What a RISE with SAP Migration Actually Costs Beyond the Subscription Line

Most RISE with SAP proposals arrive as one annual number. That number covers a lot: the S/4HANA software, the cloud infrastructure, SAP’s technical operations and a set of transformation tools. It doesn’t cover the migration project itself, and that’s where many budgets come apart. The real RISE with SAP costs include partner fees, data work, custom code changes and testing. They also include extra cloud services and the expense of keeping an old ECC system alive while the new one is built.

This guide breaks down what sits outside the subscription line, using SAP’s own contract documents and independent research on how S/4HANA projects actually run. It’s written for finance and IT leaders who need a budget that holds up after the contract is signed. Each section covers one cost area and shows how to estimate it before you commit.

TL;DR

•   The RISE subscription covers software, infrastructure and technical managed services. SAP’s own Roles and Responsibilities document says any task not purchased or included as a standard service stays with the customer.

•   Implementation partners, data migration, testing, custom code remediation and change management are usually the biggest costs outside the subscription.

•   Independent research shows overruns are common. A 2025 Horváth study found more than 60% of companies saw deviations in budget, schedule or quality, and projects ran 30% longer than planned on average.

•   ECC end of maintenance adds deadline costs. Mainstream support ends in 2027, extended maintenance runs to 2030 at an added fee, and the transition option to 2033 has strict conditions and its own price uplift.

•   A realistic budget models every cost category over the full contract term, with a contingency based on how S/4HANA projects actually perform.

What the RISE Subscription Actually Includes

The RISE subscription is a bundle, and knowing its edges is the first step in any honest budget. At its core, it includes SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, the hosting infrastructure on SAP or a hyperscaler, and a defined set of technical services that SAP runs for you. Those services include system monitoring, backups and database administration, all listed in SAP’s contract documents.

SAP has added more to the bundle over time. In April 2025, SAP introduced the Cloud ERP Private package for existing on-premise customers. According to SAP, the package includes SAP LeanIX and SAP Signavio capabilities, plus workshops, road map planning and adoption plans. It also includes SAP Build for extensions and the SAP Master Data Governance application. Licensing advisors report that the former RISE Premium package now sits under this Cloud ERP Private branding.

Those included tools have real value, but they don’t do the migration for you. Signavio helps you understand processes, and LeanIX helps you map your current architecture. Someone still has to redesign processes, convert data, rewrite custom code and test everything. That work is usually bought separately, which is why RISE with SAP pricing tells you only part of the story.

How RISE with SAP Pricing Is Built

RISE with SAP pricing is mainly based on full usage equivalents, or FUEs, a weighted count of users by role type. A heavy finance user counts for more than an occasional approver. The FUE count, the system size and the package you choose together set the annual subscription. Because the subscription is quoted per year, it’s easy to compare against your current maintenance bill and forget everything else. That comparison misses most RISE with SAP costs, since the current maintenance bill never included a migration project.

It also helps to know that RISE with SAP pricing is built on a defined scope of infrastructure and services. Contracts set system sizes, service levels and the volume of included cloud credits. Anything beyond those limits, such as extra environments, cross-region disaster recovery or higher usage, can carry added fees. The next section shows where SAP draws those lines in writing.

Where SAP’s Responsibility Ends

The most useful document in any RISE evaluation isn’t the price quote. It’s SAP’s Roles and Responsibilities document, often called the R&R. SAP publishes it for RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition, and it lists every task in the service with a named owner.

SAP keeps the document current and lists it as the documentation of record for the service. The SAP R&R document sorts tasks into 5 categories and presents them as a catalog of services. It also includes a clause that matters for budgeting: any task not purchased by the customer, or not provided by SAP as part of the standard service, is the customer’s responsibility. Some tasks fall into a group SAP calls Cloud Application Services, which are supplementary services you can buy from SAP or handle yourself.

In practice, that leaves a large share of ERP work with the customer. An SAP security advisor explained this in an SAP Community post. SAP handles many infrastructure tasks, but the customer keeps ERP administration, security, compliance, roles and authorizations, along with the business processes running in the system. Threat detection inside the application also stays with the customer, because SAP’s cloud operations teams don’t have visibility at that level.

