How much does a data center cost? USA, EU, UAE, India and Pakistan compared

Building a 10-megawatt data center in Mumbai costs about $66 million, before land and servers. The same building in Silicon Valley costs about $133 million. Running them is a different story: on Maharashtra's state industrial tariff, the Indian facility's electricity bill comes to roughly $11.3 million a year — the same as a comparable US site paying the average American industrial rate.

That gap between what a data center costs to build and what it costs to run is the most useful thing to understand when comparing the United States, the European Union, the United Arab Emirates, India and Pakistan. Construction costs vary by a factor of two. Electricity bills vary by a factor of three, last for decades, and rank countries in a different order.

This guide sets out what each market costs, using the latest published construction indices, utility and regulator tariffs, and a single standard model so the numbers can be compared directly.

How much does it cost to build a data center?

For a conventional air-cooled facility, construction typically costs about $6 million to $13 million per megawatt of IT capacity in the markets covered here, before land and before any servers or chips. A megawatt of IT capacity is enough to power, for example, 100 server racks drawing 10 kilowatts each.

The most widely used benchmark is Turner & Townsend's Data Centre Construction Cost Index, which prices the cost per watt of IT load across 52 markets. Its latest edition found costs rose 5.5% in a year, down from 9% the year before, and that liquid-cooled facilities built for AI cost seven to ten percent more than comparable air-cooled ones in the US. The index excludes land, utility connections and IT equipment, so it measures the building and its electrical and cooling systems.

Construction cost by market, with the equivalent cost of a 10-megawatt facility:

• Silicon Valley, USA: $13.3 per watt, about $133 million (building and M&E, excluding land and IT)
• New Jersey, USA: $12.9 per watt, about $129 million
• Atlanta, Phoenix and Columbus, USA: $9.8 to $9.9 per watt, about $98 million to $99 million
• US and Canada average, all-in: $17.6 million per megawatt, about $176 million (excludes chips and GPUs)
• Stockholm, Sweden: $12.3 per watt, about $123 million
• Frankfurt, Germany: $11.6 per watt, about $116 million
• Paris and Amsterdam: $10.8 per watt, about $108 million
• Dublin and Madrid: $10.0 per watt, about $100 million
• UAE, Khazna projects: about $6.1 million per megawatt, about $61 million (derived from an announced investment; scope not disclosed)
• Mumbai, India: $6.64 per watt, about $66 million
• India, five major cities: $5.9 million to $9.0 million per megawatt, about $59 million to $90 million (powered shell and data hall, excluding land)
• Pakistan: no published construction benchmark

Two cautions apply to that list. Turner & Townsend's per-watt figures and Cushman & Wakefield's per-megawatt ranges use different scopes, so they are close but not identical measures. And where no index exists, as in the UAE and Pakistan, the only available figures come from company investment announcements, which rarely say what they include.

Data center construction cost in the USA: $9.5 to $13.3 per watt

The United States has the deepest data center market and some of its most expensive construction. Turner & Townsend puts Silicon Valley at $13.3 per watt and New Jersey at $12.9, while newer hubs are cheaper: Atlanta at $9.9, Phoenix and Columbus at $9.8, and Charlotte, added in the latest edition, at $9.5.

The all-in picture is higher. Cushman & Wakefield's 2026 development cost guide, published on September 3, found costs have risen an average of 21% per megawatt since late 2024. All-in greenfield development in the US and Canada now averages $17.6 million per megawatt for the most modern facilities, excluding chips and GPUs. Power infrastructure is the largest single cost category at 21% of the total, and powered land in primary US markets has averaged $584,000 per megawatt so far in 2026, up 51% from a year earlier.

Demand explains the pricing. The US accounted for 45% of global data center electricity consumption in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency, and vacancy in Northern Virginia, the world's largest market, was 0.3% in the first quarter of 2026. States compete hard for projects: Virginia's sales-tax exemption for data center equipment delivered operators an estimated $1.9 billion in tax savings in fiscal 2025, on $33.2 billion of exempt purchases.

Data center construction cost in Europe: $10 to $12.3 per watt

Europe's major markets now cost about the same as America's secondary hubs. Paris and Amsterdam are both $10.8 per watt on Turner & Townsend's index, Dublin and Madrid $10.0, Frankfurt $11.6 and Stockholm $12.3. London, outside the EU, is $12.0. A weaker dollar has pushed European figures up the rankings when measured in US dollars.

Europe's harder constraint is access to power. Ireland's energy regulator now requires new data centers to match at least 80% of their annual demand with additional renewable electricity generated in Ireland, and CBRE reports that grid constraints are affecting development timelines and site selection in established hubs including London and Frankfurt. Those limits raise the cost of a project in ways a construction index does not capture.

Data center cost in the UAE: about $6.1 million per MW, on announced figures

The UAE has no public entry in the construction indices used here, so the best available figure comes from its largest operator. Khazna Data Centers is investing $1.28 billion in five facilities that will add about 210 megawatts, according to Emirates NBD research. That implies roughly $6.1 million per megawatt, a TECHi calculation, though Khazna does not disclose exactly what the figure covers.

