SAP ECC reaches the end of mainstream maintenance on 31 December 2027. After that you have three choices: pay for extended maintenance until 31 December 2030 at a premium of two percentage points, move to a supported platform, or, if you are a large SAP customer on a RISE contract, run ECC as a cloud subscription until 2033. The 2033 route has conditions many mid-market companies do not meet, and its price depends on the year you sign.
This guide lays out every deadline with its primary source, what each option costs, and which ERP systems actually fit a typical ECC customer. The last part comes from running our own knockout scoring engine on four ECC customer profiles, an analysis none of the vendors and consultancies in the current search results has published.
When does SAP ECC reach end of life?
SAP ECC has three end dates, not one. Mainstream maintenance for the core applications of SAP Business Suite 7, which includes SAP ERP 6.0, ends on 31 December 2027. Optional extended maintenance runs until 31 December 2030. A third route, the SAP ERP, private edition, transition option, keeps ECC running from 2031 to 2033 for customers who qualify.
SAP set the 2027 and 2030 dates in a press release on 4 February 2020, the same announcement that committed to maintaining SAP S/4HANA until the end of 2040. The 2033 option was announced in February 2025 and its terms were detailed in SAP News on 4 August 2025.
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| End of 2025 | Best terms for 2033 closed. Committed by then: no uplift for the option |
| 31 Dec 2026 | Last year of a known uplift. Sign in 2026: 20 % uplift when switching in 2031 |
| 31 Dec 2027 | Mainstream maintenance ends. Core applications of SAP Business Suite 7 |
| 2028 | 2033 option can be bought. Uplift for 2027+ signers communicated then |
| 31 Dec 2030 | Extended maintenance ends. Also the deadline to move to private edition |
| 2031 to 2033 | Transition option runs. RISE contract, 2 TB minimum, max success plan |
Sources: SAP press release, 4 Feb 2020 (PR Newswire); SAP News, 4 Aug 2025 (news.sap.com). Compiled by ERP Pilot, September 2026.
What "end of life" does not mean: your system does not switch off. It means SAP stops delivering the fixes that keep an ERP legally and technically current, such as legal changes and tax updates. Customers who neither sign extended maintenance nor migrate move automatically to customer-specific maintenance, which according to SAP's 2020 release covers "problem solving for known issues at unchanged fees". That is support for yesterday's problems, not for next year's tax law.
What does SAP extended maintenance to 2030 cost?
Extended maintenance costs two percentage points on top of your existing maintenance basis, according to SAP's 2020 release. On SAP's standard on-premise maintenance rate of 22 percent of the license value, which is the rate in ERP Pilot's pricing data, that moves the annual fee from 22 to 24 percent. In other words, you pay about 9 percent more per year for three extra years of the same system.
A worked example with round numbers: a company whose SAP licenses have a maintenance basis of $2 million pays $440,000 a year at 22 percent. Extended maintenance lifts that to $480,000, so $40,000 more per year and $120,000 across 2028 to 2030. The premium itself is rarely the decisive cost. The larger cost is three more years of running and customising a platform that receives no new functionality.
| Maintenance basis | Today (22 %) | Extended (24 %) | Extra per year | Extra 2028 to 2030 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $1,000,000 | $220,000 | $240,000 | $20,000 | $60,000 |
| $2,000,000 | $440,000 | $480,000 | $40,000 | $120,000 |
| $5,000,000 | $1,100,000 | $1,200,000 | $100,000 | $300,000 |
Your own figure depends on your contract. Some customers pay a different support rate, and the maintenance basis grows with every license purchase. Pull the current basis from your SAP invoice before you model anything. For list prices of the S/4HANA editions you would move to, see our ERP pricing guide.
Who can run SAP ECC until 2033, and what does it cost?