SAP’s own guidance on the migration project points the same way. An SAP project roles blog lists the partner’s or SAP Services’ key deliverables as fit-to-standard preparation, custom code preparation, test planning, solution configuration, data migration and integration, among others. Project management, application design and data management sit with the customer. None of that is in the subscription.

Why S/4HANA Migration Budgets Overrun

The evidence on overruns is consistent across several independent sources. Horváth surveyed 200 SAP user companies, each with at least €200 million in annual revenue, in the first quarter of 2025. Its study press release reports that more than 60% of companies saw deviations in budget, schedule and result quality. Its published key facts show the budget deviation was very strong for 24% of companies and strong for another 41%, and that projects took 30% longer than planned on average.

Schedule and quality told the same story. In CIO’s study coverage, only 8% of the companies that had finished their move did so on schedule, and 65% found severe or very severe quality problems after go-live. Respondents named scope growth during the project and underestimated testing and data migration phases among the main causes. Those are exactly the cost areas that sit outside RISE with SAP pricing, and they’re where RISE with SAP costs most often grow.

User group research points the same way. ASUG’s S/4HANA adoption research found that migration costs can exceed expectations, with 49% of respondents in its 2024 study saying costs went past their original budgets. In 2026, the pressure grew. CIO reported that budget constraints became the top challenge in ASUG’s 2026 Pulse of the SAP Customer survey, cited by 61% of respondents and up 7 points from the year before. ASUG’s research director said S/4HANA projects were driving that pressure.

There’s a useful counterpoint. An earlier joint survey by ASUG and the German-speaking user group DSAG found that while 48% of members feared a budget overrun, only 19% actually had one. Overruns aren’t guaranteed. They depend on scope, data quality, partner choice and how well the program is set up. The rest of this guide covers each of those cost drivers so you can price them in early.

Implementation Partner and Program Costs

The implementation partner is usually the largest of the RISE with SAP costs outside the subscription. Almost every company uses outside help. Horváth’s data shows 98% of companies use external support for their S/4HANA transformation, with 61% using IT consulting, 46% strategy and process consulting and 21% change management consulting. That help is billed separately from the RISE contract.

Partner fees depend on scope more than anything else. A technical conversion that keeps most processes as they are costs less than a redesign of how finance or supply chain works. Horváth found that business redesign was the most common approach, chosen by 37% of companies, ahead of catch-up approaches at 33% and selective migrations at 26%. The more redesign you choose, the more consulting time you buy.

How you contract with the partner also changes the cost. Fixed-price deals move some risk to the partner, but they come with tight scope definitions, and anything outside scope becomes a change request. Time-and-materials deals are more flexible but can grow without a firm budget owner. Either way, the S/4HANA migration cost you see in a proposal is only as good as the scope behind it.

Program costs go beyond the partner’s invoice. You’ll need internal staff for design workshops, data ownership, testing and sign-off, often for 12 months or more. Those people still have their day jobs, so many companies pay for backfill contractors or overtime. Program management, quality assurance and independent advisors add further costs that rarely appear in the RISE with SAP costs a vendor presents.

Market timing matters as well. Demand for RISE is climbing, and Constellation Research’s DSAG survey summary reported that 48% of surveyed enterprises were using or planning to use RISE with SAP. As the ECC end of maintenance deadline approaches, more companies compete for the same experienced consultants. That raises day rates and makes it harder to secure senior people. Companies that start earlier tend to have more choice of partner and more room to negotiate.

Data Migration, Archiving and Testing

Data work is one of the most underestimated parts of the S/4HANA migration cost. Moving to S/4HANA changes the data model, so legacy data has to be cleaned, mapped and converted. Duplicate customers, inactive vendors, old open items and inconsistent master data all have to be fixed before they move. Horváth’s respondents listed underestimated data migration among the main reasons projects slipped.

Data volume also affects running costs. RISE contracts specify system sizes, so a larger database can mean a larger subscription tier. Archiving old data before migration reduces what you move and what you pay to host. It also shortens the technical cutover, which reduces downtime risk. The archiving project itself costs money, but it often pays back through a smaller system.

Testing is the other half of this cost area. Most programs run several mock conversions and multiple test cycles, including unit, integration, user acceptance and performance testing. Each cycle needs test data, test scripts and business users to run them. When data quality is poor, test cycles fail and have to be repeated, which pushes cost and schedule up together.

