owning a server, including power, cooling, maintenance and admin time, with cloud hosting.
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- Nothing uploaded
The tool
Enter your numbers below. Results update as you type, and nothing leaves your browser.
Everything you enter stays on your own machine. Nothing is sent to us or to anyone else, which you can confirm in your browser network tab.
What people use it for
- Deciding whether to buy servers or move to the cloud
- Building a business case for migration
- Budgeting a server refresh
- Explaining hidden costs of on-premises IT
About this tool
What the Server Total Cost of Ownership Calculator does
The purchase price is only part of a server’s cost. Total cost of ownership adds electricity and cooling, maintenance, rack space and the time people spend looking after it, spread over the hardware lifespan. This calculator compares that monthly figure with an equivalent cloud bill.
It also works as a server cost of ownership calculator or a server TCO calculator.
Formula
- Hardware = purchase price ÷ (life in years × 12)
- Power = kW × 730 hours × price per kWh × PUE
- TCO per month = hardware + power + maintenance + admin + rack space
Worked example
Using the starting values in the calculator above:
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Server purchase price | $12,000 |
| Useful life | 4 years |
| Average power draw | 450 W |
| Electricity price | $0.15 |
| Cooling overhead (PUE) | 1.6 |
| Maintenance and support per year | 10% |
| Admin hours per month | 6 |
| Admin hourly cost | $60.00 |
| Rack space or colocation per month | $150 |
| Equivalent cloud cost per month | $900 |
| Result | Value |
|---|---|
| On-premises cost per month | $939 |
| Cloud minus on-premises per month | -$38.84 |
| Total cost over the server’s life | $45,064 |
| Hardware (spread monthly) | $250 |
| Power and cooling | $78.84 |
| Admin time | $360 |
How to read the result
A positive difference means the cloud costs more per month for this workload. Cloud can still win on flexibility, redundancy and the ability to scale down.
PUE (power usage effectiveness) captures cooling and power losses. Small server rooms are often well above modern data centre levels.
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Questions
Questions about this tool
The things clients actually want to know — costs, timelines, ownership and what happens after launch.
The full cost of running a server over its life: hardware, power, cooling, space, maintenance and staff time.
Power usage effectiveness: total facility power divided by IT equipment power. A PUE of 1.6 means 60% extra for cooling and losses.
Many organisations refresh servers every three to five years.
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