Rex says
Money math without the spreadsheet headache. Plug in your numbers and I'll show you exactly where the dollars land.
Try a scenario
Click to load — tweak from there.Inputs
Result
Estimated DR monthly cost
$4,000
Transactions at risk per failure (RPO exposure)
1,250
Annualized DR cost
$48,000
Cost multiplier vs backup-only
5.0
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How to use this
- 1Enter baseline backup-only dr cost ($/mo).
- 2Enter target dr tier.
- 3Enter transactions per hour.
- 4Enter target rpo (minutes).
- 5Read your estimated dr monthly cost on the right — it updates as you type.
- 6Hit Share to keep the scenario or send it to someone.
About this calculator
Recovery Point Objective (how much data you can afford to lose) and Recovery Time Objective (how long you can afford to be down) directly drive disaster recovery architecture cost, and the relationship is steep, not linear — going from daily backups to near-zero data loss can mean a 5-10x jump in infrastructure spend. This calculator maps common RPO/RTO tiers to a relative cost multiplier against a baseline backup-only DR posture, then applies that multiplier to your baseline monthly DR infrastructure cost, so you can see the cost of each tier before committing to an RPO/RTO target in a DR runbook or contract. It also computes the expected annual loss exposure at your chosen RPO — the amount of data or transaction volume you'd lose in a worst-case failure right before a scheduled backup — which is the number that should actually drive the RPO decision rather than picking a round number.
Worked example
Using the values the calculator loads with:
Inputs
- Baseline backup-only DR cost: 800 $/mo
- Target DR tier: Warm standby (RPO minutes, RTO <1h)
- Transactions per hour: 5000
- Target RPO: 15 minutes
Results
- Estimated DR monthly cost: $4,000
- Transactions at risk per failure (RPO exposure): 1,250
- Annualized DR cost: $48,000
- Cost multiplier vs backup-only: 5
What each field means
Inputs
- Baseline backup-only DR cost ($/mo)
- The baseline backup-only dr cost used in the calculation, measured in $/mo. Starts at 800 $/mo so you have a working example on load.
- Target DR tier
- Pick the option that matches your situation — the maths changes per option. Choices: Backup & restore (RPO hours, RTO 24h+), Pilot light (RPO ~1h, RTO hours), Warm standby (RPO minutes, RTO <1h), Multi-site active/active (RPO ~0, RTO seconds).
- Transactions per hour
- The transactions per hour used in the calculation. Starts at 5000 so you have a working example on load.
- Target RPO (minutes)
- The target rpo used in the calculation, measured in minutes. Starts at 15 minutes so you have a working example on load.
Results
- Estimated DR monthly cost
- Returned as a money amount in US dollars and shown as the headline result. It recalculates instantly whenever you change an input, so you can compare scenarios without reloading.
- Transactions at risk per failure (RPO exposure)
- Returned as a whole number. It recalculates instantly whenever you change an input, so you can compare scenarios without reloading.
- Annualized DR cost
- Returned as a money amount in US dollars. It recalculates instantly whenever you change an input, so you can compare scenarios without reloading.
- Cost multiplier vs backup-only
- Returned as a decimal number. It recalculates instantly whenever you change an input, so you can compare scenarios without reloading.
FAQ
How do I pick an RPO/RTO target instead of guessing?
Work backward from business impact: multiply your RPO exposure by revenue or transaction value per unit to get worst-case loss, and compare that to the cost delta between DR tiers from this calculator. If 15 minutes of transaction loss costs less than the jump from pilot-light to warm-standby architecture, backup-and-restore or pilot light is the economically correct choice, not a compromise.
What's the practical difference between pilot light and warm standby?
Pilot light keeps only core infrastructure (databases, key config) running in the DR region at minimal scale, requiring you to scale up compute and app tiers during an actual failover, which takes anywhere from 10 minutes to a few hours. Warm standby runs a scaled-down but fully functional copy of the whole stack continuously, cutting failover to minutes but roughly doubling the always-on infrastructure cost versus pilot light.
Is multi-region active/active ever worth the cost for a mid-size company?
Usually only when downtime cost per minute (see the incident cost calculator) is high enough that even a 5-10 minute RTO gap represents more money than the ongoing multiplier cost of running active/active. For most mid-size SaaS companies, warm standby is the practical ceiling; active/active is typically reserved for payments, trading, or infrastructure-provider-level businesses.
Accuracy and limitations
- Results are estimates before tax, fees, and inflation unless an input explicitly covers them.
- Rates are treated as fixed for the whole period — variable-rate products will drift from this projection.
- This is educational maths, not financial advice. Check anything contractual with the lender or your accountant.
Related tools
Backup Storage & Retention Cost Calculator
Project backup storage growth and cost across a retention policy.
SLA Uptime to Downtime Minutes Calculator
Convert an uptime SLA percentage into allowed downtime minutes.
Incident Cost Per Minute Calculator
Put a real dollar figure on an outage, per minute and in total.
Cite this calculator
Writing about this topic? Grab a citation — every link helps keep these tools free.
RevenueLab. (2026). RPO/RTO Disaster Recovery Cost Calculator. Retrieved from https://www.revenuelab.fyi/toolbox/rpo-rto-cost-calculator
<p>Source: <a href="https://www.revenuelab.fyi/toolbox/rpo-rto-cost-calculator" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RPO/RTO Disaster Recovery Cost Calculator — RevenueLab</a> (2026).</p>
Source: [RPO/RTO Disaster Recovery Cost Calculator — RevenueLab](https://www.revenuelab.fyi/toolbox/rpo-rto-cost-calculator) (2026).