Cloud Migration Complexity Estimator
How long will your AWS migration take? Get a complexity score, estimated timeline, and recommended migration strategy — before you commit to a plan.
- 3-step assessment
- Timeline estimate
- 6 Rs strategy
Where is your infrastructure today?
Your current environment affects migration complexity and recommended strategy.
Who This Tool Is For
IT directors and VPs of Engineering at companies with 10–200 on-premises or co-location workloads planning their first AWS migration. If you're in the early stages of migration conversations and your stakeholders are asking how long it will take, this calculator gives you a defensible answer.
Why We Built This Tool
Migration scoping calls take 2–4 weeks and require expensive executive alignment. We built this so teams could give their stakeholders a credible first estimate before formally kicking off a discovery. This calculator uses real migration data from 100+ AWS engagements to calibrate timeline estimates based on workload complexity, database count, and team AWS maturity. The result is usually within 20% of a formal discovery estimate.
What Problem It Solves
- No credible first estimate. Migrations are 6–18 months. Without a baseline, stakeholders guess wildly or say no, too risky. This gives you a number to anchor on.
- Uncertainty paralyzes planning. Budget and headcount planning cannot start without a timeline. This unlocks resource allocation conversations.
- Wrong strategy selection. The 6 Rs (Rehost, Replatform, Refactor, Repurchase, Retire, Retain) require different timelines. This recommends the right strategy for your maturity.
- Scope creep before kickoff. Knowing upfront that a 200-app migration takes 18 months prevents naive scope promises that sabotage projects later.
Ready to start? Explore our AWS migration services for hands-on help from assessment through cutover.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the difference between Rehost, Replatform, and Refactor?
Rehost (Lift & Shift): Move VMs as-is to EC2. Fastest, cheapest. Replatform: Move but swap some components (e.g., on-prem SQL to RDS). Balanced speed and modernization. Refactor: Rebuild parts of the app for cloud-native (containers, managed services). Slowest, most expensive, but best long-term ROI. This calculator recommends the right mix for your team's experience and timeline.
Is this timeline estimate accurate?
±20%. Our estimate is calibrated to real migrations from 100+ AWS engagements, accounting for team size, AWS experience, and workload composition. Actual timelines depend on dependencies, data size, and compliance constraints. For a detailed assessment, book a discovery session—we'll give you a week-by-week roadmap.
What if we're migrating from a multi-cloud setup?
Select Mixed and note which clouds you're migrating from. Cross-cloud migrations are about 20% longer due to interoperability testing. If you have workloads staying on-prem, consider Rehost for quick wins and Replatform for stateless services that can easily move.