Burning Money:
The High Cost of Downtime
With major tech outages often making worldwide news, the perceived stability of many big websites and apps has taken a hit in recent times. In an increasingly online world, sites and services we rely upon going down can have a big impact on our lives.
Question: can you guess which business has turned over $276 since you opened this page?
As well as inconveniencing users, every second of downtime translates to revenue that many businesses can't afford to lose. At BroadbandDeals.co.uk, we wondered: just how much money is burned when big tech goes down?
How much money do major tech sites and apps make?
We researched recent financial data for 50 everyday sites and apps that are relied upon by millions of users - and many of which make billions of dollars per year.
Numbers that large can be difficult to wrap your head around, but when you translate the figures into revenue-per-second or -minute, it really hits home just how much money we're talking about. For example...
Answer: in the time since you opened this page, messaging service WhatsApp has made $276! That means that over the course of their recent 2-hour global outage, WhatsApp likely saw over $46 million in revenue go up in smoke.
Check out the full table of our findings below, or try our cost-of-downtime calculator for an app or business of your choice.
Online Business Revenue Index
- $
- £
- €
All revenue data published in USD. We present GBP and EUR estimates based on current exchange rates.
- Top 10
- Social
- Messaging
- Shopping
- Gaming
- Video
- Music
- Productivity
- Search
- Food
| Site/App | Category | Per Second | Per Minute | Per Hour | Per Day | Last Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon | shopping | $14,898 | $893,877 | $53.63m | $1,287.18m | $469,822m |
| search | $8,140 | $488,394 | $29.30m | $703.29m | $256,700m | |
| AliExpress | shopping | $4,215 | $252,922 | $15.18m | $364.21m | $132,936m |
| social | $3,739 | $224,315 | $13.46m | $323.01m | $117,900m | |
| social | $1,509 | $90,563 | $5.43m | $130.41m | $47,600m | |
| Netflix | video | $942 | $56,503 | $3.39m | $81.36m | $11,438m |
| YouTube | video | $913 | $54,795 | $3.29m | $78.90m | $28,800m |
| Shein | shopping | $498 | $29,871 | $1.79m | $43.01m | $15,700m |
| Wayfair | shopping | $435 | $26,081 | $1.56m | $37.56m | $13,708m |
| eBay | shopping | $393 | $23,581 | $1.41m | $33.96m | $12,394m |
| social | $365 | $21,880 | $1.31m | $31.51m | $11,500m | |
| Spotify | music | $362 | $21,762 | $1.31m | $31.34m | $11,438m |
| Steam | gaming | $317 | $19,026 | $1.14m | $27.40m | $10,000m |
| Hulu | video | $304 | $18,265 | $1.10m | $26.30m | $9,600m |
| messaging | $276 | $16,553 | $993,151 | $23.84m | $8,700m | |
| Bing | search | $270 | $16,229 | $973,744 | $23.37m | $8,530m |
| UberEats | food | $263 | $15,791 | $947,489 | $22.74m | $8,300m |
| Fortnite | gaming | $184 | $11,035 | $662,100 | $15.89m | $5,800m |
| Disney+ | video | $165 | $9,893 | $593,607 | $14.25m | $5,200m |
| social | $161 | $9,660 | $579,623 | $13.91m | $5,078m | |
| Apple Music | music | $159 | $9,513 | $570,776 | $13.70m | $5,000m |
| DoorDash | food | $155 | $9,285 | $557,078 | $13.37m | $4,880m |
| TikTok | video | $146 | $8,752 | $525,114 | $12.60m | $4,600m |
| Snapchat | messaging | $131 | $7,833 | $469,977 | $11.28m | $4,117m |
| Zoom | productivity | $130 | $7,800 | $468,025 | $11.23m | $4,100m |
| ASOS | shopping | $124 | $7,439 | $446,347 | $10.71m | $3,910m |
| JustEat | food | $108 | $6,469 | $388,128 | $9.32m | $3,400m |
| Twitch | gaming | $82 | $4,947 | $296,804 | $7.12m | $2,600m |
| social | $79 | $4,756 | $285,388 | $6.85m | $2,500m | |
| Etsy | shopping | $74 | $4,431 | $265,879 | $6.38m | $2,329m |
| GrubHub | food | $67 | $3,995 | $239,726 | $5.75m | $2,100m |
| PUBG Mobile | gaming | $64 | $3,828 | $229,860 | $5.51m | $2,012m |
| Pandora | music | $64 | $3,811 | $228,653 | $5.49m | $2,003m |
| Wish | shopping | $63 | $3,805 | $228,311 | $5.48m | $2,000m |
| Roblox | gaming | $60 | $3,615 | $216,895 | $5.21m | $1,900m |
| Deliveroo | food | $57 | $3,425 | $205,479 | $4.93m | $1,800m |
| League of Legends | gaming | $52 | $3,101 | $186,073 | $4.47m | $1,630m |
| Slack | productivity | $29 | $1,716 | $102,968 | $2.47m | $902m |
| Minecraft | gaming | $12 | $723 | $43,379 | $1.04m | $380m |
| social | $11 | $666 | $39,954 | $958,904 | $350m | |
| Discord | social | $4 | $247 | $14,840 | $356,164 | $130m |
| Telegram | messaging | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0m |
| Signal | messaging | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0m |
Cost of Downtime: Lost Revenue Calculator
What would it cost if
went offline for
?Money, Money, Money: but not necessarily profit.
Of course, the picture is a little more complex than these figures might suggest. We can tell you how much these tech giants turn over per second, but accurate profit figures are harder to come by.
Some of the biggest names on our list publicly declare enormous turnover, but are still languishing in the red.
Twitter, for instance - despite revenue in the billions of dollars - declared losses of over $200 million last year.
And there are other surprises in the shape of two household-name messaging platforms. Telegram and Signal have exploded in popularity in recent years - yet currently they are yet to generate any revenue whatsoever.
Virtually all businesses have seen huge turmoil recently, and we've seen things can change dramatically in a short time. Who knows what these figures could look like a year from now!