Published quotes run from 25,000 to over a million dollars, and most of that money never touches a file. On one agency's own worked example, 62 percent of the bill is rebuilding forms, branding and workflows. Moving the content is about 14 percent.
How much does a SharePoint migration cost?
Published figures from migration consultancies land in these bands, and they are consistent enough across firms to take seriously.
| Size | Scope | Quoted range |
|---|---|---|
| Departmental | Under 500 GB, clean content | 5,000 to 25,000 |
| Small | Under 500 users, under 1 TB | 25,000 to 75,000 |
| Mid sized | 500 to 3,000 users, 1 to 10 TB | 100,000 to 250,000 |
| Large enterprise | 3,000 to 10,000 users, 10 to 50 TB | 250,000 to 500,000 |
| Enterprise plus | 10,000+ users, 50 TB and above | 500,000 to 1,500,000+ |
Swipe the table sideways to see every column. Figures in US dollars, services only.
Before using any of them, understand what a SharePoint migration cost quote covers. These are professional services numbers. They exclude Microsoft 365 licences, extra storage, third party tools and your own staff time, which is the first thing to notice about any SharePoint migration cost you are quoted.
The second thing matters more. Almost none of that money is spent moving files.
A migration quote is mostly a rebuild quote wearing a migration label. Once you separate the two lines, half the conversation with finance changes.
Jamie Kaler Marketing Head and Content Strategist, RecoveryTools
Why is most of a SharePoint migration cost not migration?
One consultancy publishes a full line by line estimate for a 200 site programme. Their typical column totals 1,675,000 dollars. Read where it goes.
| Line | Typical | Share |
|---|---|---|
| InfoPath form replacement, 80 forms | 320,000 | 19% |
| Farm solution rewrite, 5 solutions | 280,000 | 17% |
| Workflow rewrite, 150 workflows | 280,000 | 17% |
| Branding remediation, 15 sites | 160,000 | 10% |
| Rebuild work combined | 1,040,000 | 62% |
| Site migration labour, 200 sites | 180,000 | 11% |
| Migration tool licensing, 12 months | 60,000 | 4% |
| Actually moving content | 240,000 | 14% |
Sixty two percent of that SharePoint migration cost is recreating things no tool carries. Fourteen percent is the migration.
Nothing in those top four lines is a file moving between tenants. They are forms rewritten in Power Apps, branding rebuilt as modern pages, workflows redone in Power Automate and custom code replaced. A migration tool does not make them cheaper, because a migration tool was never going to touch them.
That split is the single most useful number in this article, because it tells you where to push. Arguing about tool licences saves four percent. Deciding that 60 of those 80 InfoPath forms are dead saves far more than any discount you will negotiate.
What drives a SharePoint migration cost?
Published per item rates make the shape obvious. Ordinary content is cheap per unit. Custom work is not.
- A document library with standard content. 200 to 800 dollars.
- A site with standard permissions. 400 to 1,500 dollars.
- A SharePoint Designer workflow. 800 to 5,000 dollars, with rewrites quoted around 1,800 dollars a piece.
- An InfoPath form. 2,000 to 12,000 dollars.
- A site with custom branding. 5,000 to 25,000 dollars.
- A farm solution. 8,000 dollars to several hundred thousand.
Notice the ratio. One farm solution can cost more than migrating every library in the estate. A hundred ordinary sites cost less than five customised ones.
So a SharePoint migration cost estimate built from a storage figure is guessing at the only variable that matters. Count sites, then count the customised ones separately. Route choice affects the rest, and the options are compared in how to migrate a SharePoint site to another tenant.
Permissions sit in the middle and get expensive quietly. Consultancies quote 20 to 40 hours of permissions remediation and say group based permissions cut that cost roughly in half. Doing that cleanup yourself first is free, and the method is in how to migrate SharePoint permissions to another tenant.
What do the tools themselves cost?
Three price models exist and they are not comparable, so compare what they let you do rather than the number.
- SharePoint Migration Tool. Free. Microsoft charges nothing. It reads on premises sources only and cannot see SharePoint Online, so a tenant to tenant move is outside it. The rest of the boundaries are in SharePoint Migration Tool limitations, and the free route end to end is in SharePoint Server to SharePoint Online migration steps.
- Microsoft's native cross tenant route. Per 100 GB moved. Sold to Enterprise Agreement customers only, and it runs no delta pass, which changes your cutover rather than your budget.
- Third party tools. Per site, per seat or per year. The published 200 site estimate carries 60,000 dollars of annual tool licensing, which is where a subscription model lands at that scale.
Our own RecoveryTools SharePoint Migrator sells in site packs that do not expire, so re-runs and delta passes against a site you already started cost nothing more. Current pack sizes and prices sit on the SharePoint Migrator pricing page.
Price per site beats price per gigabyte. Storage tells you nothing about effort. A 200 GB regulated estate with custom apps costs more to move than a 2 TB folder of documents, which is why gigabyte pricing suits the seller rather than the buyer.
Which SharePoint migration costs land after the quote?
Every overrun story has the same shape. Something true was not in the inventory.
- Internal staff time. Never in the services quote, always in the project. Owners approving content, admins answering questions, testers checking sites.
