Tool
IT support cost calculator
Work out what your IT should cost per employee per year, using real UK benchmarks for identity, devices, SaaS and support. Six questions, no email, no gate.
Benchmarks from Gartner, Zylo and current vendor list pricing. Every figure the tool uses is published further down this page.
Estimator
Estimate your annual IT spend
Six steps. Your team size, industry, device mix, what you already run, what you need and what you are trying to fix. The running total updates as you go.
How many people?
Employees, contractors, and anyone who needs IT access.
Startup · 5-50 employees
Most companies this size run IT ad-hoc. A lightweight retainer prevents the problems that cost real money later.
These figures are based on published industry benchmarks and typical market rates. They are not a substitute for a proper assessment. Actual costs vary significantly by vendor, contract terms, scope, and configuration.
Here is what fixing this actually costs
Support and endpoints are the two lines that move the total most. Our managed IT services page sets out what a retained team covers and how it is scoped, and device management does the same for MDM, enrolment and patching.
Benchmarks
What UK companies actually spend on IT per employee
Annual cost per employee, in pounds, for each layer of a normal cloud-first IT stack. Ranges narrow as headcount grows because licensing tiers and support ratios improve with volume. Hardware purchase is amortised over four years.
| Category | Startup5-50 staff | Growth51-200 staff | Scale-up201-500 staff | Enterprise501-2,500+ staff |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Identity & Access ManagementSSO, MFA, provisioning, access reviews, joiners/leavers | £100-£200 | £80-£170 | £60-£140 | £50-£120 |
| Device ManagementMDM, zero-touch deployment, OS updates, compliance baselines | £120-£240 | £90-£200 | £70-£160 | £55-£130 |
| Endpoint SecurityAntivirus, EDR, threat detection, security patching | £40-£120 | £35-£100 | £30-£85 | £25-£70 |
| SaaS & LicensingLicence management, renewals, vendor negotiation, procurement | £200-£400 | £180-£360 | £150-£300 | £120-£260 |
| Email & ProductivityMicrosoft 365, Google Workspace, collaboration platform management | £150-£300 | £130-£280 | £120-£250 | £100-£220 |
| IT Support & HelpdeskDay-to-day support, monitoring, incident response, escalation | £150-£300 | £120-£250 | £90-£200 | £70-£170 |
| Backup & Data ProtectionCloud backup, disaster recovery, data retention, business continuity | £50-£120 | £40-£100 | £30-£80 | £25-£65 |
| Workflow AutomationOnboarding flows, approvals, API integrations, AI workflows | £30-£100 | £25-£80 | £20-£65 | £15-£50 |
| IT Strategy & CIORoadmaps, compliance planning, budgets, board reporting | £50-£150 | £45-£130 | £40-£110 | £35-£95 |
| Full stack, all categories | £890-£1,930 | £745-£1,670 | £610-£1,390 | £495-£1,180 |
Most companies do not run every category at once. A typical 60-person team lands between £550 and £1,100 per employee per year once identity, devices, SaaS and support are counted properly.
Worked example
Lean stack versus Microsoft stack, at 50 people
Both of these are defensible choices. The difference is not really the licence line, it is the support load you inherit. Figures are indicative annual totals for identity, devices and endpoint security at 50 employees.
Lean stack
Google Workspace + Okta + IRU + SentinelOne
- Per user, per month
- £28-42
- Annual total
- £16,800-25,200
- Support ratio
- 1 engineer per 5,400 Macs
Microsoft stack
Microsoft 365 E3/E5 + Intune + Entra ID P1
- Per user, per month
- £33-57
- Annual total
- £19,800-34,200
- Support ratio
- 1 engineer per 242 PCs
Support ratios come from IBM's 200,000-device study. They are the reason a Mac fleet with a higher sticker price often costs less over four years. If you are weighing the management platforms directly, see how we choose between Intune, Jamf and IRU on our device management page.
Methodology
How we calculate this
The estimator starts from published per-employee ranges, then adjusts for your industry, your device mix and how much of your infrastructure still runs on-premise. Nothing is invented. Where a figure comes from vendor list pricing, we say so, because real contracts land below list.
Sources
- Gartner IT Key Metrics Data
- IT spend as a share of revenue and per-employee spend by industry and company size.
- Zylo SaaS Management Index
- Average applications per company and per-employee SaaS spend, including shadow IT.
- IBM 200,000-device deployment study
- Support ratios and four-year total cost of ownership for Mac versus Windows fleets.
- Vendor list pricing
- Published UK list prices for Okta, Microsoft, Google, Jamf, IRU and endpoint security vendors.
What the ranges exclude
- Salaries for in-house IT staff, unless you tell the estimator you employ them.
- Line-of-business software specific to your sector, such as a legal case system or an EHR.
- Cloud hosting for products you build and sell. This is business IT, not product infrastructure.
- One-off project fees. Those are quoted separately once scope is clear.
Treat the output as a budgeting range, not a quote. Two companies the same size can differ by 40 percent depending on contract terms and how much technical debt they are carrying.
Questions
IT cost questions, answered plainly
- How much should a company spend on IT per employee?
- Most UK companies spend between £550 and £1,100 per employee per year on core business IT: identity, device management, SaaS licensing, endpoint security and support. Smaller teams sit at the top of that range because they get worse licensing tiers and cannot spread support across enough people.
- What is the SSO tax?
- The SSO tax is the premium SaaS vendors charge to put single sign-on behind a higher pricing tier. About half the tools a company buys do this. Budget £3 to £5 per user per year for every SSO-capable tool you connect, on top of your identity provider licence.
- How much does MDM cost per device?
- Apple device management is priced per device per month: Mosyle is typically £2-4, IRU £4-6 and Jamf Pro £6-10. Microsoft Intune is included with certain Microsoft 365 plans, which makes it effectively free for many Windows fleets. MDM is priced per device, not per employee.
- Is a Mac fleet more expensive than Windows?
- Higher to buy, usually cheaper to own. IBM found Macs saved between $273 and $543 per device over four years, driven by support load (one engineer per 5,400 Macs versus one per 242 PCs) and residual value at refresh (30 to 40 percent versus 10 to 15 percent).
- How accurate is this IT cost calculator?
- It produces a budgeting range, not a quote. The inputs are published benchmarks from Gartner and Zylo plus vendor list pricing, adjusted for your industry, device mix and infrastructure model. Real contracts land below list, so treat the low end as achievable with decent negotiation.
- Do I have to give you my email to use it?
- No. There is no gate, no form and no email capture. You see the full estimate on screen. If you want the numbers pressure-tested against your actual contracts, you can start a chat with an engineer or book a scoping call.
- How many SaaS tools does a normal company have?
- More than it thinks. Companies typically undercount their SaaS estate by two to three times, because tools bought on a team card never reach the IT inventory. A 100-person company commonly runs 60 to 90 applications, with 20 to 30 percent of the seats going unused.