People & Ops
Technical Debt Calculator
Calculate the ongoing interest cost of technical debt in terms of engineering time and money.
What this calculator does
The Technical Debt Calculator quantify the cost of technical debt, then compares your result against operator benchmarks (Healthy: <10% time on debt. Heavy: 25%+. Crippling: 40%+.). Enter your numbers below and you'll get a result, a benchmark band, and a plain-English interpretation in under two minutes.
Annual Interest Cost
$288,000
Manageable, Monthly cost: $24,000
Monthly Interest
$24,000
Annual Interest
$288,000
Cost per Debt Item
$5,760
Rating
Manageable
Formula
Interest Cost = Team Cost × % Time on DebtBenchmarks: Healthy: <10% time on debt. Heavy: 25%+. Crippling: 40%+.
Sources: OpenView 2024 SaaS Benchmarks, ChartMogul Retention Reports, ProfitWell Pricing Studies, and Pressense operator data.
Frequently asked questions
How do I measure technical debt?
Track time spent on rework, bugs from legacy code, and refactoring.
About this calculator
Built and reviewed by the Pressense team, a strategy and systems partner working with B2B SaaS operators on unit economics, retention, GTM, and positioning. Every calculator in this library uses public benchmarks from OpenView, ChartMogul, ProfitWell, and KeyBanc, supplemented with anonymised data from the operators we partner with.