Business CCTV Purchase vs Rental TCO Calculator

Compare direct purchase and CCTV rental using camera, recorder, storage, installation, electricity, maintenance, privacy administration, downtime, replacement, removal, and deposit cash flows.

Illustrative quick scenarios

These are not market benchmarks. Replace them with like-for-like quotes and contract terms.

Shared analysis and storage assumptions

Apply the same camera count, horizon, recording, and powered hours to both alternatives.

Direct purchase and installation

Enter equipment, cabling, storage, recurring operations, replacement, and removal costs.

Rental and monitoring service

Use the contract to confirm deposits, recurring fees, exclusions, and return terms.

Present-value cost breakdown

Present-value cost breakdown
Cost categoryPurchase PVRental PV
Initial cost5,580,000 KRW1,200,000 KRW
Rental fees0 KRW30,851,410 KRW
Electricity818,282 KRW608,081 KRW
Connectivity, monitoring, and privacy admin1,713,967 KRW571,322 KRW
Maintenance and exclusions2,380,510 KRW571,322 KRW
Downtime loss3,808,816 KRW1,428,306 KRW
Replacement1,414,304 KRW0 KRW
Removal and return258,783 KRW172,522 KRW
Residual and deposit credits-172,522 KRW-431,304 KRW

Monthly rental fee sensitivity

Monthly rental fee sensitivity
Monthly fee per cameraPurchase PVRental PVLower cost
80% · 44,000 KRW15,802,141 KRW29,944,022 KRWPurchase
100% · 55,000 KRW15,802,141 KRW34,971,659 KRWPurchase
120% · 66,000 KRW15,802,141 KRW39,999,297 KRWPurchase
Annual discounted cash flow
Annual discounted cash flow
YearPurchase annual costPurchase PVRental annual costRental PV
11,831,871 KRW1,778,516 KRW7,147,721 KRW6,939,535 KRW
21,868,509 KRW1,761,249 KRW7,290,675 KRW6,872,161 KRW
31,905,879 KRW1,744,149 KRW7,436,489 KRW6,805,441 KRW
43,535,808 KRW3,141,520 KRW7,585,218 KRW6,739,368 KRW
52,082,876 KRW1,796,707 KRW7,436,923 KRW6,415,155 KRW

Korea privacy-law checkpoint as of July 31, 2026

This result is not a legality determination. For a Korean site, review Personal Information Protection Act Articles 25 and 29 and Enforcement Decree Articles 24 and 25 for purpose and authority, prohibited locations, notice signs, disabled audio, operating policy, and safeguards.

Related calculators

Why a monthly rental quote is not a complete CCTV cost comparison

A direct-purchase quote is often presented as camera hardware, while a rental proposal is presented as one monthly payment.
Comparing those headline figures can omit recorders, usable storage, cabling, network work, platform charges, service exclusions, replacement, removal, and deposit deductions.
This business CCTV installation and rental TCO calculator rebuilds both alternatives for the same camera count, coverage, retention requirement, and analysis period.

The model places setup, recurring operations, downtime, replacement, terminal costs, residual value, and deposit refunds on an annual cash-flow timeline.
It reports nominal TCO, present-value TCO, equivalent annual and monthly cost, cost per camera, storage capacity, discounted crossover, and a break-even rental fee.
Every default price and operating assumption is illustrative rather than a 2026 market average or supplier recommendation.

Use this calculator to answer four practical questions

  • What are the nominal and present-value costs of purchase and rental?
  • What is the equivalent monthly cost per camera and the break-even rental fee?
  • How much reference storage and first-year electricity does the selected design require?
  • Have privacy notices, operating policy, access control, safeguards, and contract exit work been budgeted?

What belongs in each alternative

Direct purchase and installation

Purchase includes more than cameras and an NVR.
Add cabling, conduit, working-at-height charges, PoE switches, UPS equipment, storage, licenses, notice signs, and initial policy work.

  • Annual inspection, cleaning, repair reserve, and license renewal
  • Connectivity, remote access, monitoring, and privacy administration
  • Expected cost of recording gaps and internal incident response
  • Planned replacement, terminal removal, and residual recovery

Rental and monitoring service

Separate the per-camera rental from site-wide platform, cloud storage, monitoring, and response charges.
Treat a deposit as cash paid at the start and credit only the confirmed refund rate at the end.

  • Registration, installation, network work, signs, and policy setup
  • Connectivity, callout, parts, consumables, or licenses excluded from the fee
  • Privacy-policy reviews, access checks, disclosure requests, and training retained by the operator
  • Return, removal, restoration, ownership transfer, and deposit deductions

Avoid double counting: set a separate input to zero when the rental fee already includes that exact service.
If a proposal says service is free but excludes storage tiers, parts, working-at-height labor, or callouts, enter the expected excluded cost instead.