Only customers on a RISE with SAP contract whose systems meet four conditions. According to SAP's August 2025 update, the systems must be moved to SAP ERP, private edition on SAP HANA before 31 December 2030, the system must be at least 2 TB in size, the option is only sold together with the "max success plan", which SAP scheduled for general availability in January 2026, and the landscape must be technically ready. The option can be bought in 2028 and used from 2031 to 2033.
The price depends on when you commit to SAP ERP, private edition. Customers who committed by the end of 2025 keep commercially equivalent terms when they switch in 2031. Customers who sign in 2026 pay a standard uplift of 20 percent when they switch. For customers who sign in 2027 or later, SAP has not published the uplift; it will be communicated closer to the 2028 purchase date. The max success plan fees come on top.
The 2033 decision has a 2026 deadline
If you might need ECC beyond 2030, 31 December 2026 is the last date on which you can sign with a known price. After that the uplift is unpublished until 2028. That makes 2026 a decision year even for companies that plan to migrate later.
Two consequences for the mid-market. First, the 2 TB threshold rules out many smaller ECC systems entirely, so for a large share of mid-sized companies the realistic end is 2030, not 2033. Second, the option is not a free extension: it moves ECC into SAP's private cloud under a RISE contract, so you take on a cloud subscription for a system you plan to leave. According to the DSAG Investment Report 2026, 4 percent of ECC users plan to use it.
What are your options as an SAP ECC customer?
There are five realistic paths, and three of them keep you with SAP. The right one depends less on the deadline than on how far your processes have drifted from the standard and whether you can run in a public cloud.
| Path | What it means | Fits when | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| S/4HANA On-Premise | Brownfield conversion on your own infrastructure | Heavy customisation you want to keep, on-premise required | You run and pay for the infrastructure; check which innovations SAP offers only in its cloud editions |
| S/4HANA Private Cloud (RISE) | S/4HANA as a managed subscription, conversion possible | You want SAP to run infrastructure but keep your process depth | The subscription bundles licences, hosting and support; compare total cost, not list price |
| S/4HANA Public Cloud | Greenfield on SAP's multi-tenant SaaS | Processes can move close to standard | Clean core rules out deep customisation; knocked out in all four of our ECC profiles |
| Another ERP | Greenfield on Dynamics 365, IFS, Infor, Epicor and others | The SAP lead comes from the migration path, not from fit | Full re-implementation; no brownfield shortcut |
| Third-party support | Stay on ECC with an independent support provider | A bridge while you decide, stable system, no new requirements | No new SAP legal updates or innovation; treat vendor-reported savings as claims to verify |
The details of each SAP edition are in our reviews of SAP S/4HANA On-Premise, SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. Our ERP migration guide covers the greenfield, brownfield and phased approaches in detail.
Which ERP fits a typical SAP ECC customer?
For a large or on-premise ECC customer, S/4HANA leads clearly. For a mid-sized manufacturer that can move to the cloud, the SAP lead comes from the migration path, not from functional fit: without the brownfield advantage, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain ranks first. That is the result of running ERP Pilot's knockout scoring engine, the same one behind our quiz, on four ECC customer profiles on 27 September 2026.
All four profiles describe a discrete manufacturer on ECC with heavy customisation, reporting under local GAAP and IFRS. Two are mid-sized (101 to 500 employees, 2 to 5 countries, 2 to 5 legal entities) and two are large (501 to 2,000 employees, 6 to 20 countries, 6 to 15 legal entities). Each size was run once with "cloud is fine" and once with "on-premise required".
| Systems not knocked out | |
|---|---|
| Mid-sized, cloud is fine | 16 of 20 |
| Mid-sized, on-premise required | 12 of 20 |
| Large, cloud is fine | 14 of 20 |
| Large, on-premise required | 10 of 20 |
Source: ERP Pilot scoring engine, replay of four stated ECC profiles, 27 Sep 2026. Base: the 20 ERP systems in the ERP Pilot quiz.
Three findings stand out:
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition is knocked out in every profile. Heavy customisation conflicts with its clean core rules, and it has no on-premise option. That matches the DSAG finding that only 6 percent of its members plan high or medium investment in the public cloud edition.
