How we work out what SAP costs

Contents

1. Evidence, in order of weight
2. Formulas
3. The ranking frame
4. The criteria
5. Vendor claims
6. Use of SAP’s name
7. Keeping it current

A price guide for a vendor that does not publish prices has to be explicit about where each number comes from and how far it can be trusted. This page sets out the rules.

Evidence, in order of weight

1. SAP’s own statements: its News Center and Support Portal, for maintenance dates, premiums and programme terms.
2. Named reporting: articles that quote SAP, its user groups (DSAG, ASUG, USF, the UK and Ireland group) or analysts by name, with the publication and date.
3. Court and competition records, as reported: the 2017 High Court ruling on indirect access and the European Commission’s 2025 investigation and 2026 commitments decision.
4. Marketplace data: price ranges from software buying marketplaces. These are always labelled as estimates, with the publisher’s own description of the data, because the samples are not disclosed.

Reseller blogs, anonymous forum posts and any page we could not open are excluded. SAP’s pricing pages did not open for us on 11 November 2026, so no figure in this guide is attributed to them.

Formulas

The cost tables use only sourced rates: a maintenance percentage applied to licence value, a yearly adjustment at its stated cap, the extended maintenance premium, and market ranges per user for cloud. Every worked example is marked as our arithmetic. Where a table applies a cap every year, it is an upper bound and says so.

The ranking frame

The ranking answers one situation: a company that wants to stop paying licence, maintenance and integrator fees for a rigid system and to own an AI-native system. Within that frame OpenLazarus ranks first, because it is the only option reviewed in which the company owns the code and the data and there is no licence base for a percentage to apply to. Rimini Street follows as the way to lower the bill while staying; Business Central and Odoo follow as packaged ERPs with published per-user prices. A company with a different aim, such as keeping SAP unchanged for a decade, should read the ranking accordingly.

The criteria

1. Published price. The vendor publishes prices a buyer can read without a sales call, with currency and billing terms.
2. No percentage maintenance. The yearly bill is not a percentage of a licence value paid once already, as SAP on-premise maintenance is.
3. Protected from yearly rises. The contract or the model limits index-linked adjustments and renewal increases, or leaves no licence base for them to apply to.
4. You own code and data. The company owns the system it runs and the data in it, and can maintain it itself or with any developer.
5. AI without a premium contract. AI features do not depend on a premium package, a cloud commitment or a migration programme.

Vendor claims

Savings figures published by a vendor, including OpenLazarus and Rimini Street, are attributed to the vendor in the sentence where they appear and are never restated as findings.

Use of SAP’s name

This guide is independent of SAP SE. SAP and its product names are used only to identify the products discussed. We use no SAP logos, and nothing on this site implies affiliation with SAP.

Keeping it current

We re-check every source at least once a quarter. Each source shows the date we accessed it.

Further reading

• Guide · ReallocationHow to reallocate an SAP budget to an AI system your company ownsAn SAP budget is a recurring payment for a system the company does not own. This guide shows what the same money funds as a company’s own AI operating system, and how to move it without a single cut-over.
• Guide · Licences and maintenanceSAP licence cost and maintenance fees: what each line is and how it growsThe licence is paid once. The maintenance is paid every year, on a base that only moves one way. This guide sets out each fee, the rate behind it and the rights customers gained in 2026.
• Guide · Implementation and migrationWhat an SAP implementation costs, and why the quote is rarely the billNo public average exists for an SAP implementation. There are market ranges, survey findings on overruns and a few documented failures, and together they are enough to budget with open eyes.

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