“How much does cloud migration cost?” is the question every prospective client asks first, and it is the one we answer last — after an audit, not before it. That order matters, but it does not mean the question is unanswerable. It means the honest answer is a range tied to specific cost drivers, not a single number pulled from a rate card.

Cloud migration to AWS or Azure for a single mid-sized application typically costs ₹10-20 lakh for a lift-and-shift approach over 8-12 weeks, or ₹25-45 lakh+ for a re-architected, cloud-native approach over 4-6 months. Larger, multi-system migrations with significant integration work commonly run ₹50 lakh-₹1 crore+. The gap between those numbers is driven almost entirely by how much re-architecting the migration involves and how much undocumented complexity the audit uncovers.

The Cost Components Nobody Puts on the Homepage

1. Assessment and audit

Before any migration plan, someone needs to map dependencies, data flows, and integration points — including business logic that accumulated undocumented over years of patches. For a mid-sized system this runs roughly ₹1.5-4 lakh and 1-3 weeks, and it is the single highest-leverage cost in the whole project: skipping it does not save money, it defers the cost into mid-migration rework, which is more expensive and harder to estimate in advance.

2. The migration work itself

This is what most cost estimates focus on, and it splits along the lift-and-shift vs. re-architect line:

• Lift-and-shift (move as-is onto cloud infrastructure, minimal code changes): faster and cheaper, typically ₹8-18 lakh for a focused application, because you are not redesigning the system — just relocating it.
• Re-architecting (redesign for cloud-native services — managed databases, auto-scaling, serverless components where appropriate): ₹20-45 lakh+, because you are effectively rebuilding parts of the application to take advantage of the platform instead of just running old code on new infrastructure.

We cover how to choose between these in lift-and-shift vs. re-architecting — it is worth deciding deliberately rather than defaulting to whichever sounds cheaper on paper, because the wrong choice for your situation costs more over 2-3 years even if it costs less upfront.

3. Data migration and validation

Treated as its own workstream (as it should be), data migration for a moderate-sized database with validation and reconciliation typically adds ₹4-10 lakh, scaling up sharply for very large datasets, multiple source systems, or strict compliance/audit trail requirements. See our database migration and ETL checklist for what this actually involves.

4. Parallel-run and testing

Running old and new systems side by side before cutover — the step that catches discrepancies before your customers do — adds time and coordination cost but rarely a large line item on its own. Budget for it as part of the migration timeline, not as an afterthought squeezed into the last week.

5. Ongoing cloud spend (the part that surprises people)

This is not a migration cost, but it changes the total cost of ownership conversation. Cloud infrastructure that is not right-sized after migration can end up costing more monthly than the on-premise setup it replaced — we have seen this happen when a lift-and-shift simply recreates the old server’s specifications in cloud compute without adjusting for actual usage patterns. Budget 4-6 weeks post-migration for right-sizing before judging the new monthly bill.

AWS vs. Azure: Does the Provider Change the Cost Much?

Not dramatically, for most mid-market businesses. Both have Indian data center regions (AWS ap-south-1 in Mumbai, Azure’s Central India region in Pune), both offer comparable compute, storage, and managed database pricing tiers, and both have migration tooling that covers the common lift-and-shift scenarios.

The real cost differentiators are usually:

• Existing tooling and team familiarity. If your team already works in the Microsoft ecosystem (Active Directory, .NET, Office 365), Azure often has lower integration friction. If you are already using AWS services elsewhere, staying on AWS avoids duplicated learning and tooling costs.
• Specific managed service fit. Certain workloads map more cleanly to one provider’s managed offerings than the other’s — this is worth evaluating during the audit phase rather than assuming based on brand reputation.
• Reserved capacity and commitment discounts. Both providers offer meaningful discounts (often 30-50%) for 1-3 year compute commitments, which matters more for total cost than the sticker price comparison.

We do not push clients toward a provider by default — this gets decided during the audit based on your existing stack and workload characteristics, and we will tell you honestly if the provider you have in mind is not the best fit.

What Drives Cost Up (Watch For These)

• Undocumented business logic. The more the audit surfaces, the more scope grows — this is expected, not a red flag, but it is why fixed-price quotes before an audit are unreliable.
• Tight integration coupling. Systems wired directly into many other internal tools take longer to migrate safely than standalone applications.
• Compliance and data residency requirements. DPDP Act obligations or client-contractual data residency clauses can constrain region choice and add compliance validation work.
• Zero tolerance for downtime. We do not guarantee zero-downtime migrations — very few legacy architectures genuinely support that — but designing toward minimal downtime (phased rollout, parallel run, careful cutover windows) does add planning and coordination cost versus a simple maintenance-window cutover.

What Drives Cost Down

• A system that is already reasonably documented and modular
• A realistic tolerance for a planned cutover window rather than insisting on zero downtime
• A willingness to lift-and-shift now and re-architect selectively later, rather than doing everything in one project
• Data volumes that are moderate and already have decent integrity (fewer orphaned records and inconsistencies to reconcile)

The Bottom Line

Cloud migration cost estimates that arrive before an audit are guesses dressed up as quotes. The real cost depends on how much re-architecting your situation calls for, how much undocumented complexity is buried in the system, and how large and messy the data migration turns out to be. For most mid-sized businesses, budget ₹10-20 lakh for a focused lift-and-shift or ₹25-45 lakh+ for a re-architected move, and treat anything quoted without an audit as a starting estimate, not a commitment.

Want an honest, audit-based estimate for your specific system instead of a generic range? Talk to our team — we will scope it properly before we quote it. See our full cloud migration approach for what the engagement looks like end to end.