Budget for these items separately:

•   Data profiling and cleansing, including ownership decisions for master data.

•   Archiving of old transactions before migration.

•   Mock conversions and cutover rehearsals.

•   Test tooling, test data preparation and business user time for testing.

Teams that treat data and testing as their own workstreams, with their own budgets, tend to see fewer surprises. Teams that bury them inside the partner’s general estimate often find out late that they were undersized.

Custom Code and Clean Core Remediation

Custom code is the customer’s responsibility under RISE, and it can be one of the larger RISE with SAP costs. Many ECC systems carry years of custom programs, reports, interfaces and user exits. Some of that code won’t run on S/4HANA without changes, and some of it is no longer used at all.

SAP’s clean core approach adds a second layer of cost. Clean core means keeping the S/4HANA system close to standard and moving custom logic into side-by-side extensions. In RISE, those extensions are typically built with SAP Build and run on SAP Business Technology Platform. That reduces upgrade pain later, but it means rewriting some custom code rather than simply fixing it.

The S/4HANA migration cost for custom code depends on 3 decisions. First, how much custom code you retire instead of moving. Usage analysis often shows that a large share of custom objects are rarely or never used. Second, how much you fix in place versus rebuild as an extension. Third, who does the work, whether your own developers, the partner or an offshore team.

Clean core also changes running costs. Extensions on BTP consume cloud credits, and those credits come from a fixed allocation in your contract. A custom code plan that moves heavily to BTP extensions should be checked against your SAP BTP credits before you sign. Otherwise, the remediation that saves upgrade effort can create a usage bill that nobody planned.

SAP BTP Credits, Integration and Add-On Services

SAP BTP credits are one of the least visible RISE with SAP costs. RISE packages include an allocation of credits for BTP services, which can be used for extensions, integrations, analytics and AI features. Usage beyond that allocation is billed separately. Because consumption grows as you build extensions and turn on AI services, the included SAP BTP credits can run out sooner than expected.

Integration is a common reason. Most ERP landscapes connect to CRM, e-commerce, banking, logistics and HR systems. In RISE, many of those integrations move to SAP Integration Suite on BTP, which consumes SAP BTP credits based on usage. Message volumes that seemed small on paper can add up once every interface is live.

Add-on services form the second group. SAP sells Cloud Application Services for tasks outside the standard R&R scope, such as some application operations. Others are handled by your own team or a managed services partner. Either way, application management, incident handling for business issues and security monitoring inside the application need a budget line. SAP’s services and support plans now come in foundational, advanced and max tiers, with higher tiers adding more guidance and transformation support at a higher cost. Decide early which tier you need, because moving up later adds to RISE with SAP costs mid-contract.

Track credit usage from the first month. Ask SAP for usage reporting at the service level and set internal alerts as consumption rises. Review the allocation before each renewal. A small monthly overage is easy to miss in year 1 and hard to ignore by year 3.

ECC End of Maintenance and the Cost of Running Late

Timing is a cost driver in its own right. ECC end of maintenance sets the deadlines that shape every RISE budget. As ERP Today explains, SAP’s mainstream maintenance for SAP ERP 6.0 ends in 2027, and paid extended maintenance runs through 2030. A separate transition option extends support to 2033 for customers who move to SAP ERP, private edition. After 2030, customers who take neither path move to customer-specific maintenance.

Paying for 2 Systems at Once

Most migrations involve a period when the old and new systems both cost money. Your ECC system keeps running, with its maintenance, hosting and support costs, until the new system goes live and the old one is retired. Meanwhile, the RISE subscription has its own start date. Check exactly when the subscription clock starts relative to your planned cutover. If it starts at signing, every month of project delay means another month of paying for both.

Extended Maintenance Through 2030

If your migration won’t finish before the ECC end of maintenance date at the end of 2027, extended maintenance is the standard bridge. It costs more than mainstream maintenance, with advisors citing a premium of about 2 percentage points on the existing maintenance basis. That extra cost belongs in the migration budget, since it exists only because the move isn’t finished.

