RTO Calculator for Cloud Recovery Planning

Enter your recovery steps

Use minutes for each step. The calculator adds a buffer and outputs total RTO.

Detection time (minutes)

Monitoring → alert acknowledged.

Triage & decision (minutes)

Assess impact, approve failover, assign owners.

Restore / rebuild (minutes)

Boot new capacity, restore backups, rehydrate storage.

Data validation (minutes)

Integrity checks, migrations, replication catch-up.

DNS / traffic cutover (minutes)

Routing switch, TTL effects, load balancer updates.

Smoke tests (minutes)

Buffer (percent)

Covers uncertainty, coordination, and surprises.

Target RTO (hours)

Set to 0 if you only want an estimate.

Downtime cost per hour (optional)

Revenue loss, penalties, labor, and reputational impact.

After calculation, download buttons appear above this form.

Scenario	Step minutes (Detect/Triage/Restore/Validate/Cutover/Test)	Buffer	Total RTO	Target	Status
Managed failover	5 / 10 / 35 / 15 / 10 / 10	10%	1h 31m	2h	On track
Backup restore	10 / 20 / 90 / 45 / 20 / 25	15%	4h 4m	3h	At risk
Region rebuild	15 / 30 / 180 / 60 / 30 / 30	20%	6h 21m	6h	At risk

Use this table as a starting point, then replace values with your runbook timings.

Base recovery time

Base Minutes = Detection + Triage + Restore + Validation + Cutover + Tests

Total Minutes = Base Minutes × (1 + Buffer% ÷ 100)

Target and cost model

Total Hours = Total Minutes ÷ 60

Estimated Downtime Cost = Total Hours × Cost per Hour

Note: This is a planning estimate. Real incidents vary by workload complexity, dependencies, and team availability.

Time each recovery step during drills or past incidents, then enter minutes per step.
Add a buffer for coordination delays and unknowns, usually 10–30%.
Set your target RTO to see whether the plan meets requirements.
If you exceed target, reduce the longest step first, then retest.
Export CSV or PDF to share assumptions with stakeholders and auditors.