Cloud & AWS · Financial planning

Is moving to the cloud worth the cost?

Compare on-premises operating costs with estimated cloud spending. Understand the annual difference, migration payback and 3- or 5-year total cost of ownership.

Free to useNo AI or APIBreak-even estimateTransparent formulas

Compare your infrastructure costs

Enter annual costs for your current environment and expected monthly cloud spending.

01 / INPUTS

Currency

Comparison period

Current on-premises costs (per year)

Hardware / server depreciationAnnualized purchase or lease cost.

Licensing & subscriptions

Electricity & facilities

Maintenance & support

Infrastructure administration / laborCount only the labor cost that could actually change after migration.

Estimated cloud costs (per month)

Cloud services estimateCompute, storage, data, networking, etc.

Cloud operations & support

Backup, security & other

One-time migration costTools, consulting, training, downtime.

For a service-by-service AWS estimate, use the AWS Cost Calculator first, then enter that monthly estimate here. Do not assume migration automatically reduces costs.

All math runs locally in your browser. No cloud pricing or external data is fetched automatically.

Your cost comparison

Side-by-side costs based on the assumptions above.

02 / RESULTS

Estimated annual operating difference—

Positive means estimated cloud operations cost less per year before migration expenses.

Monthly on-prem baseline—

Monthly cloud estimate—

One-time migration cost—

Estimated payback period—

Total cost of ownership

On-prem

—

Cloud

—

On-prem 3-year TCO—

Cloud 3-year TCO + migration—

Net estimated savings (negative = added cost)—

Return vs. migration investment—

Assumes flat operating costs through the selected period, with a one-time migration outlay at the beginning. Excludes growth, discount rates, tax implications, and changes in service levels. Payback is shown only if recurring cloud costs are lower. ROI is net savings divided by the one-time migration cost; if that cost is zero, ROI is not defined.

The method

Make cloud cost tradeoffs visible

Build your baseline

Include real on-prem infrastructure costs: annualized hardware, licenses, utilities, maintenance and relevant staff time.

Estimate cloud operations

Enter your full expected recurring bill, including networking, backup, management, and security where applicable.

Compare over time

Add migration investment and compare three or five years of total costs. Use payback only if recurring savings are positive.

Common questions

Cloud migration ROI FAQs

What does this calculator include in ROI?

It compares your estimated on-prem recurring operating cost to recurring cloud costs across the chosen period, then subtracts one-time migration expense. ROI is net savings divided by migration investment when that investment is greater than zero.

Why can the result be negative?

A negative difference means the cloud option is estimated to cost more under your inputs. This can happen with steady workloads, unexpected networking expenses, added labor or high migration costs.

How is the payback period calculated?

One-time migration cost divided by monthly recurring savings. If monthly cloud operations cost at least as much as on-prem, there is no positive operational payback under these assumptions.

Does this include AWS real-time prices?

No. Enter an estimate based on your region and services. Mavensum's AWS Cost Calculator can help build a separate monthly estimate, which you can paste into this comparison.

What other costs should I consider?

Include security, networking, data transfer, staff, training, licensing, performance changes, compliance, support, availability and possible remaining on-prem costs. This simple model does not automatically forecast future price changes.

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