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IT Downtime Cost Statistics 2026

Splunk's 2026 research puts the average cost of unplanned downtime at $15,000 per minute and the total for Global 2000 companies at $600 billion a year. New Relic's 2025 survey put the median cost of a high-impact outage at $2 million per hour, and ITIC found that one hour of downtime costs more than $300,000 for over 90% of mid-size and large enterprises. Uptime Institute reports that 1 in 5 organizations said their latest major outage cost more than $1 million.

Download CSV Cite this pageUpdated November 4, 2026 · 17 sources · 50/50 quotes re-checked

$15,000The average cost of unplanned downtime reached $15,000 per minute in 2026, according to a Splunk survey of 2,000 executives at Global 2000 companies.Splunk (Cisco)
$300,000One hour of downtime costs more than $300,000 for over 90% of mid-size and large enterprises, according to ITIC's 2024 survey of more than 1,000 firms worldwide.Information Technology Intelligence Consulting (ITIC)
68%68% of organizations lose more than $300,000 per hour during IT incidents, according to PagerDuty's 2026 survey of 1,000 business and IT leaders.PagerDuty
$600 billionUnplanned downtime costs Global 2000 companies $600 billion a year in total, 50% more than two years earlier, according to Splunk's 2026 study.Splunk (Cisco)
$95 millionDowntime costs a Global 2000 organization $95 million in lost revenue per year on average, nearly double the 2024 level (Splunk, 2026).Splunk (Cisco)
57%57% of respondents to Uptime Institute's 2025 survey said their most recent major outage cost more than $100,000.Uptime Institute
$380 millionDelta Air Lines estimated the CrowdStrike outage cost it about $380 million in revenue from roughly 7,000 cancelled flights over five days in July 2024.Delta Air Lines
$1 millionOrganizations with full-stack observability report high-impact outages costing $1 million per hour on average, half the $2 million per hour reported by those without it (New Relic, 2025).New Relic

This page collects what IT outages cost organizations: the price of an hour or a minute of downtime, annual losses at large companies, how often outages happen, what single incidents cost, and the uptime guarantees cloud providers actually offer. Most figures come from surveys run in 2024 to 2026 by research firms and vendors, plus company filings and incident reports. Coverage is global unless a figure says otherwise.

Every major survey puts the cost of downtime for larger organizations in six or seven figures per hour. ITIC found that an hour of downtime costs more than $300,000 for over 90% of mid-size and large enterprises, and 41% of enterprises put it at $1 million to over $5 million. New Relic's 2025 survey put the median cost of a high-impact outage at $2 million per hour, and PagerDuty's 2026 survey found 68% of organizations lose more than $300,000 per hour during IT incidents and 8% lose more than $1 million. Splunk's 2026 study, based on 2,000 executives at Global 2000 companies, reached $15,000 per minute on average, which is $900,000 per hour.

Annual totals are rising faster than outage counts. Splunk put the total cost of unplanned downtime for Global 2000 companies at $600 billion a year in 2026, up 50% from the $400 billion it measured in 2024, with $95 million of lost revenue per organization. Uptime Institute sees the opposite trend in frequency: outage rates per site have fallen for five years in a row, but 57% of operators said their latest major outage cost more than $100,000 and 1 in 5 said it cost more than $1 million.

Single incidents show how concentrated the risk is. The faulty CrowdStrike update in July 2024 hit 8.5 million Windows devices, according to Microsoft, and Delta Air Lines told the SEC it cost about $380 million in revenue plus about $170 million in extra operating expenses. Parametrix estimates that a 24-hour outage of one AWS region in Ireland could cause about £1 billion of losses for UK businesses. Cyberattacks are a separate path to downtime: IBM puts the average data breach at $4.99 million in 2026, and Sophos found the average ransomware recovery cost $1.53 million in 2025 before any ransom.

Contracts rarely cover these losses. AWS commits to 99.99% monthly uptime for EC2 deployed across availability zones and pays service credits as a share of the monthly bill, not compensation for lost revenue. Even 99.99% availability allows about 52 minutes of downtime per server per year, by ITIC's calculation, and New Relic found that organizations with full-stack observability report outages costing half as much per hour. Buyers should treat SLAs as a floor for vendor accountability and budget separately for monitoring, redundancy and incident response, which 77% of organizations in PagerDuty's survey plan to increase.

