Costs range from $8 to $12 million per megawatt, shaped by Tier level and power density. New builds are AI-ready with liquid cooling, modular systems, and high-density power. You should budget about $7 million to $12 million per MW to build a modern data center, or roughly $600 to $1,100 per square foot overall. Your actual cost depends mostly on power availability, land, redundancy level, and MEP scope, with electrical systems taking 40% to 45% of spend and cooling. Data center buildout costs depend heavily on factors like facility size, geographic location, tier classification, and the workload type. Every project is different, but the industry has reliable cost benchmarks you can use as a starting point for your budget planning. markets, including building, material, land and labor costs, material and equipment lead times, labor availability, and more. Size is important, but design choices and execution. Actual data center costs can vary greatly from this model; the primary value of this tool is to evaluate how each cost input affects the lifetime cost differences between the two approaches. After 10 years, building is 12. 7% less expensive than colocation with a break- even at < 6 years. Blog:. Data centers aren't cheap to build, but what drives the cost? This article outlines a full breakdown for a mid-sized (5,000 sq ft, ~800 kW load) Tier II/Tier III data center. From land acquisition to lighting OpEx, every line item is laid bare to help planners, project managers, and CFOs make.