The 2031 to 2033 Transition Option

For the largest customers, SAP offers a longer bridge with strict conditions. SAP’s transition option update says systems must move to SAP ERP, private edition on SAP HANA before December 31, 2030, with a minimum system size of 2 TB. It’s only available with the max success plan during 2031 to 2033. The option is priced at an uplift over SAP ERP, private edition pricing at the end of 2030, and the success plan fee comes on top. SAPinsider notes that the option is based on SAP ECC and isn’t available for every customer. In other words, it buys time on the old system rather than progress toward S/4HANA.

Analysts see the option as a narrow safety net. Forrester’s 2033 option analysis describes it as designed for customers with very large and complex landscapes who need more time. For most companies, the cheaper path is to plan around the ECC end of maintenance dates and finish on time. Every year of extension adds bridge costs on top of the RISE with SAP costs you’re already paying.

Contract Terms That Change the Long-Run Cost

The first-year price is only one part of the commercial picture. RISE contracts typically run for several years, and terms set in the original deal shape costs for the whole period. Reviewing these terms before signing belongs in the budget process as well as in legal review, because they shape RISE with SAP costs long after go-live.

Price escalation is the first term to check. Licensing advisors report that many RISE order forms include either a consumer price index clause or a fixed annual increase. Even a modest yearly increase compounds over a 5-year term, so model the full term rather than year 1.

Renewal terms are the second. At the end of the initial term, the price is open to negotiation again. Moving off RISE at that point is difficult, so the customer’s bargaining position is weaker than at the first signing. Agree renewal caps and price protections up front where you can.

License conversion is the third. Moving to RISE usually means giving up perpetual ECC licenses in exchange for subscription credits. Once that happens, returning to an on-premise model would mean buying licenses again. That’s a cost you hope never to pay, but it affects your bargaining power later.

Finally, check what happens to your data and systems if you leave. Ask for clear data export rights, transition assistance terms and any fees tied to ending the contract. These clauses rarely matter in year 1, but they decide how expensive a future change would be.

There can be commercial upside too. Advisors report that SAP sometimes offers migration credits or incentives to ECC customers who commit before set deadlines. Ask for these in writing, and confirm exactly which costs they can offset.

People, Change Management and Hypercare

The human side of a RISE migration carries real cost, even when it doesn’t show on a vendor invoice. New processes, new screens and new ways of working mean every affected user needs training. Finance teams that close the books and buyers who raise purchase orders both need to learn the new system before go-live.

Change management is more than training sessions. It includes communication plans, process owners who explain changes to their teams and support for managers whose teams are disrupted. Horváth’s data shows only 21% of companies used change management consulting, compared with 61% using IT consulting. That gap may explain part of the quality problems so many companies report after go-live.

Hypercare is the period right after go-live when the project team stays on to fix problems. It’s often planned for a few weeks and then extended. With 65% of Horváth’s respondents reporting severe or very severe quality issues after completing their migration, budgeting for a longer hypercare window is sensible. Productivity also tends to dip while users adjust, which carries a cost in slower operations even if it never appears as a project line.

Internal time is the hidden cost behind all of this. Subject matter experts spend weeks in design sessions, testing and training. Their regular work either waits or gets covered by others. Many S/4HANA migration cost estimates leave this out because it doesn’t come with an invoice, but it’s one of the clearest reasons projects take longer than planned. A simple way to price it is to list the experts each workstream needs, estimate the share of their time the project will take and multiply by their loaded salary cost. Adding that figure to the other RISE with SAP costs gives leadership a truer view of what the program asks of the business.

How to Build a Realistic RISE Budget

A reliable budget for RISE with SAP costs starts by listing every cost category, assigning an owner and estimating each over the full contract term. The table below gives a working structure. Use it alongside the subscription quote so nothing falls between the vendor’s proposal and the partner’s. In many programs, the items outside the subscription end up larger than the subscription itself over the project years, so they deserve the same scrutiny when you total RISE with SAP costs.

Follow these steps to turn the table into a budget you can defend:

1. Run the technical analysis first. Use SAP’s readiness tools and a custom code analysis before asking partners to bid. Better inputs produce better quotes.

2. Map your scope to the R&R. Go line by line through SAP’s Roles and Responsibilities document and mark who will do each customer task.

3. Get comparable partner bids. Give every partner the same scope, data volumes and custom code counts, then compare assumptions as well as prices.