Cost of downtime per hour and per minute

These figures are respondents' own estimates of what an hour of downtime costs, so they reflect perceived loss, including revenue, productivity and recovery work, rather than audited accounts. The samples lean toward mid-size and large enterprises; very small firms report far lower costs. Even so, three independent surveys land in the same range: hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour for most large organizations, and over $1 million for a significant minority.

Share of organizations by hourly loss during IT incidents, 2026

Survey of 1,000 business and IT decision-makers by Wakefield Research for PagerDuty, published March 2026. Categories overlap.

More than $300,000 per hour68%
At least $500,000 per hour34%
More than $1 million per hour8%

Source: PagerDuty, PagerDuty Report Reveals Some Organizations Lose More than $1 Million Per Hour During Unplanned Disruptions

$15,000
The average cost of unplanned downtime reached $15,000 per minute in 2026, according to a Splunk survey of 2,000 executives at Global 2000 companies.
Splunk (Cisco) · The $600 Billion Wake-up Call: New Splunk Research Reveals Downtime is a Systemic Business Crisis (May 2026)
Exact quote
The study found that the average cost of downtime has reached $15,000 per minute.
$300,000
One hour of downtime costs more than $300,000 for over 90% of mid-size and large enterprises, according to ITIC's 2024 survey of more than 1,000 firms worldwide.
Information Technology Intelligence Consulting (ITIC) · ITIC 2024 Hourly Cost of Downtime Report Part 1 (Sep 2024)
Exact quote
The average cost of a single hour of downtime now exceeds $300,000 for over 90% of mid-size and large enterprises.
41%
41% of enterprises in ITIC's 2024 survey said an hour of downtime costs them $1 million to over $5 million.
Information Technology Intelligence Consulting (ITIC) · ITIC 2024 Hourly Cost of Downtime Part 2 (Sep 2024)
Exact quote
Even more significantly: four in 10 enterprises – 41% – indicate that hourly downtime costs their firms $1 million to over $5 million (See Exhibit 1).
97%
97% of large enterprises with more than 1,000 employees said a single hour of downtime costs them over $100,000 (ITIC, 2024).
Information Technology Intelligence Consulting (ITIC) · ITIC 2024 Hourly Cost of Downtime Part 2 (Sep 2024)
Exact quote
ITIC’s 11th annual Hourly Cost of Downtime Survey data indicates that 97% of large enterprises with more than 1000 employees say that on average, a single hour of downtime per year costs their company over $100,000.
68%
68% of organizations lose more than $300,000 per hour during IT incidents, according to PagerDuty's 2026 survey of 1,000 business and IT leaders.
PagerDuty · PagerDuty Report Reveals Some Organizations Lose More than $1 Million Per Hour During Unplanned Disruptions (Mar 2026)
Exact quote
Some organizations (8%) lose more than $1 million per hour, 34% lose at least $500,000 per hour, and more than two thirds (68%) lose more than $300,000 per hour during IT incidents.
34%
34% of organizations in PagerDuty's 2026 survey lose at least $500,000 per hour of IT incidents.
PagerDuty · PagerDuty Report Reveals Some Organizations Lose More than $1 Million Per Hour During Unplanned Disruptions (Mar 2026)
Exact quote
Some organizations (8%) lose more than $1 million per hour, 34% lose at least $500,000 per hour, and more than two thirds (68%) lose more than $300,000 per hour during IT incidents.
8%
8% of organizations in PagerDuty's 2026 survey lose more than $1 million per hour of IT incidents.
PagerDuty · PagerDuty Report Reveals Some Organizations Lose More than $1 Million Per Hour During Unplanned Disruptions (Mar 2026)
Exact quote
Some organizations (8%) lose more than $1 million per hour, 34% lose at least $500,000 per hour, and more than two thirds (68%) lose more than $300,000 per hour during IT incidents.
4%
Only 4% of respondents in ITIC's 2024 survey said an hour of downtime costs less than $100,000, and 93% of those were micro businesses with fewer than 10 employees.
Information Technology Intelligence Consulting (ITIC) · ITIC 2024 Hourly Cost of Downtime Part 2 (Sep 2024)
Exact quote
Only four (4%) percent of enterprise respondents said that downtime costs their companies less than $100,000 in a single 60-minute period and of that number an overwhelming 93% majority were micro SMBs with fewer than 10 employees.
$2 million
High-impact outages carry a median cost of $2 million per hour, about $33,333 per minute, according to New Relic's 2025 survey of IT and engineering professionals.
New Relic · New Relic Study Reveals Businesses Face an Annual Median Cost of $76 Million from High-Impact IT Outages (Sep 2025)
Exact quote
The data showed that the cost of any digital business downtime is profound—with high-impact outages carrying a median cost of $2 million USD per hour, or approximately $33,333 for every minute systems remain down.

