MSP Backup and BDR Pricing: What It Costs and What to Charge
What backup and BDR actually cost per endpoint and per user in 2026, the five pricing models MSPs use, and what to bill clients to hold a 50-60% gross margin as their data grows.
Pricing guide - Updated August 2026
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Contents
- 1.The Pricing Complexity
- 2.What Backup Actually Costs You
- 3.Five Pricing Models, With Typical Rates
- 4.Cost vs. Charge by Line Item
- 5.Watch for storage growth
- 6.Run the margin math on a real client
- 7.How should MSPs price restore tests?
- 8.Should emergency restores be billed separately?
- 9.What margin should MSPs target on backup services?
- 10.How much should an MSP charge for backup per endpoint?
- 11.How do you price for data growth without repricing every year?
The Pricing Complexity
Backup pricing is more complex than other managed services because the cost scales with data volume, not just device count. A client with one server holding 500 GB of data costs dramatically less to protect than a client with the same number of devices but 5 TB of data. Most MSPs discover this the hard way: they set a flat per-server backup price, then onboard a client with a massive file server and watch their margin disappear into storage costs.
What Backup Actually Costs You
Backup costs land in four buckets, and only the first is obvious. Platform and agent licensing runs roughly $3 to $15 per endpoint per month depending on vendor and model. Cloud storage adds $0.006 to $0.023 per GB per month at the backend. Most MSPs reselling a white-label platform land between $3.50 and $5.00 all-in per endpoint per month once both are counted. Egress is the cost nobody quotes. AWS S3 charges around $0.09 per GB to pull data out, which turns a 500 GB restore into a line item you did not price for. Backblaze B2 charges nothing for egress within a fair-use allowance. If you control your storage backend, this is the single highest-leverage decision on the page. SaaS backup is priced per user, not per GB. Street pricing through MSP channels runs about $2.00 to $4.50 per user per month across Datto SaaS Protection, Acronis, Veeam, Barracuda, Keepit, and AvePoint. Microsoft's own native backup is consumption-based at $0.15 per GB per month, which gets expensive fast on large tenants. Labor is the bucket that quietly kills margin: daily monitoring across the whole client base, failure triage at 2 to 4 hours per month, quarterly restore tests at 30 minutes to 2 hours per client, and monthly reporting. Budget 1 to 2.5 hours per client per month and cost it at your loaded technician rate before you quote anything. Two 2026 changes worth repricing against: Veeam raised prices 4 to 8% in January, the second consecutive annual increase. Datto ended high-watermark storage billing in December 2025 and cut prices roughly 10% in January.
Five Pricing Models, With Typical Rates
| Model | How It Works | Typical Client Price | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per-device flat rate | One monthly rate per protected server or workstation, storage included up to a cap | $12-20 per endpoint/mo (workstation); $60-150 per server/mo | Clients with predictable data volumes |
| Per-device plus storage | Base rate per device plus per-GB overage above an included allowance | $10-15 per endpoint/mo base, plus $0.03-0.08 per GB over cap | Clients with variable or growing data |
| Tiered by data volume | Banded pricing: Small (under 500 GB), Medium (500 GB-2 TB), Large (2 TB+) | $150-300 / $300-600 / $600-1,200 per client per mo | Simplifies quoting while still accounting for storage |
| Bundled into managed services | Folded into the per-user or per-endpoint AYCE rate, not billed separately | $10-30 per user/mo of the total contract value | MSPs with standardized service packages |
| BaaS with SLA tiers | Bronze (daily RPO / 24hr RTO), Silver (hourly / 4hr), Gold (15min / 1hr) | Silver at roughly 1.5x Bronze; Gold at roughly 2.5x Bronze | MSPs selling differentiated recovery levels |
Cost vs. Charge by Line Item
| Line Item | What You Pay | What to Bill | Gross Margin (pre-labor) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Endpoint backup (workstation) | $3.50-5.00 all-in (platform fee $3-15 plus storage $0.006-0.023/GB) | $12-20 per endpoint/mo | 70-75% |
| Server backup | $15-40 per server/mo depending on data volume and vendor | $60-150 per server/mo | 70-75% |
| Microsoft 365 / SaaS backup | $2.00-4.50 per user/mo street price through MSP channels | $6-10 per user/mo | 55-67% |
| BDR appliance (local) | Hardware or virtual appliance license, amortized over the contract term | Rolled into the monthly rate, not billed as capex | Varies |
| Monitoring and triage labor | 1-2.5 hrs per client/mo at your loaded tech cost | Covered by the recurring rate above | Pulls the blend down to the 50-60% band |
Watch for storage growth
Client data volumes grow 20 to 40% per year on average. If your pricing doesn't account for growth, your margin erodes annually. Include storage growth projections in your pricing, add overage clauses for storage beyond the included amount, or review pricing annually alongside data volume.
Run the margin math on a real client
Work the math on a real client before you quote. A 25-seat client with 25 workstations and one server: platform and storage at $4.25 per endpoint is $106 a month, M365 backup at $3.25 per user is $81, and 1.5 hours of monitoring, triage, and reporting at a $65 loaded cost is $98. Your cost is roughly $285. Bill that client $16 per endpoint ($400) plus $8 per user for M365 backup ($200) and you are at $600 a month for a 52% gross margin - inside the 50 to 60% band backup should hold. If your margin is coming in below 40%, it is almost always storage overage or untracked triage labor. Those are the two line items MSPs forget to meter.
How should MSPs price restore tests?
Include a defined number of restore tests per year in the service agreement (typically 4 for critical systems). Additional tests beyond the included count are billable at your standard hourly rate. Emergency restores (actual disaster recovery, not scheduled tests) should also be covered by the agreement with a defined scope.
Should emergency restores be billed separately?
If the restore is due to a hardware failure or a disaster event, it should be covered under the backup service agreement (within reason). If the restore is due to user error (deleted files, accidental overwrite) beyond a defined threshold (say, 2 per quarter), additional restores can be billed. Define this boundary in the MSA.
What margin should MSPs target on backup services?
Target 50 to 60% gross margin on backup services. This is higher than the typical managed services margin (40 to 50%) because backup carries higher liability. The margin needs to cover not just tool costs and labor, but also the operational risk of being the last line of defense for client data.
How much should an MSP charge for backup per endpoint?
For workstation backup, $12 to $20 per endpoint per month is the common range, against an all-in cost of $3.50 to $5.00. Servers run $60 to $150 per server per month. Microsoft 365 backup bills at $6 to $10 per user per month against a $2.00 to $4.50 wholesale cost. If backup is bundled into an all-you-can-eat managed services contract rather than billed separately, it typically represents $10 to $30 per user per month of the total contract value. Price the bundle so backup still carries its own margin inside it, or the bundle hides the loss.
How do you price for data growth without repricing every year?
Client data volumes grow 20 to 40% a year, so a flat per-device rate set today is underpriced within 18 months. Three options work: build a growth assumption into the initial rate, cap included storage and bill overage at $0.03 to $0.08 per GB, or write an annual price review tied to measured data volume into the agreement. The third is cleanest because it makes the increase a scheduled conversation rather than a surprise.