Cost of IT downtime: Complete UK guide with calculator
UK businesses lose £3.7 billion annually to IT downtime. Get the latest statistics and prevention strategies.
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What this tool does
This calculator helps you estimate the true cost of IT downtime for your business. By entering your employee count, average wages, revenue per hour, and expected downtime duration, you'll get an instant breakdown of direct costs including employee wages, lost revenue, and recovery productivity impact.
All calculations are performed locally in your browser - no data is sent to our servers.
Calculate your downtime cost
Your estimated downtime cost
Employee cost
£0
Wages paid during outageRevenue loss
£0
Direct sales/revenue impactRecovery productivity loss
£0
Catch-up period impactTotal incident cost
£0
Cost per minute
£0
Annual risk (14 hrs avg)
£0
Note: This calculator provides estimates based on direct costs. Hidden costs such as reputation damage, customer churn, and compliance fines can multiply these figures by 2-5x.
Understanding your results
Employee cost
Wages you pay to employees who can't work productively during the outage. This is calculated as: employees x hourly wage x downtime hours.
Revenue loss
Direct revenue your business loses while systems are down. This is calculated as: revenue per hour x downtime hours.
Recovery productivity loss
The cost of reduced productivity after systems come back online. Research shows it takes an average of 9 hours to return to full productivity.
Hidden costs
Not included: reputation damage, customer churn, emergency support fees, regulatory penalties, and overtime costs. These can multiply direct costs by 2-5x.
UK downtime statistics
£3.7bn
Lost to internet failures alone in 2023
£4,000
Average cost per minute of downtime
92%
Of businesses take 24+ hours to recover
When to use this tool
- Budget planning - Understand your downtime risk exposure to prioritise IT investments
- Business case development - Justify spending on backup systems, monitoring, or redundancy
- Insurance assessment - Calculate appropriate cyber insurance coverage levels
- Disaster recovery planning - Set Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) based on cost impact
