About ITBudgetCalculator.com
An independent reference for IT budget benchmarks in May 2026. Percentage-of-revenue ranges by industry and company size, recommended five-category allocation, cybersecurity and cloud-spending breakdowns, and the 2026 Gartner spending-forecast context. No vendor relationships, no affiliate links, no quote forms.
Why this site exists
IT budget benchmarks are fragmented across paywalled analyst reports (Gartner subscriptions cost $30,000+ per seat), gated vendor research (Flexera, Deloitte CIO Survey, Spiceworks State of IT all gate the full data behind email forms), and one-off industry articles that age fast. A CFO trying to validate that 6.5 percent of revenue is the right IT spend for a $40M financial services firm needs three subscriptions and four hours of cross-referencing to triangulate an answer.
This site reduces those scattered sources to a single comparable benchmark with the formula shown. The audit goal is reproducibility: every percentage, salary range, and growth rate on this site should be re-derivable from the named public source. Where two sources disagree the range is widened to cover both, not narrowed by picking a favourite.
Cross-category math is the other gap. Five-category allocation, cybersecurity sub-allocation (40 percent software, 30 percent personnel, 15 percent hardware, 15 percent services), cloud share of infrastructure, and the AI-spending wave layered on top all need to reconcile. The methodology page shows how the math holds together so finance teams can re-run the allocation against their own assumptions.
Who builds this
ITBudgetCalculator.com is built and maintained by Oliver Wakefield-Smith at Digital Signet, an independent reference-content studio. The site is part of a portfolio of cost-reference properties that includes cicdcost.com, monitoringcost.com, platformengineeringcost.com, egresscost.com, and databreachcost.com.
The sister sites cover the line-item economics behind the headline IT budget number: CI/CD per-minute rates, monitoring stack pricing, platform-engineering team cost, cloud egress charges, and breach-cost ranges. ITBudgetCalculator.com is the top-of-funnel benchmark layer; the sister sites are the per-category cost-out detail.
Editorial position
This is a reference site, not a reseller, not a managed-services lead-generation property, and not a consulting funnel. Source links go directly to the analyst, vendor, or government statistics page without affiliate or UTM tracking. Benchmark tables order industries by published percentage range, not by any commercial relationship.
Where an analyst source disagrees with another (for example, Flexera reports SaaS waste at 30 percent while Productiv reports 25 percent), both numbers are shown with the source named. Where a benchmark range is genuinely contested in the public literature (for example, security as a percentage of IT for SMBs has shifted from 10.2 percent to 14.8 percent in four years), the trajectory is shown rather than a single point estimate.
What this site covers
Editorial principles
Every percentage, dollar range, and growth rate on this site traces back to a named industry source: Gartner IT Spending Forecast press releases, Flexera State of Tech Spend, Deloitte CIO Survey, Spiceworks State of IT, IDC Worldwide IT Spending Guides, or US Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS for salary inputs. No private data, no NDA leaks.
There are no sponsored slots, no premium positioning, no pay-to-rank. Industry order in benchmark tables is determined by published percentage or company-size band, not by any commercial relationship.
Outbound links to vendor pricing pages, analyst reports, and government statistics sources are plain unaffiliated URLs. There are no email-gated downloads, no quote forms, and no sales redirects on this site.
Benchmarks are re-verified against published source data on the first business week of each month. The last verified label currently reads May 2026.
The verification date is held in one constant (LAST_VERIFIED_DATE) imported by every page. Footer text, Article JSON-LD dateModified, and visible labels all read from that single source so cosmetic refreshes are structurally impossible.
Percentage ranges are shown as ranges, not as point estimates, because real IT budgets vary by industry, company size, growth stage, and digital maturity. Where two analyst sources disagree the wider range is shown with both ends sourced; the calculator output is an estimate, not a prescription.
Methodology in brief
Percentage-of-revenue ranges come from Gartner IT Spending Forecast press releases, Flexera State of Tech Spend, Deloitte CIO Survey, and the Spiceworks Ziff Davis State of IT report. IT staffing salary inputs come from US Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics. Industry-vertical splits cross-reference IDC Worldwide IT Spending Guides. The five-category allocation (28-32 / 26-30 / 20-24 / 10-14 / 7-10) is the standard model used by mid-market CFO advisory practices and is shown as a range, not a prescription.
For full source provenance, calculation framework, in-scope and out-of-scope coverage, and the corrections process, see the methodology page.
Contact and corrections
Spotted a stale benchmark, a missing analyst source, or a recently published update we have not caught? Email [email protected] with the page URL and the source you would like cited. Substantive corrections are typically actioned within five business days.
Disclosures
- ●No affiliate links or referral fees on any vendor URL on this site.
- ●No email-gated downloads, quote forms, or sales redirects.
- ●Not affiliated with Gartner, Flexera, Deloitte, Spiceworks, IDC, CompTIA, or any vendor referenced in the benchmarks.
- ●Calculator outputs and benchmark ranges are estimates; production IT budget decisions depend on industry, growth stage, compliance scope, and digital maturity factors not fully captured here.