How to replace the defaults with evidence

1. Normalize coverage, recording, and retention

Match the number of cameras and coverage before comparing cost.
Use an actual proposal or recorder statistic for average bitrate because resolution alone does not determine storage traffic.
Recording mode, frame rate, codec, scene movement, night noise, and event rules can materially change the average.

2. Split scalable and site-wide purchase costs

Enter camera hardware and installation per unit so they scale with camera count.
Enter recorders, storage, network equipment, UPS capacity, policy preparation, and shared restoration work as site-wide costs.
The planned replacement amount is one present-price event and is escalated to the year in which it occurs.

3. Reconstruct the rental contract

Separate the per-camera payment from site-wide platform and monitoring fees.
Confirm whether fees stay fixed for the committed term, change on renewal, or rise after an introductory period.
Review mandatory use, automatic renewal, ownership, return, removal, restoration, data deletion, and deposit deductions before entering terminal values.

Storage, electricity, and present-value formulas

Reference recording storage

The estimate converts aggregate megabits per second to bytes, multiplies by recording time and retention days, and adds the selected overhead allowance.

TB = cameras × Mbps × 1,000,000 ÷ 8 × hours × 3,600 × days ÷ 10¹² × (1 + overhead)

The output uses decimal TB and is a planning reference, not a guaranteed usable array size.
Adjust for RAID, filesystem overhead, dual streams, bitrate peaks, spare capacity, and event-recording behavior.
Storage capacity does not automatically price a purchase array or a cloud plan.

Annual electricity

Add all camera watts and shared recorder or gateway watts, convert to kilowatts, then multiply by powered hours and 365 days.
First-year kWh is multiplied by the effective incremental electricity price, and later years use the electricity escalation assumption.

PV, EAC, and monthly equivalence

Each year's net cost is divided by the discount factor for that year and added to time-zero cost.
The present value is annualized with a capital-recovery factor and then divided by 12 and by the camera count.
At a zero discount rate, equivalent annual cost is simply PV divided by the analysis years.

Step-by-step workflow

  1. Define an equivalent service scope. Match coverage, indoor or outdoor rating, low-light performance, retention, monitoring, and response.
  2. Verify storage and power. Use proposal specifications, recorder statistics, device power data, and a recent electricity bill.
  3. Disassemble the purchase quote. Separate camera-scaled cost from shared storage, network, privacy setup, maintenance, replacement, and removal.
  4. Disassemble the rental contract. Enter per-camera, platform, monitoring, exclusions, deposit, return, and restoration terms.
  5. Read cash and economic cost together. Compare upfront cash, annual cash flow, PV TCO, and equivalent monthly cost.
  6. Stress the decision. Review the 80%, 100%, and 120% rental-fee cases, break-even fee, and privacy responsibilities.

Worked example using the editable default scenario

The default has eight cameras, a five-year analysis period, 2 Mbps per camera, continuous recording, 30-day retention, and 15% storage overhead.
It uses KRW 5,580,000 of purchase setup cash, KRW 55,000 per camera per month for rental, and KRW 100,000 per month for a site-wide platform.
Those figures reproduce the model; they are not official price levels or a market survey.

Purchase and rental results for the illustrative business CCTV scenario
MetricPurchaseRental
Upfront cashKRW 5,580,000KRW 1,200,000
Five-year nominal TCOKRW 16,804,943KRW 38,097,026
Present-value TCOKRW 15,802,141KRW 34,971,659
Equivalent monthly costKRW 287,539KRW 636,352
Monthly equivalent per cameraKRW 35,942KRW 79,544

Reference storage is 5.9616 TB, and purchase PV is KRW 19,169,518 below rental PV.
Although rental uses less cash at the start, purchase becomes lower on cumulative discounted cost in year 1.
Holding every other rental input constant, the break-even per-camera monthly rental fee is KRW 13,059.
Actual results can reverse when rental includes broader storage, monitoring, replacement, and callout coverage or when purchase downtime and repair are higher.

Interpreting break-even and rental-fee sensitivity

The break-even value changes only the per-camera rental fee and holds platform, monitoring, deposit, exclusions, power, downtime, and return cost constant.
It is therefore a negotiation reference for one defined contract structure, not a universal fair price.
Re-enter the complete proposal when a lower rental fee also changes included storage, service response, installation, or exit terms.

