For CTO · Procurement · Legal

AI Vendor Lock-In Cost.

"How locked-in are we, really?" Most exec teams find out at renewal — when the leverage conversation is already over. Five components estimate the all-in cost of switching off your current AI vendor: data egress, team retraining, application retooling, parallel-run grace, and FTE-month rebuild cost. Optimistic / Realistic / Worst-case exit mode toggle.

Your inputs

Slide each one. Total + lock-in multiplier update live.

Annual vendor spend (USD)License + usage + premium support. Excludes one-time setup.

Data egress required (GB)Vector embeddings, fine-tuned models, training corpora, audit logs you need to take.

Egress price per GB (USD)Vendor-published rate. Some vendors charge nothing for export. Many charge $0.05–$0.50/GB.

Team retraining hours0 = same skill stack · 800+ = brand-new platform with no overlap. 600

Application retooling (months × engineer)0 = drop-in API swap · 24+ = ground-up rewrite of integrations. 6

Parallel-run grace period (months)How long both vendors run simultaneously during cutover. 0 = hard flip · 6+ = phased. 3

Fully-loaded engineer annual cost (USD)Salary + benefits + tax + equipment. US senior eng ≈ $220K · staff ≈ $300K.

Total switching cost

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Cost component breakdown

Where the switching dollars actually go.

Lock-in multiplier gauge

Total switching cost as a multiple of annual spend.

Sensitivity tornado

Each row shows how the result changes if you perturb that input. Bigger bar = more sensitive.

Move increases switching cost Move decreases switching cost

The math, openly

Egress = egressGb × egressPricePerGb × modeMult

Retraining = retrainHours × (fteCost / 2080) × modeMult

Retooling = retoolingMonths × (fteCost / 12) × modeMult

Parallel-run = graceMonths × (annualSpend / 12) × modeMult

Total switching cost = egress + retrain + retooling + parallel

Lock-in multiplier = total / annualSpend — categorized as portable (<0.5×) · committed (<1.5×) · locked (<3×) · captured (>3×).

Realistic mode (default)All multipliers = 1.0. Use as the baseline for renewal-conversation prep.

Optimistic exitAll components × 0.7. Cooperative wind-down — vendor honors transition assistance, partial egress discount, no penalty fees.

Worst-case exitEgress × 3 · Grace = 0 (cliff cut) · Retooling × 1.5. Hostile or forced exit — what the contract permits and what crisis conditions actually look like.

The honest version of this number is what your procurement team should bring to renewal. The vendor already knows it.