Cloud switching charges end on 12 January 2027

From 12 January 2027, providers of cloud services in the EU may not impose switching charges on customers who move to another provider or to their own servers, and that includes data egress fees. Standard service fees, early termination penalties and cost-based egress charges for running two providers in parallel stay allowed.

What does the Data Act say about switching charges?

Chapter VI of Regulation (EU) 2023/2854, the Data Act, covers switching between "data processing services". According to the Commission's FAQ, that definition takes in IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. Providers of any size are bound, and the Bundesnetzagentur's fact sheet says the rules cover existing and new contracts. Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 itself applies from 12 September 2025.

Article 29 holds the timetable. Paragraph 2 lets providers impose reduced switching charges from 11 January 2024 to 12 January 2027, and paragraph 3 caps them at the costs the provider incurs that are directly linked to the switching process concerned. Paragraph 1 says that from 12 January 2027 providers shall not impose any switching charges for the switching process.

The Regulation defines switching charges in Article 2(36) as charges, other than standard service fees or early termination penalties, for the actions the Regulation requires for switching, including data egress charges. Article 2(35) defines egress charges as data transfer fees for taking data out of a provider's infrastructure to another provider or to on-premises systems. The Commission's Data Act explained page says the Act will entirely remove switching charges, including charges for data egress, and gives the same two dates.

The wording leaves a one-day overlap: paragraph 2 runs to 12 January 2027 and paragraph 1 starts on 12 January 2027. The Commission's FAQ resolves it in practice by saying that from 12 January 2027 onwards providers will no longer be allowed to charge for switching.

What can a provider still charge after that date?

The ban is on switching charges, and the definition excludes two items. Standard service fees remain: the hosting or subscription you pay while the contract runs, including through the notice period. Early termination penalties also remain. Article 29(4) requires providers to tell a prospective customer, before signing, about the standard service fees, any early termination penalties and the reduced switching charges that might apply.

Two further limits come from the text. Article 31(1) says Article 29 does not apply to services whose main features were custom-built for one customer and that are not offered at broad commercial scale through the provider's catalogue. Article 31(2) takes test and evaluation versions offered for a limited period out of Chapter VI altogether. The Commission's FAQ adds that custom-built services are not fully outside Chapter VI, because the provisions not listed in Article 31(1) still apply.

The second limit is parallel use, covered below.

What do the notice and transition periods look like?

Article 25 sets the contract terms, and we describe them here as read from the text. The first group concerns form and timing. The contract must be written and available before signing in a form you can store and reproduce. It must give a maximum notice period for starting the switching process of two months. A transitional period of at most 30 calendar days then starts after the notice period, during which the service contract stays in force and the provider must give reasonable assistance, keep the service running and keep security high.

The second group concerns what happens when the schedule slips. If 30 days is technically unfeasible, the provider must say so within 14 working days of the switching request, justify it and offer an alternative period of at most seven months. The customer also has a right to extend the transitional period once. For a buyer this means the 30 days is a default, and a long justified period can push the real switching date a long way past the notice.

The third group concerns the end of the relationship and the data itself. A data retrieval period of at least 30 calendar days follows the transitional period, and then comes full erasure of the customer's exportable data. The contract must include an exhaustive list of the data and digital assets that can be ported, and a statement of any switching charges in line with Article 29. That list decides in practice what you can take with you, so it deserves a close read.

The Bundesnetzagentur's fact sheet describes the same two scenarios, with the same figures. The Commission's FAQ paraphrases the unfeasibility deadline as 14 days, where the Regulation says 14 working days. We follow the Regulation.

What about using several providers at once?

This is the part most often called unsettled. Part of it is settled in the text. Article 34(2) says that where a service is used in parallel with another, providers may impose data egress charges, but only to pass on egress costs incurred, without exceeding them. Recital 99 gives the reason: egress for parallel use can be an ongoing activity, in contrast with the one-off egress of switching. The Commission's FAQ states that in a multi-cloud deployment the provider may still bill the costs incurred for data egress after 12 January 2027.

What stays open is how that cap works in practice. Neither the Regulation nor the FAQ says how a provider should calculate "costs incurred", or how a customer can check the figure. We found no Commission guidance on that point. Article 29(7) lets the Commission set up a monitoring mechanism for switching charges by delegated act. We did not find that such an act has been adopted.

Another open point is the line between switching and parallel use. A customer who moves a workload over six months while both providers run could be in either category. The text does not say, and this is our reading of a gap, not a statement of the Commission.

Could the Digital Omnibus change this?

The Commission proposed the Digital Omnibus on 19 November 2025 (COM(2025) 837). Its Digital Package FAQ says it would target exemptions to cloud-switching rules for SMEs and small mid-caps and for providers of custom-made services. In the proposed Article 31(1a) and 31(1b), the exemptions cover contracts concluded on or before 12 September 2025, and Article 29 is expressly left out of them. The proposal says that a contract term contrary to Article 29(1), (2) or (3) would be null and void.

The Council's negotiating mandate, agreed by the Permanent Representatives Committee on 21 October 2026 keeps that carve-out for Article 29. In both texts the same paragraphs would also switch off Article 34 for those contracts, so the parallel-use cap could fall away there; that is our reading. As of 28 October 2026, a third-party tracker lists the Parliament file as awaiting a committee decision, so nothing is adopted. On the texts we could read, the 12 January 2027 date is not in play. That is our reading of two documents that may still change.

What should a team do before 12 January 2027?

This section is our addition. It turns Articles 25 and 29 into questions to put to each cloud and SaaS supplier. It is a working list, and a lawyer should confirm it for a specific contract.

Start with an inventory: list every supplier that stores your data or runs your workloads, and note the contract date and the notice period. Then ask each one for its switching terms, as Article 25(2) requires, and check that notice is at most two months, the transitional period is 30 days unless justified, and the retrieval period is at least 30 days. With those terms in hand, the contract tells you where you stand.

Next, look for money. Find any switching or egress charge in the contract or price list. Until 12 January 2027 it must be capped at direct switching costs, and after that date it must be zero for a switch. Separate real switching from parallel use, because if your design moves data between two providers continuously, you should expect a cost-based egress charge to remain. Early termination penalties and fixed terms need their own check, since they are not switching charges and the new date does not remove them.

Finally, look at what you can actually take. Check the exportable data list in the contract and the provider's online register of formats, and ask which of your data count as exportable. Keep your own copy of configuration, scripts and infrastructure definitions in accounts you control, so that a switch never depends on a supplier's goodwill.

At FlightLabs, our DevOps and managed support work happens in your own cloud accounts and repositories, and every engagement includes runbooks for releases, alerts and recovery. Our way of working starts with a plan that agrees what we take over and what we won't touch.

What we could not confirm

We could not open EUR-Lex directly, which blocks automated access, so we read the official Regulation text through the EU Publications Office. The link above points to the same act on EUR-Lex. We found no Commission guidance on how to calculate "costs incurred" for reduced switching charges or for parallel-use egress charges, and no delegated act under Article 29(7). We cannot say whether the Commission plans one.

We could not read the Council's press release of 21 October 2026, which returned an access error, although the Council mandate document and a tracker agree on the date. Parliament's position on the Digital Omnibus data file was not available on 28 October 2026, and we have no later status. The Bundesnetzagentur fact sheet is undated, and its file metadata shows it was created on 2 June 2026.