Annual downtime costs at large companies

Splunk's two studies, run with Oxford Economics in 2024 and repeated in 2026, are the most detailed public breakdown of what downtime costs large companies over a year. They count lost revenue, fines, missed SLA penalties, ransom payments and recovery labor, so they are broader than the hourly estimates above. The 2026 totals are much higher than in 2024, and the cost items that grew most were ransom payouts, which nearly tripled, and regulatory fines, which rose from $22 million to $51 million per company. New Relic's survey uses a median rather than an average, so its $76 million figure is not directly comparable.

Largest annual downtime costs per Global 2000 company, 2024 ($ millions)

Average per company, Global 2000 companies surveyed by Splunk and Oxford Economics, published June 2024.

Lost revenue$49
Regulatory fines$22
Missed SLA penalties$16

Source: Splunk (Cisco), .conf24: Splunk Report Shows Downtime Costs Global 2000 Companies $400B Annually

$600 billion
Unplanned downtime costs Global 2000 companies $600 billion a year in total, 50% more than two years earlier, according to Splunk's 2026 study.
Splunk (Cisco) · The $600 Billion Wake-up Call: New Splunk Research Reveals Downtime is a Systemic Business Crisis (May 2026)
Exact quote
SAN JOSE, Calif. – May 19, 2026 – Cisco today announced the release of Splunk’s latest research, The Hidden Costs of Downtime, revealing the aggregate cost of unplanned downtime for Global 2000 companies has surged to $600 billion annually – a 50% increase in just two years.
$95 million
Downtime costs a Global 2000 organization $95 million in lost revenue per year on average, nearly double the 2024 level (Splunk, 2026).
Splunk (Cisco) · The $600 Billion Wake-up Call: New Splunk Research Reveals Downtime is a Systemic Business Crisis (May 2026)
Exact quote
Downtime has become a systemic business crisis that threatens revenue, brand equity and shareholder value, costing an organization $95 million in lost revenue annually. This is nearly twice the level seen in 2024.
3.4%
Companies see an average 3.4% drop in their stock price after a downtime event, according to Splunk's 2026 study.
Splunk (Cisco) · The $600 Billion Wake-up Call: New Splunk Research Reveals Downtime is a Systemic Business Crisis (May 2026)
Exact quote
In addition, organizations see an average 3.4% drop in stock price following a downtime event.
$40 million
Average ransomware payouts at Global 2000 companies reached $40 million in 2026, nearly three times the 2024 level.
Splunk (Cisco) · The $600 Billion Wake-up Call: New Splunk Research Reveals Downtime is a Systemic Business Crisis (May 2026)
Exact quote
Escalating Ransomware Costs: Ransomware payouts have nearly tripled since 2024, now reaching $40 million on average, making them one of the most significant direct financial burdens.
$51 million
Regulatory fines linked to downtime average $51 million per Global 2000 organization (Splunk, 2026).
Splunk (Cisco) · The $600 Billion Wake-up Call: New Splunk Research Reveals Downtime is a Systemic Business Crisis (May 2026)
Exact quote
Regulatory Exposure: Regulatory fines have reached an average of $51 million per organization, with 57% of technology executives now viewing these penalties as very or prohibitively disruptive.
47%
47% of technology leaders say customers are often the first to detect an outage, and 81% cite lost customers as a consequence of downtime (Splunk, 2026).
Splunk (Cisco) · The $600 Billion Wake-up Call: New Splunk Research Reveals Downtime is a Systemic Business Crisis (May 2026)
Exact quote
Customer Churn: Eighty-one percent of technology leaders cite the loss of customers as a consequence of downtime, with 47% admitting customers are often or very often the first to detect service degradation or outages.
$24.5 million
Large organizations spend a median of $24.5 million a year on AI tools to prevent and respond to downtime (Splunk, 2026).
Splunk (Cisco) · The $600 Billion Wake-up Call: New Splunk Research Reveals Downtime is a Systemic Business Crisis (May 2026)
Exact quote
The Evolving Role of AI in Resilience Organizations are increasingly turning to AI to enhance incident triage and root cause analysis, with a median annual spend of $24.5 million on AI tools that prevent and respond to downtime.
$400B
In Splunk's 2024 study, downtime cost Global 2000 companies $400 billion a year, equal to 9% of profits.
Splunk (Cisco) · .conf24: Splunk Report Shows Downtime Costs Global 2000 Companies $400B Annually (Jun 2024)
Exact quote
The survey calculated the total cost of downtime for Global 2000 [1] companies to be $400B annually, or 9 percent of profits, when digital environments fail unexpectedly.
71%
71% of technology executives rate publicly disclosing a data breach as very or prohibitively disruptive, up from 23% in 2024, making it the most severe hidden cost of downtime in Splunk's 2026 study.
Splunk (Cisco) · The $600 Billion Wake-up Call: New Splunk Research Reveals Downtime is a Systemic Business Crisis (May 2026)
Exact quote
Publicly disclosing a data breach is now considered the most severe hidden cost, with 71% of technology executives rating it as very or prohibitively disruptive, up from 23% in 2024.
$76 million
High-impact IT outages cost the businesses in New Relic's 2025 Observability Forecast a median of $76 million a year, based on a survey of more than 1,700 IT and engineering professionals in 23 countries.
New Relic · New Relic Study Reveals Businesses Face an Annual Median Cost of $76 Million from High-Impact IT Outages (Sep 2025)
Exact quote
The annual median cost of high-impact IT outages for businesses surveyed is $76 million USD per year.

