Methodology
How ITBudgetCalculator.com sources, derives, and verifies IT spend benchmarks. Every percentage range, salary input, and growth rate on this site should be re-derivable from a named public source using the framework below.
Sources
Each benchmark on the site cites the named public source of record. Where two sources disagree, the wider range covering both numbers is shown. Where a source sits behind a paywall (Gartner subscription, IDC subscription), the press-release archive is the publicly verifiable proxy.
| Source | Refresh cadence | What we take from it |
|---|---|---|
| Gartner IT Spending Forecast | Quarterly | Headline global IT spending number ($6.39 trillion in 2026, up 14.5% YoY, and $7.35 trillion in 2027, up 15.0%, per the October 2026 press release), 2026 segment splits (data centres $879B +73.8%, IaaS $292B +31.3%, devices $847B +7.2%, software $1.46T +15.2%, IT services $1.56T +4.4%, communications services $1.35T +4.1%), and the worldwide AI spending forecast ($2.7T in 2026, +49.5% YoY, per the September 2026 press release). The press release archive is the public source of record; the underlying Forecast report sits behind the Gartner subscription paywall. |
| Flexera State of Tech Spend | Annual | The by-industry IT spend as a percentage of revenue figures (2019 data, published 2020), the only free source publishing this metric by industry. It covers five industries and its sample skews to large, software-heavy enterprises. It is not the source of the five-category allocation, which is this site's model. |
| Deloitte CIO Survey / Global Tech Leadership Study | Annual | CIO priorities for the year (AI scaling, security investment, FinOps adoption), AI deployment timelines, security budget direction signals, technical-debt reduction priorities. Context only: no Deloitte figure drives a number on this site. The agentic AI deployment figure (64% within 24 months) and the AI investment growth figure (more than 35% a year) on the 2026 pages come from Gartner's 2026 CIO and Technology Executive Survey press release, October 2025. |
| Spiceworks Ziff Davis State of IT | Annual | SMB IT budget breakdowns by hardware / software / cloud / services, per-employee spend ranges in the SMB segment, IT spending year-on-year direction, and SMB allocation shifts across categories. Free public report download. |
| IDC Worldwide IT Spending Guides | Quarterly | IDC's vertical IT spending data sits behind a paid subscription we do not hold, so no IDC figure drives a number on this site. Listed so readers know it exists; the by-industry ranges come from Flexera and Deloitte. |
| US Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS | Annual | Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for IT roles: computer and information systems managers, information security analysts, software developers, network and systems administrators, computer support specialists. Source for the loaded US salary inputs on the staffing-costs page (load multiplier 1.3x base salary for benefits, payroll tax, and overhead). |
| CompTIA IT Industry Outlook | Annual | Industry-trend reference for SMB IT spending direction, hiring patterns, and skills shortage indicators. Used as a secondary cross-reference against Spiceworks State of IT for the SMB segment narrative on /small-business. |
| AWS / Azure / GCP public pricing | On change | The maximum commitment and spot discounts the providers publish, quoted on the cloud-spending page with links: AWS Savings Plans and Azure reserved VM instances up to 72%, Google Cloud committed use discounts up to 55% (up to 70% memory-optimised), AWS Spot up to 90%. Checked October 2026. |
| IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report | Annual | Public-source data breach cost reference ($4.44M global average in the 2025 study, down from $4.88M in 2024). Quoted on /cybersecurity-budget as the scale of the cost a security budget is set against. |
| Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report | Annual | Breach pattern reference (ransomware share, attack vectors, time-to-detection). Used qualitatively on /cybersecurity-budget for the threat-trajectory framing behind the security-spend discussion. |
| IANS Research / Artico Search Security Budget Benchmark | Annual | Security spend as a percentage of IT budget, measured across 500+ organisations. Source for the 10.9% in 2025 (down from 11.9% in 2024) figure on /cybersecurity-budget, /breakdown and the home page - the first decline in five years, as overall IT budgets grew faster than security spend. |
| Cloud Security Alliance research | On change | Cloud security threat landscape and shared-responsibility-model framing. Background only; no figure on this site comes from it. |
| Apptio Technology Business Management research | On change | Technology Business Management (TBM) taxonomy reference for the categories page and the CapEx vs OpEx classification. No figures drawn from this source; framing only. |
In scope
- +Published percentage-of-revenue figures from free public sources: Deloitte's Global Technology Leadership Study for the cross-industry level and Flexera's State of Tech Spend Report for the by-industry spread.
