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20 Mar, 2026
Free Tool
Database Storage Capacity Planner
Plan your database storage requirements and forecast growth over 1, 3, and 5 years — including backups, replicas, indexes, and transaction logs.
Enter Your Details
Total current size of your database data files
Average monthly growth as a percentage (e.g. 5 = 5% per month)
How long data must be retained before archival or deletion
Total number of database instances to plan for
Average size of a single row in bytes (used for index estimation)
Storage Costs by Provider & Tier
| Storage Tier | AWS (per GB/mo) | Azure (per GB/mo) | GCP (per GB/mo) | On-Premise* |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SSD (gp3 / Premium) | £0.07 | £0.08 | £0.07 | £0.04 |
| Provisioned IOPS SSD | £0.10 | £0.12 | £0.11 | £0.06 |
| HDD (st1 / Standard) | £0.04 | £0.04 | £0.03 | £0.02 |
| Archive / Cold | £0.01 | £0.01 | £0.01 | £0.01 |
| Backup Storage | £0.02 | £0.02 | £0.02 | £0.02 |
| Cross-Region Replica | £0.09 | £0.10 | £0.09 | N/A |
*On-premise costs are amortised over 3 years including hardware and power. All prices are per GB per month (excl. VAT), typical UK pricing as of 2025. Volume discounts apply at scale. Talk to our database team
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Frequently asked questions
Storage planning starts with your current data volume, then applies your business's typical growth rate, often 15-30% annually for transactional data, to project needs 1-3 years ahead, plus headroom for backups and indexes. This planner uses your current usage and growth rate to forecast when you'll need to scale up.
Most UK SMEs see database growth of 15-30% per year as transaction volumes and customer records increase, though data-heavy businesses like e-commerce or logging-intensive applications can see 50%+ annual growth. Budgeting storage costs against this growth rate upfront avoids unexpected scaling costs later.
Running out of storage typically causes failed write operations, application errors, and potential downtime while capacity is urgently added, which is far more disruptive and costly than planned scaling. Most managed cloud database services can auto-scale storage, but this usually comes at a premium versus provisioning ahead of need.
Most UK SMEs plan capacity 12-18 months ahead based on historical growth trends, giving enough lead time to budget for upgrades without over-provisioning too early and paying for unused capacity. This planner projects your growth curve forward so you can see roughly when your current capacity will be exhausted.