How often outages happen and what causes them

Outage frequency depends heavily on definitions. Uptime Institute counts impactful outages at data centers and IT services and finds them slowly becoming less common per site, while Cockroach Labs asked executives to count all outages, including minor ones, and got a much higher number. New Relic adds the labor cost: engineers spend a third of their time on disruptions. The surveys point to the same causes: procedures not followed, network and IT complexity, and growing dependence on third-party cloud services.

57%
57% of respondents to Uptime Institute's 2025 survey said their most recent major outage cost more than $100,000.
Uptime Institute · Uptime Announces Annual Outage Analysis Report 2026 (May 2026)
Exact quote
In Uptime’s 2025 Annual Survey, 57% of respondents said their most recent major outage cost more than $100,000.
1 in 5
1 in 5 organizations reported that their most recent major outage cost more than $1 million, for the second year in a row (Uptime Institute).
Uptime Institute · Uptime Announces Annual Outage Analysis Report 2026 (May 2026)
Exact quote
For the second consecutive year, 1 in 5 reported costs exceeding $1 million.
23%
Outages from IT and networking issues made up 23% of impactful outages in 2024, according to Uptime Institute.
Uptime Institute · Uptime Announces Annual Outage Analysis Report 2025 (May 2025)
Exact quote
Outages from IT and networking issues increased in 2024, totaling 23% of impactful outages.
40%
Nearly 40% of organizations had a major outage caused by human error over the three years to 2025 (Uptime Institute).
Uptime Institute · Uptime Announces Annual Outage Analysis Report 2025 (May 2025)
Exact quote
Nearly 40% of organizations have suffered a major outage caused by human error over the past three years.
85%
85% of human error outages came from staff not following procedures or from flawed procedures (Uptime Institute, 2025).
Uptime Institute · Uptime Announces Annual Outage Analysis Report 2025 (May 2025)
Exact quote
Of these incidents, 85% stem from staff failing to follow procedures or from flaws in the processes and procedures themselves.
86
Enterprises experience 86 outages a year on average, according to a Cockroach Labs survey of 1,000 senior technology leaders run in 2024.
Cockroach Labs · The State of Resilience 2025 (Oct 2024)
Exact quote
On average, organizations are experiencing a staggering 86 outages each year, jeopardizing revenue and reputation.
28%
Total downtime across major cloud providers fell 28% in 2025 compared with 2024, according to Parametrix monitoring.
Parametrix · Cloud Outage Risk Report 2025 (Mar 2026)
Exact quote
While overall cloud stability improved in 2025, with total downtime decreasing by 28% from the previous year, high-impact outages continued to disrupt critical regions, services, and thousands of businesses worldwide.
78%
78% of IT and engineering teams report more incidents despite faster coding speeds, according to New Relic's 2026 survey of 2,575 leaders.
New Relic · 2026 Observability Forecast (2026)
Exact quote
Learn why 78% of teams report more incidents despite faster coding speeds, and how to protect runtime reliability.
33%
Engineers spend 33% of their time fighting fires or handling disruptions instead of building new features, according to New Relic's 2025 survey.
New Relic · New Relic Study Reveals Businesses Face an Annual Median Cost of $76 Million from High-Impact IT Outages (Sep 2025)
Exact quote
Notably, the data shows that engineers are spending 33% of their time fighting fires or addressing disruptions, taking focus away from developing new features or coding innovations.
40%
40% of organizations without full-stack observability have high-impact outages at least weekly, against 23% of those with it, in New Relic's 2025 survey.
New Relic · New Relic Study Reveals Businesses Face an Annual Median Cost of $76 Million from High-Impact IT Outages (Sep 2025)
Exact quote
Teams with full-stack observability also report fewer outages (just 23% experience high-impact outages at least weekly versus 40% without) and detect them 7 minutes faster with an average mean time to detection (MTTD) of 28 minutes.

