What does technical debt cost your organization?
Calculate the hidden annual costs in under 2 minutes.
Your Technical Debt Cost
Total Annual Cost
€316,909 — €428,757
per year
Cost per Developer
€31,691 — €42,876
per developer / year
Budget Waste
~50%
of developer budget
Cost Breakdown
Impact Chain
The impact chain shows how technical debt creates cascading costs. Thicker arrows = higher cost share.
Benchmark Comparison
Compare your values against industry averages. The green zone shows the healthy target range.
3-Year Projection: Cost of Inaction
Without intervention, technical debt costs compound annually through accumulation effects.
Based on 15–30% annual cost compounding. Sources: Stripe Developer Coefficient 2018, Accelerate / Forsgren et al. 2018.
How we calculate
Input Classification
Each input value falls into one of three categories:
| Input | Type | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| Team Size | Measured | Direct input — number of developers |
| Firefighting Time | Measured | Direct input — percentage of unplanned work |
| Deploy Frequency | Measured | Direct input — selected from options |
| CI Wait Time | Measured | Direct input — minutes per pipeline run |
| Single-Point Systems | Measured | Direct input — systems only one person understands |
| Onboarding Duration | Measured | Direct input — weeks until productive |
| Region | Measured | Determines salary and hourly rate assumptions (see table below) |
| Hourly Rate | Estimated | Derived from region and industry averages |
| Replacement Cost | Estimated | Estimated at 1.5x annual salary (SHRM benchmark) |
| Frustration Attrition | Benchmarked | Benchmark: 25% increased attrition probability |
Salary Assumptions by Region
Based on industry averages for software developers (full-time):
| Region | Annual Salary (avg) | Hourly Rate | Currency |
|---|---|---|---|
| DACH (DE/AT/CH) | €75,000 | €43 | € |
| Western Europe | €65,000 | €37 | € |
| Eastern Europe | €35,000 | €20 | € |
| United Kingdom | £60,000 | £34 | £ |
| USA | $120,000 | $69 | $ |
Base calculation: 1,720 working hours per year (industry standard).
Range Calculation
We use +/-15% around the base value to express estimation uncertainty. No single model can precisely quantify hidden costs — the range makes the inherent imprecision transparent.
Compounding Effect
Technical debt does not grow linearly — it creates cascading costs. We model 15-30% annual cost growth based on:
- Stripe Developer Coefficient (2018): Developers lose 42% of their time to technical debt and maintenance
- Accelerate / Forsgren et al. (2018): High technical debt correlates with exponentially increasing lead times
The lower value (15%) is conservative, the upper (30%) applies to organizations with growing codebases and no active refactoring.
Sources
All benchmarks and industry averages are based on cited sources:
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