Monthly rental fee sensitivity for the illustrative default scenario
ScenarioMonthly fee per cameraRental PVLower PV
80% of baseKRW 44,000KRW 29,944,022Purchase
100% baseKRW 55,000KRW 34,971,659Purchase
120% of baseKRW 66,000KRW 39,999,297Purchase

Korea privacy-law checkpoint for fixed CCTV

This calculator does not determine legality, violation, liability, or an administrative fine.
As of July 31, 2026, the current Personal Information Protection Act is MST 270351, effective October 2, 2025, and the current Enforcement Decree is MST 286175, effective May 19, 2026.

  • Purpose and authority: Act Article 25 limits fixed cameras in publicly accessible places to listed grounds such as crime prevention or properly authorized facility safety and management.
  • Highly private locations: cameras must not view the inside of toilets, changing rooms, bathing rooms, saunas, and similar locations used by an unspecified public, subject to narrow statutory exceptions.
  • Notice: the sign identifies purpose and location, coverage and hours, and the contact details of the responsible manager; Enforcement Decree Article 24 addresses visible placement.
  • Function limits: do not arbitrarily redirect a fixed camera away from its installation purpose, and do not use its audio-recording function.
  • Safeguards: Act Article 29 requires appropriate technical, managerial, and physical protection against loss, theft, leakage, falsification, alteration, or damage.
  • Operating policy: Enforcement Decree Article 25 lists purpose, count, location, coverage, authorized people, recording and retention, access requests, and safeguards for the policy.

A promulgated amendment, MST 283839, is scheduled to take effect on September 11, 2026.
The checked Article 25 amendment consolidates safeguard wording through a defined term, while the core checkpoints above remain.
Recheck the effective Act, follow-up decree, and current Personal Information Protection Commission guidance after that date.

Quote and contract checklist

Technical and installation scope

  • Camera model, count, codec, low-light, backlight, and weather rating
  • Cable length, conduit, working-at-height labor, and finish restoration
  • NVR channels, promised storage, usable RAID capacity, and retention
  • PoE switches, UPS, internet, fixed IP, cellular backup, and remote-access security
  • Final viewing angles, blind spots, disabled audio, and acceptance testing

Service and exit scope

  • Parts, callout, consumables, working-at-height exclusions, and response time
  • Monitoring and response events, night or holiday surcharges, false alarms, and network outages
  • Cloud location, account access, subcontractors, and incident notification
  • Mandatory term, automatic renewal, fee escalation, and early termination
  • Ownership, return, removal, restoration, deletion evidence, and deposit deductions

Important limits

Lower TCO does not mean better security or legal compliance.
The calculator compares quote-driven cost but does not monetize deterrence, reduced theft, evidentiary value, insurance discounts, or differences in image quality and reliability.

  • Facial recognition, biometric processing, employee monitoring, audio collection, and sector-specific legal determinations
  • VAT recovery, depreciation, corporate tax, financing, and lease accounting
  • Early-termination damages, SLA credits, incident liability, and enforceability
  • Exact RAID design, event-recording probability, codec efficiency, and network engineering
  • Stochastic failure, breach, crime-loss, and insurance-recovery modeling

Frequently asked questions

Does Korean law require every private business to retain CCTV for 30 days?

No. Thirty days is an illustrative default here. Determine a necessary and proportionate period from purpose, any sector-specific rule, the operating policy, and current regulatory guidance.

Does a rental provider take over all privacy responsibility?

Do not assume so. Review the site operator's role, the provider's storage, monitoring, access and subcontracting activities, incident response, and the governing contract.

Can I buy exactly the storage capacity shown?

The result is an average-bitrate decimal TB estimate. Confirm usable capacity after RAID, filesystem, spare space, dual streams, peak bitrate, and recording-mode effects with the system designer.

What does a zero purchase replacement cycle mean?

It means no planned replacement event is added within the analysis horizon. It does not imply zero failures, so expected repair should remain in annual maintenance.

Is rental automatically better below the break-even fee?

Only if every other rental input stays unchanged. Recalculate the full proposal when a lower monthly fee also changes installation, storage, repair coverage, platform charges, or exit cost.

Primary sources and update boundary

  • NIST Handbook 135e2022 for present-value life-cycle costing and annual-value methodology
  • Personal Information Protection Act, MST 270351, including Articles 25 and 29
  • Personal Information Protection Act Enforcement Decree, MST 286175, Articles 24 and 25
  • National Law Information OPEN API verification on July 31, 2026, including pending Act MST 283839
  • Personal Information Protection Commission 2024 private-sector fixed CCTV guide, used only as a historical practical reference because the official page labels it a past guide

Rebuild both quotes on one comparable basis

Fix the camera count and retention requirement, then enter every included and excluded line from the purchase quote and rental contract.
Review upfront cash, PV TCO, equivalent monthly cost, storage, crossover, and Korea-specific operating duties together before signing.