What single major outages cost

Large incidents are rare but expensive, and they spread across many companies at once because so many depend on the same software and cloud regions. The CrowdStrike update in July 2024 is the best documented case because Delta disclosed its losses in an SEC filing. Insurer estimates for hypothetical outages, such as a full-day loss of one AWS region, are models, not measured losses, but they show how concentrated cloud risk has become.

8.5 million
The faulty CrowdStrike update in July 2024 affected 8.5 million Windows devices, less than 1% of all Windows machines, according to Microsoft.
Microsoft · Helping our customers through the CrowdStrike outage (Jul 2024)
Exact quote
We currently estimate that CrowdStrike’s update affected 8.5 million Windows devices, or less than one percent of all Windows machines.
$380 million
Delta Air Lines estimated the CrowdStrike outage cost it about $380 million in revenue from roughly 7,000 cancelled flights over five days in July 2024.
Delta Air Lines · Delta Air Lines Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2024 (Oct 2024)
Exact quote
We estimate that this disruption led to a direct revenue impact of approximately $380 million related to approximately 7,000 flight cancellations over five days, which reduced our expected year-over-year capacity growth in the quarter by approximately 1.5 percentage points.
$170 million
Delta booked about $170 million of additional operating expenses from the July 2024 outage and recovery, mostly customer reimbursements and crew costs.
Delta Air Lines · Delta Air Lines Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2024 (Oct 2024)
Exact quote
The outage and operational recovery resulted in approximately $170 million of additional operating expenses primarily due to customer expense reimbursements and crew-related costs.
£1B
A 24-hour outage of the AWS eu-west-1 region could cause about £1 billion of losses for UK organizations, before downstream effects, according to Parametrix modeling.
Parametrix · The Cost of Downtime: UK Exposure to Cloud Infrastructure Failure (Jul 2026)
Exact quote
A 24-hour outage of AWS eu-west-1 could generate an estimated £1B in losses (excluding downstream impacts)
80%
More than 80% of FTSE 100 companies and more than 60% of all UK organizations depend on cloud infrastructure, according to Parametrix.
Parametrix · The Cost of Downtime: UK Exposure to Cloud Infrastructure Failure (Jul 2026)
Exact quote
More than 80% of FTSE 100 and more than 60% of all UK organisations are cloud dependent

Downtime from breaches and ransomware

Cyberattacks are now one of the main causes of extended downtime, and their costs are reported separately from operational outages. IBM's breach cost includes detection, response, notification and lost business, while Sophos isolates the cost of recovering from ransomware without the ransom itself. Recovery times are improving, but the bills remain in the millions for the organizations surveyed.

Average ransomware recovery cost excluding ransom ($ millions)

Mean recovery cost reported by organizations hit by ransomware in Sophos surveys, 2024 and 2025.