- Destination storage. Microsoft gives 1 TB plus 10 GB per eligible licence. Versions, staging and growth push past it, and version history is the usual culprit, as SharePoint version history migration explains.
- Content cleanup. Budget 15 to 20 percent of the project for it. Skipping it moves the work to the far side where it costs more.
- Compliance validation. One firm reports retroactive retention remediation at 60,000 dollars after the fact.
- Decommissioning the source. Turning the old farm off is its own line, quoted at 15,000 to 70,000 dollars on a large programme.
- Throttled throughput. Published rates assume off peak hours, so daytime batches stretch a project calendar that somebody is paying for. The limits are in SharePoint migration throttling.
- A longer window than planned. Time is the one cost that scales with everything, and the maths sits in how long does a SharePoint migration take.
How do you cut a SharePoint migration cost?
In order of how much they save, which is not the order most teams try them in.
- Rationalise customisations before anybody prices them. Rationalising workflows ahead of a rewrite saves 30 to 50 percent of that line, and it is the biggest line.
- Migrate less content. Consultancies report that 30 to 50 percent of legacy content never needed to move, and that every terabyte left behind saves 3,000 to 5,000 dollars.
- Flatten permissions at the source. Group based permissions roughly halve the permissions mapping line.
- Run discovery before quoting. One firm says proper discovery prevents six figures of change orders, which is the entire argument for a paid assessment.
- Do the content move in house. Site migration labour is a real line on every quote, and a tool plus your own admin replaces it.
- Buy tooling that does not renew. Annual licensing on a project that slips becomes a second year nobody budgeted.
- Keep contingency sized to uncertainty. Weak documentation and an incomplete workflow inventory justify more than a flat 15 percent. Clean estates justify less.
Price your own estate before anybody quotes it
Discovery and read only scanning run without volume limits in trial, so you can count sites, items, workflows and permission scopes before spending anything.
No credit card, no sign-up. Runs on Windows 11, 10 and Windows Server.
How do you compare two quotes fairly?
Two proposals for the same estate can differ threefold and both be honest. Line them up on these questions.
- Is the rebuild work priced separately? If forms, branding and workflows sit inside one migration number, you cannot tell what you are buying.
- What is the content inventory behind it? Sites, items and average file size, or a storage figure and a guess.
- Who pays when the inventory is wrong? Fixed fee after discovery and time and materials before it are different risks.
- Is tool licensing in or out? Twelve months of a subscription tool on a nine month project is a renewal waiting to happen.
- What happens in the second year? Managed services quoted from 3,500 dollars a month with a twelve month minimum is a real commitment.
- Is cutover support included? Hypercare after go live gets dropped from cheap quotes and added back later.
Moving several workloads together changes the shape again, since mailboxes and Teams are priced apart from sites. For that the Tenant to Tenant Migration Tool covers the estate, and teams who want the work done for them use our cloud migration service.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a SharePoint migration cost?
Published consultancy ranges run from 5,000 dollars for a departmental move under 500 GB to over 1,500,000 dollars for an estate above 50 TB. Those figures are services only and exclude Microsoft licences, storage, tooling and your own staff time.
Why are migration quotes so different for the same data?
Because content volume is a poor predictor of effort. Ordinary libraries are quoted at hundreds of dollars while a single farm solution can run past 100,000. Two estates holding the same terabytes can differ tenfold on customisations alone.
What is the cheapest way to move SharePoint content?
Microsoft's SharePoint Migration Tool is free, but it reads on premises sources only and cannot migrate between Microsoft 365 tenants. For a tenant to tenant move the cheap route is a per site tool run by your own admin, with consultancy kept for the rebuild work that no tool handles.
Should migration be priced per gigabyte or per site?
Per site tracks effort far better. Storage says nothing about item counts, custom columns, permission scopes or workflows, which are the things that decide both duration and risk. Gigabyte pricing favours the seller on large, simple estates and punishes you on small, complex ones.
How much should be set aside for contingency?
Fifteen percent is the common default, and it should move with uncertainty rather than stay fixed. Weak documentation, unknown content owners and an incomplete workflow inventory justify more. A clean, well governed estate justifies less.
What is the biggest avoidable line in a SharePoint migration cost?
Rebuilding customisations. On one published 200 site estimate, InfoPath forms, farm solutions, workflows and branding account for 62 percent of the bill. Deciding what still gets used, before anybody prices a rewrite, saves more than any discount.
Where to start this week
Count two things. Ordinary sites, and customised ones.
Ordinary sites are a volume problem with a known answer. Customised sites are a rebuild project that happens to sit inside a migration, and they carry most of the SharePoint migration cost whoever does the work. Separating the two lists turns one scary number into two manageable ones. Both counts belong in the wider Microsoft 365 migration planning checklist rather than a separate budget sheet.
Then take the question to your first vendor call. Which of these sites are you migrating, and which are you rebuilding?
Jamie blends strategic marketing insight with technical writing, turning migration and recovery topics into guidance that works for technical and general readers alike.
Published 9 October 2026. Quoted ranges and the worked 200 site estimate come from published pricing guides by EPC Group, migrationcost.com and MoreYeahs. Figures are in US dollars and were current when this was written.