- "On-premise required" knocks out four more systems at either size: Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain, Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP, NetSuite and QAD, because they are cloud-only. SAP Business ByDesign (no longer sold to new customers), Sage Intacct and Unit4 (no manufacturing) are out in every profile anyway.
- The ECC answer itself is worth 30 points to S/4HANA Private and On-Premise, because a brownfield conversion keeps existing customisations. With that answer, the mid-sized cloud profile ranks S/4HANA On-Premise first (115 points), Private second (110) and Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain third (95). Without it, Dynamics 365 leads with 95 against 85 and 80.
| Profile | Rank 1 | Rank 2 | Best non-SAP system |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mid-sized, cloud is fine | S/4HANA On-Premise (115) | S/4HANA Private (110) | Dynamics 365 F&SCM (95) |
| Mid-sized, on-premise | S/4HANA On-Premise (165) | S/4HANA Private (150) | Epicor Kinetic (75) |
| Large, cloud is fine | S/4HANA Private (195) | S/4HANA On-Premise (195) | Dynamics 365 F&SCM (110) |
| Large, on-premise | S/4HANA On-Premise (245) | S/4HANA Private (235) | IFS Cloud (70) |
The practical reading: if you are a mid-sized manufacturer and not bound to on-premise, a greenfield evaluation that includes Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain is worth the effort before you default to a conversion. Our SAP vs Dynamics 365 comparison covers the knockout criteria between the two, such as parallel ledgers. If you need on-premise, look at Epicor Kinetic and IFS Cloud alongside S/4HANA. Your own answers will move these rankings, which is why the profiles above are a starting point, not a recommendation.
💡 Key Takeaway
The deadline does not tell you which system to move to. Your customisation depth and deployment constraint do. For a mid-sized ECC manufacturer that can run in the cloud, SAP's lead is the conversion path; for a large or on-premise customer, S/4HANA leads on fit as well.
How far along are other SAP ECC customers?
About half of the SAP customers surveyed by DSAG still run ECC, and most of them will not finish by 2027. The DSAG Investment Report 2026, published on 26 February 2026 and based on 198 CIOs and IT leaders from member companies of the German-speaking SAP user group, found that 54 percent still operate ECC or the Business Suite, down from 68 percent in 2024. For the first time more respondents run S/4HANA On-Premise (56 percent, up from 44 percent) than ECC.
| Share of respondents | |
|---|---|
| ECC / Business Suite, 2024 | 68 % |
| ECC / Business Suite, 2026 | 54 % |
| S/4HANA On-Premise, 2024 | 44 % |
| S/4HANA On-Premise, 2026 | 56 % |
Source: DSAG Investment Report 2026, 26 Feb 2026, n = 198. Companies can run both platforms, so the shares add up to more than 100.
Of the ECC users in the survey, 37 percent plan to switch by the end of 2027 and about half by the end of 2030; 4 percent plan to use the transition option to 2033. DSAG reads this as companies accepting higher maintenance costs rather than rushing a transformation. The survey covers the German-speaking market, where SAP's installed base is densest, so treat it as a strong signal rather than a global census.
What should you decide before the end of 2026?
Four decisions, in this order, because each one narrows the next:
- Can you run in a public or private cloud? In our replay this single answer knocked out four more systems at every company size. Settle it with IT security and compliance first.
- How much of your customisation is still needed? Heavy customisation points to a conversion; processes that can return to standard open the greenfield options, including non-SAP systems.
- Could you need ECC beyond 2030? If yes, check the 2 TB threshold and price a 2026 sign-up against the unknown 2027 terms.
- Is extended maintenance your bridge or your plan? At roughly 9 percent more per year it is an affordable bridge. As a plan, it only buys three years.
Once those four are answered, the shortlist usually has three to five systems on it, and the evaluation can start from your own requirements rather than from a deadline.