$2.73

$1.53

20242025

Source: Sophos, The State of Ransomware 2025

$4.99 million
The global average cost of a data breach reached $4.99 million in 2026, a record high and 12% more than a year earlier, according to IBM and the Ponemon Institute.
IBM · Cost of a Data Breach Report 2026 (2026)
Exact quote
4.99M The global average cost of a data breach, in USD, a 12% increase over last year and a record high—driven by higher detection, escalation and lost business costs.
$1.93 million
Organizations that make extensive use of AI and automation in security save $1.93 million per breach compared with those that use none (IBM, 2026).
IBM · Cost of a Data Breach Report 2026 (2026)
Exact quote
1.93M Cost savings, in USD, from extensive use of AI and automation in security, compared to organizations using none.
$1.53 million
The average cost to recover from a ransomware attack, excluding any ransom, was $1.53 million in 2025, down from $2.73 million in 2024, according to Sophos.
Sophos · The State of Ransomware 2025 (Jun 2025)
Exact quote
The average (mean) cost to recover from a ransomware attack (excluding any ransom payment) dropped by 44% over the last year, coming in at $1.53 million, down from $2.73 million in 2024.
53%
53% of ransomware victims fully recovered within a week in 2025, up from 35% in 2024 (Sophos).
Sophos · The State of Ransomware 2025 (Jun 2025)
Exact quote
At the same time, over half of victims (53%) were recovered within a week, a significant jump from the 35% reported in 2024.
52%
57% of ransom demands and 52% of ransom payments were for $1 million or more in Sophos's 2025 survey.
Sophos · The State of Ransomware 2025 (Jun 2025)
Exact quote
While encouraging, it’s important to keep in mind that 57% of ransom demands and 52% of payments were for $1 million or more.
85%
Victims that paid a ransom paid 85% of the initial demand on average, based on 826 organizations in Sophos's 2025 survey.
Sophos · The State of Ransomware 2025 (Jun 2025)
Exact quote
826 organizations that paid the ransom shared both the initial demand and their actual payment, revealing that they paid, on average, 85% of the initial ransom demand.

Uptime guarantees and resilience budgets

Cloud SLAs promise high availability but cap the remedy at service credits against the monthly bill, which rarely matches the business loss. Observability spending is one of the few resilience costs with a measured payoff in survey data, and most organizations plan to spend more on resilience. New rules such as the EU's DORA and NIS2 add a compliance cost on top, and most companies say they are not ready.

99.99%
AWS commits to a Monthly Uptime Percentage of at least 99.99% for Amazon EC2 instances deployed across two or more availability zones in a region.
Amazon Web Services · Amazon Compute Service Level Agreement (2026)
Exact quote
Region-Level SLA For Amazon EC2 with all running instances deployed concurrently across two or more AZs in the same region (or at least two regions if there is only one AZ in a given region), AWS will use commercially reasonable efforts to make Amazon EC2 available for each AWS region with a Monthly Uptime Percentage of at least 99.99%, in each case during any monthly billing cycle (the “Region-Level SLA”).
99.5%
A single Amazon EC2 instance carries a lower uptime commitment of 99.5% per monthly billing cycle.
Amazon Web Services · Amazon Compute Service Level Agreement (2026)
Exact quote
For each individual Amazon EC2 instance (“Single EC2 Instance”), AWS will use commercially reasonable efforts to make the Single EC2 Instance available with an Instance-Level Uptime Percentage of at least 99.5%, in each case during any monthly billing cycle (the “Instance-Level SLA”).
$1 million
Organizations with full-stack observability report high-impact outages costing $1 million per hour on average, half the $2 million per hour reported by those without it (New Relic, 2025).
New Relic · New Relic Study Reveals Businesses Face an Annual Median Cost of $76 Million from High-Impact IT Outages (Sep 2025)
Exact quote
For respondents with full-stack observability, the research shows the cost of significant IT outages is cut in half, with high-impact outages averaging $1 million per hour versus $2 million per hour for those without full-stack observability.
52 minutes
ITIC notes that four nines, or 99.99% availability, still allows about 52 minutes of unplanned downtime per server per year.
Information Technology Intelligence Consulting (ITIC) · ITIC 2024 Hourly Cost of Downtime Part 2 (Sep 2024)
Exact quote
The so-called 99.99% or “four nines” of reliability equals 52 minutes of unplanned per server/per annum downtime for mission critical systems and applications or, 4.33 minutes of unplanned monthly outages for servers, applications, and networks.
77%
77% of organizations plan to increase operational resilience budgets over the next 12 months, according to PagerDuty's 2026 survey.
PagerDuty · PagerDuty Report Reveals Some Organizations Lose More than $1 Million Per Hour During Unplanned Disruptions (Mar 2026)
Exact quote
While 77% of organizations plan to increase operational resilience budgets over the next 12 months, companies reporting revenue growth are investing at significantly higher rates (82%) than underperformers (62%).
79%
79% of companies say they are not ready to comply with operational resilience rules such as DORA and NIS2, according to Cockroach Labs.
Cockroach Labs · The State of Resilience 2025 (Oct 2024)
Exact quote
79% of companies admit they're not ready to comply with new operational resilience regulations like DORA and NIS2.