- +Industry-vertical benchmark ranges (financial services, healthcare, technology, manufacturing, retail, professional services, education, non-profit, government, energy).
- +A five-category allocation model (personnel 28-32%, software and SaaS 26-30%, infrastructure 20-24%, security 10-14%, and support and maintenance 7-10%), labelled as this site's model wherever it appears.
- +Company-size brackets (startup 1-50, SMB 51-250, mid-market 251-1,000, enterprise 1,001-5,000, large enterprise 5,000+) with corresponding spend percentages and per-employee dollar ranges.
- +Security as a percentage of IT spend: the measured IANS Research / Artico Search average, plus this site's planning bands by industry, labelled as such.
- +Worldwide public cloud and IaaS spending from Gartner's free forecast releases, labelled as forecasts with their release dates.
- +US loaded salary inputs for IT roles, sourced from BLS OEWS and adjusted by a 1.3x load multiplier for benefits, payroll tax, and overhead.
Out of scope
- -Enterprise-negotiated vendor pricing. Volume commitments, custom MSAs, and sales-led tiers without a public per-unit rate are excluded.
- -Region-specific cost-of-living adjustments beyond US, UK, and EU averages. Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Africa salary inputs are not adjusted here.
- -M&A integration cost spikes. Integration programmes temporarily raise IT spend; this site shows steady-state figures.
- -Regulated-industry compliance audit fees (SOX, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, GDPR audit costs). Mentioned qualitatively but not priced.
- -Internal change-management and adoption cost. SaaS and cloud migrations carry change-management cost that is hard to attribute across departments; excluded from the IT-budget-narrow definition.
- -GPU and AI infrastructure capex. AI infrastructure spending is shown as a growth-rate signal (worldwide AI spend +49.5% YoY in 2026 per Gartner, September 2026) but a specific GPU-cost line item is delegated to sister sites in the AI-cost cluster.
Calculation framework
The level comes from Deloitte's Global Technology Leadership Study, which publishes a measured cross-industry series: 3.28% (2016), 3.64% (2018), 4.25% (2020) and 5.49% (2022), with 5.85% projected for 2024. The 2026 edition does not publish this metric, so 5.49% is the most recent measured figure available and every calculation here starts from it. The industry spread comes from Flexera's State of Tech Spend Report, the only free source publishing this metric by industry, which covers five industries. To be explicit about what this is not: the Gartner IT Spending Forecast is a forecast of worldwide IT spend in dollars and contains no percentage-of-revenue metric, so it cannot be a source for this figure and is not used as one.
This is the one part of the model with no published source behind it, and it is labelled as a model everywhere it appears. No free public source breaks IT spend as a percentage of revenue down by company size; Gartner's IT Key Metrics Data does and is paid, so we neither hold it nor reproduce it. We apply a multiplier to the sourced cross-industry level: 1.35x for startups (1-50), 1.2x for SMB (51-250), 1.05x for mid-market (251-1,000), 1.0x for enterprise (1,001-5,000) and 0.9x for large enterprise (5,000+). The direction is well established, since a baseline of security tooling, helpdesk, core systems and compliance does not scale down with revenue. The magnitude is our assumption. The spread is deliberately narrow because the industry figures are already measured across a mix of company sizes, so a wide size multiplier on top would double-count the same variation.
Financial services 7-10%, technology 6-9%, healthcare 6-9%, telecom 5-8%, professional services 4-7%, e-commerce and retail 3-6%, education 3-6%, energy 3-5%, logistics and transport 3-5%, manufacturing 2-5%, non-profit 2-4%. These ranges are this site's indicative bands, anchored to Flexera's published by-industry figures and Deloitte's cross-industry level; the wider range captures small-vs-large within each vertical.
