Error Budget Calculator

Track allowed failures, downtime minutes, and request health. See burn rate, consumption, and release risk. Plan incidents, launches, and freezes using dependable service signals.

Calculator Inputs

3 columns large • 2 medium • 1 mobile

Enter your SLO window, request counts, and downtime data. Results appear above this form after submission.

Example Data Table

This worked example shows how the calculator behaves with a realistic 30-day SRE window.

Service SLO Window Total Requests Failed Slow Weight Downtime Allowed Bad Events Actual Bad Events Burn Rate
Checkout API 99.90% 30 days 2,000,000 850 400 100% 18 min 2,000 1,250 0.63x
In this example, 62.50% of the request budget is consumed, leaving 750 weighted bad events for future releases.

Formula Used

1) Error Budget Percentage

Error Budget % = 100 − SLO Target %

2) Allowed Bad Events

Allowed Bad Events = Total Requests × (Error Budget % ÷ 100)

3) Weighted Slow Requests

Weighted Slow Requests = Slow Requests × (Slow Weight % ÷ 100)

4) Actual Bad Events

Actual Bad Events = Failed Requests + Weighted Slow Requests

5) Observed Availability

Observed Availability % = ((Total Requests − Actual Bad Events) ÷ Total Requests) × 100

6) Event Budget Consumed

Event Consumed % = (Actual Bad Events ÷ Allowed Bad Events) × 100

7) Allowed Downtime

Allowed Downtime = Effective Minutes × (Error Budget % ÷ 100)

Effective Minutes = Window Minutes − Planned Maintenance Minutes

8) Burn Rate

Burn Rate = Actual Error Rate ÷ Allowed Error Rate

9) Overall Budget View

Overall Consumed % = max(Event Consumed %, Downtime Consumed %)

Overall Remaining % = 100 − Overall Consumed %

How to Use This Calculator

Step 1: Enter the service name and your SLO target, such as 99.9%.

Step 2: Set the measurement window in days, usually 7, 28, or 30.

Step 3: Add total requests, failed requests, and slow requests for the same period.

Step 4: Choose how much slow traffic should count against the budget.

Step 5: Enter downtime minutes and exclude any planned maintenance minutes.

Step 6: Add incident count and release count for a better release-pressure view.

Step 7: Click Calculate Error Budget to see the result summary above the form.

Step 8: Use the CSV or PDF buttons to export the metrics.

Frequently Asked Questions

1) What is an error budget?

An error budget is the amount of unreliability your service can spend while still meeting its SLO. It helps teams balance feature delivery and reliability work.

2) Why include slow requests?

Many teams treat severe latency breaches as user-visible failures. Weighting slow requests lets you reflect that impact without always counting every slow request as a full error.

3) What does burn rate show?

Burn rate compares actual error spending with the allowed rate. A burn rate above 1 means the budget is disappearing faster than the SLO can safely support.

4) Why subtract planned maintenance?

Planned maintenance is often excluded from monitored time because it is expected and controlled. Removing it gives a cleaner view of unexpected reliability loss.

5) What window should I use?

Use the same window your team uses for SLO reporting. Thirty days is common, but weekly windows can be useful for faster operational decisions.

6) Should downtime and request failures both be tracked?

Yes. Request-level data captures user impact during degraded service, while downtime captures complete service unavailability. Comparing both gives a more conservative reliability picture.

7) What does incidents per release mean?

It estimates delivery pressure by comparing incidents with release volume. Higher values may signal weak testing, risky deployment patterns, or insufficient rollback controls.

8) When should releases be slowed down?

Slow releases when budget consumption is high, burn rate exceeds 1, or incidents spike. That usually means reliability work should take priority over risky change volume.

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Important Note: All the Calculators listed in this site are for educational purpose only and we do not guarentee the accuracy of results. Please do consult with other sources as well.