FAQ

How much does IT downtime cost per hour?

For most large organizations it is several hundred thousand dollars per hour. ITIC found an hour costs more than $300,000 for over 90% of mid-size and large enterprises, and PagerDuty's 2026 survey found 68% of organizations lose more than $300,000 per hour during incidents. Splunk's 2026 average of $15,000 per minute works out to $900,000 per hour.

How much does downtime cost per minute?

Splunk's 2026 Hidden Costs of Downtime study puts the average at $15,000 per minute for Global 2000 companies. Smaller businesses lose far less: in ITIC's survey, nearly all firms reporting under $100,000 per hour had fewer than 10 employees.

What is the total cost of downtime for large companies?

Splunk estimates $600 billion a year across Global 2000 companies in 2026, up 50% from $400 billion in 2024. That includes $95 million of lost revenue per organization on average, plus fines, ransom payments and recovery work.

What did the CrowdStrike outage cost?

Microsoft estimated that the July 2024 update affected 8.5 million Windows devices. Delta Air Lines alone reported about $380 million in lost revenue from about 7,000 cancelled flights and about $170 million in extra operating expenses in its SEC filing.

Do cloud SLAs cover downtime losses?

No. AWS commits to 99.99% monthly uptime for EC2 deployed across availability zones, but the remedy is a service credit calculated as a percentage of the monthly bill. Splunk found missed SLA penalties cost large companies $16 million a year in 2024, far less than the $49 million in lost revenue.

Methodology note

We selected figures that put a price on IT downtime or describe how often it happens, and took each one from the organization that ran the survey, analyzed the incidents or filed the disclosure. Most cost figures are self-reported estimates from surveys of mid-size and large organizations, so they measure perceived loss and differ in what they include: Splunk counts revenue, fines, penalties and ransom, ITIC, New Relic and PagerDuty ask for an hourly figure, and IBM measures data breaches rather than outages. Samples, regions and years differ, so compare figures within a source rather than across sources. The ITIC and Splunk 2024 data and the CrowdStrike figures are older than 2025 and are included because no newer public equivalent exists. Every quote is re-fetched from the source by our checker. See how we rank and verify.

Sources

1Amazon Web Services: Amazon Compute Service Level Agreement
2Cockroach Labs: The State of Resilience 2025
3Delta Air Lines: Delta Air Lines Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2024
4IBM: Cost of a Data Breach Report 2026
5Information Technology Intelligence Consulting (ITIC): ITIC 2024 Hourly Cost of Downtime Report Part 1
6Information Technology Intelligence Consulting (ITIC): ITIC 2024 Hourly Cost of Downtime Part 2
7Microsoft: Helping our customers through the CrowdStrike outage
8New Relic: New Relic Study Reveals Businesses Face an Annual Median Cost of $76 Million from High-Impact IT Outages
9New Relic: 2026 Observability Forecast
10PagerDuty: PagerDuty Report Reveals Some Organizations Lose More than $1 Million Per Hour During Unplanned Disruptions
11Parametrix: Cloud Outage Risk Report 2025
12Parametrix: The Cost of Downtime: UK Exposure to Cloud Infrastructure Failure
13Sophos: The State of Ransomware 2025
14Splunk (Cisco): The $600 Billion Wake-up Call: New Splunk Research Reveals Downtime is a Systemic Business Crisis
15Splunk (Cisco): .conf24: Splunk Report Shows Downtime Costs Global 2000 Companies $400B Annually
16Uptime Institute: Uptime Announces Annual Outage Analysis Report 2026
17Uptime Institute: Uptime Announces Annual Outage Analysis Report 2025

Cite this page

Rankozo. (2026, November 4). IT Downtime Cost Statistics 2026. https://rankozo.com/it-downtime-cost-statistics

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