The five-category split is this site's planning model, not published benchmark data. No free public source publishes a current breakdown of IT budgets by these categories; Gartner's IT Key Metrics Data does and is a paid product we do not hold. The one measured figure inside it is security: 10.9% of IT spend in 2025, down from 11.9% the year before (IANS Research / Artico Search Security Budget Benchmark, 587 CISOs, August 2025), inside the model's 10-14% security band. The bands are personnel 28-32%, software and SaaS 26-30%, infrastructure 20-24%, security 10-14%, and support and maintenance 7-10%; their midpoints add to about 100%. Personnel includes contractors and MSP fees; software includes SaaS subscriptions and on-premise licences; infrastructure includes cloud IaaS / PaaS plus on-premise hardware. The calculator applies the midpoints and raises security for regulated industries, with support and maintenance taking the remainder.
The measured figure is the IANS Research / Artico Search Security Budget Benchmark: security averaged 10.9% of IT spend in 2025, down from 11.9% in 2024 (587 CISOs, released August 2025). IANS publishes no industry split, so the industry bands on /cybersecurity-budget (10-15% for most organisations, 15-18% for regulated sectors) are this site's planning bands. No free source publishes a current split of the security budget itself across software, personnel, hardware and services, so the site does not quote one.
No free, current source measures cloud's share of a typical IT budget, so the site does not quote one. Market figures come from Gartner's free releases and are labelled as forecasts: the November 2024 public cloud forecast (2025 total $723.4B, +21.5%; SaaS $299.1B, IaaS $211.9B, PaaS $208.6B; cloud infrastructure and platform services, the integrated IaaS-plus-PaaS platforms, $301B, +24.2%) and the October 2026 Worldwide IT Spending Forecast (IaaS $292B in 2026, +31.3%).
Refresh cadence
The site is re-verified against named analyst and government statistics sources on the first business week of each month. The visible "Data verified" label reads from a single constant ( LAST_VERIFIED_DATE), and bumping it is a single-line change that touches every page at once, so it moves only after that re-verification. The footer's "Updated" date and the dateModified field in every page's Article JSON-LD are the day that page last changed, read from the site's version history when it is built.
Out-of-cycle refreshes trigger on:
- ●Gartner publishes a new IT Spending Forecast press release (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 cadence).
- ●Flexera, Deloitte, or Spiceworks publishes an annual State-of report with materially different segment numbers.
- ●A vertical industry shows a >2 percentage point shift in the benchmark range, or security as a percentage of IT budget moves year-on-year (per the IANS Security Budget Benchmark).
- ●A new AI / cloud spending wave shifts the segment growth-rate ranking (e.g. IaaS overtaking SaaS in growth rate).
- ●US BLS releases a new OEWS occupational wage survey; staffing-cost salary inputs update.
Refreshes that move a benchmark range by less than 0.5 percentage points are batched into the next monthly pass. Refreshes that materially shift the segment narrative (for example, an IaaS growth-rate revision driven by a new GPU-supply data point) ship as soon as the change is confirmed against the named source.
Limitations
Calculator outputs and benchmark ranges are estimates. Production IT budgets depend on industry, growth stage, compliance scope, M&A activity, AI infrastructure exposure, and digital maturity factors that a percentage-of-revenue plus headcount input cannot fully capture. Always validate the output against your finance team's actual cost base before treating it as more than a sanity check.
Analyst forecasts drift between releases. Gartner's IT Spending Forecast revises segment growth rates quarterly; Deloitte's CIO Survey shifts priority rankings year to year; Spiceworks State of IT changes its panel mix between annual editions. The site reflects the most recent public-source-of-record value at the verification date; older releases may give different segment numbers.
Salary inputs in the staffing-costs page use US BLS OEWS national means with a 1.3x load multiplier. Companies operating in high-cost-of-living metros (San Francisco, New York, Boston) should apply a 1.2-1.4x metro premium on top; companies in lower-cost metros should expect a 0.85-0.95x adjustment. The formula is shown so the math is portable.
Corrections process
Spotted a stale benchmark, a recently revised Gartner segment forecast, a new BLS OEWS release we have not folded in, or an analyst-report number that disagrees with what is on this site? Email [email protected] with the page URL and the source you would like cited. Substantive corrections (percentage range changes, new analyst-report releases, BLS OEWS updates) are typically actioned within five business days. Non-substantive corrections (typo fixes, link rot, structural edits) batch into the next monthly pass.
See also the about page for the site's editorial position, disclosures, and full coverage map.