4. Model the full term. Include escalation, BTP usage growth and renewal assumptions across the whole contract.

5. Add a contingency based on evidence. Horváth’s finding that projects run 30% longer than planned is a reasonable reference point for schedule risk.

6. Plan the ECC exit date. Decide when ECC will be shut down and price the bridge costs until then.

Horváth’s respondents offered their own lesson on S/4HANA migration cost planning. More than 40% said they would set a higher budget from the start, and 30% would reduce project scope. Those answers suggest that honest budgeting up front is cheaper than asking for more money halfway through.

The Real Cost Picture

RISE with SAP costs are much broader than the subscription line suggests. The subscription buys the platform, the hosting and SAP’s technical operations, plus a set of transformation tools. The migration itself, including partners, data, testing, custom code, change management and the cost of running late, is still the customer’s to fund. SAP’s own Roles and Responsibilities document makes that split clear.

Companies that budget well map every task to an owner before signing and price the full contract term instead of year 1. They also treat the ECC end of maintenance dates as fixed planning limits. With overruns as common as independent research shows, a budget built on those habits is far more likely to hold than one built on the RISE with SAP pricing quote alone.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the RISE with SAP subscription include?

It includes SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, the hosting infrastructure and the technical services listed as standard in SAP’s Roles and Responsibilities document. The Cloud ERP Private package also adds SAP Signavio and SAP LeanIX capabilities, SAP Build and the SAP Master Data Governance application.

Is the migration project included in RISE with SAP?

No. The subscription covers the platform and SAP’s technical operations. Implementation partner work, data migration, testing, custom code changes and training are usually paid for separately.

What are the biggest RISE with SAP costs outside the subscription?

Implementation partner fees are usually the largest part of the S/4HANA migration cost. Data migration, testing, custom code remediation, integration, change management and ECC bridge maintenance follow, depending on your landscape.

What is the SAP Roles and Responsibilities document?

It’s SAP’s published list of tasks in the RISE private edition service, with an owner for each. It states that any task not purchased or provided as a standard service is the customer’s responsibility.

How often do S/4HANA migrations go over budget?

A 2025 Horváth study of 200 companies found more than 60% saw deviations in budget, schedule or quality. ASUG’s 2024 research found 49% of respondents exceeded their original budgets.

How long do S/4HANA migrations take compared with plans?

Horváth found that implementations took 30% longer than planned on average, and only 8% of completed migrations finished on schedule.

What are SAP BTP credits in RISE?

SAP BTP credits are a usage allocation included in RISE packages for services on SAP Business Technology Platform, such as extensions, integration and AI features. Usage beyond the allocation is billed separately.

Why do SAP BTP credits run out?

Consumption grows as companies build clean core extensions, move integrations to SAP Integration Suite and turn on AI services. Each of these draws on the same credit allocation.

When is ECC end of maintenance?

Mainstream maintenance for SAP ERP 6.0 ends in 2027. Paid extended maintenance runs through 2030, and a transition option to 2033 is available only to qualifying customers who move to SAP ERP, private edition.

What does the SAP transition option to 2033 require?

Systems must move to SAP ERP, private edition on SAP HANA before the end of 2030, with a minimum size of 2 TB. It requires the max success plan during 2031 to 2033 and is priced at an uplift.

Does RISE with SAP pricing increase over time?

Many contracts include an annual escalation clause tied to inflation or a fixed rate. Renewal pricing is also negotiated again at the end of the term, so model the full contract period.

Do I lose my perpetual ECC licenses when moving to RISE?

Moving to RISE usually means converting perpetual licenses into a subscription. Returning to an on-premise model later would generally mean buying licenses again.

How much contingency should a RISE budget include?

There’s no single rule. Horváth’s finding that projects run 30% longer than planned on average gives a useful reference for schedule risk, and its respondents said they’d set higher budgets from the start next time.

Can I reduce the S/4HANA migration cost?

Yes. Archiving old data, retiring unused custom code, fixing data quality early and agreeing a tight scope with partners all reduce cost. Starting early also helps secure experienced consultants at better rates.

Who manages application security in RISE?

The customer does. SAP secures the infrastructure, but security inside the application, including user access, roles, custom code and security monitoring, remains a customer responsibility.