The same research puts UAE capacity at 358 megawatts, rising to about 950 megawatts by 2028. It also shows the climate's cost: data centers in the Middle East operate at an average power usage effectiveness of about 1.79, against 1.46 in Europe, because summer temperatures reach 50°C and cooling consumes more electricity. Power usage effectiveness is total facility power divided by the power used by the IT equipment, so a lower figure means less waste.

Electricity in Dubai is set by the Dubai Electricity & Water Authority. Industrial users pay AED 0.23 per kilowatt-hour for the first 10,000 kWh a month and AED 0.38 above that, plus a fuel surcharge of AED 0.06 for September 2026 and 5% VAT. A data center lives entirely in the top slab, so its marginal rate is AED 0.44, or about $0.12 per kWh before VAT.

Data center cost in India: $5.9 to $9 million per MW

India is among the cheapest places in the world to build a data center. Turner & Townsend ranked Mumbai 51st of 52 markets, at $6.64 per watt. Cushman & Wakefield's 2026 Asia-Pacific cost guide, covering Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai, puts total construction at $5.9 million to $9.0 million per megawatt — about ₹56 crore to ₹86 crore at current exchange rates — split between a powered shell of $1.8 million to $2.7 million and data hall fit-out of $4.1 million to $6.3 million. In its model hyperscale development, land accounts for 27% of total cost.

The market is growing quickly from a smaller base. The Indian government's budget backgrounder cites industry estimates that cloud data center capacity has reached about 1,280 megawatts, and the 2026–27 budget proposed a tax holiday until 2047 for eligible foreign cloud providers using Indian data centers. Planned projects such as Reliance's, which TECHi reported could be among the world's biggest AI data centers, point to much larger campuses ahead.

Electricity is where India's advantage narrows. Tariffs are set state by state. Maharashtra's regulator, which classifies data centers as industrial consumers, set a high-tension industrial energy charge for customers of the state utility MSEDCL of ₹7.48 per kVAh plus a demand charge of ₹555 per kVA a month in its March 2025 order. The demand charge, levied on contracted capacity whether or not it is used, adds about $1 million a year to a 10-megawatt facility's bill.

Data center cost in Pakistan: no benchmark, and power is the problem

Pakistan does not appear in any published construction cost index, and its market is still small. The country's "largest" data center, Sky47 in Islamabad, has a capacity of 8.5 megawatts, with a 5-megawatt facility under development in Karachi — a fraction of the capacity in neighbouring India.

The government has tried to change that. In May 2025 it announced it would allocate 2,000 megawatts in a first phase for bitcoin mining and AI data centers. It proposed selling that power at 23 to 24 rupees per kWh, about $0.08, but the International Monetary Fund rejected the subsidy, with Pakistan's power secretary saying the fund was concerned about market distortions.

That leaves standard tariffs. Under the tariff schedule notified by the power regulator NEPRA in February 2026, large industrial consumers connected at 66 kV and above pay a variable rate of Rs 26.43 per kWh, falling to Rs 23.38 off-peak, plus a fixed charge of Rs 1,250 per kilowatt a month, before sales tax and fuel adjustments. The same document puts the average rate paid by commercial users at Rs 45.56 per kWh. The difference matters because many of Pakistan's data centers are run by telecom companies, and China Mobile Pakistan has said that although telecom has been declared an industry, operators have been unable to access industrial electricity tariffs because of longstanding regulatory and legal issues. Reliability adds a further cost: where the grid is subject to load-shedding, backup generators run more often, adding fuel and maintenance costs that a construction index does not capture.

Data center electricity cost by country

Construction is a one-time cost. Electricity is paid every hour for the life of the building. To compare markets on equal terms, TECHi modeled a facility with 10 megawatts of IT load running continuously at a power usage effectiveness of 1.5, which draws 15 megawatts and uses 131.4 gigawatt-hours a year.

Annual electricity bill for the model 10-megawatt facility, with the price used:

• Ireland: about $26.3 million a year ($0.200 per kWh, Eurostat H2 2025)
• Germany: about $22.0 million ($0.167, Eurostat)
• Pakistan, commercial average: about $21.6 million ($0.164, NEPRA average rate paid)
• EU average: about $18.6 million ($0.141, Eurostat)
• Dubai, UAE: about $15.7 million ($0.120, DEWA industrial slab plus fuel surcharge)
• Pakistan, industrial B-4: about $13.3 million ($0.095 plus the fixed charge)
• Virginia, USA: about $13.2 million ($0.101, EIA January–June 2026)
• Maharashtra, India: about $11.3 million ($0.078 plus the demand charge, MERC)
• USA average: about $11.3 million ($0.086, EIA 2025)
• Sweden: about $11.2 million ($0.085, Eurostat)
• France: about $10.9 million ($0.083, Eurostat)
• Texas, USA: about $8.7 million ($0.067, EIA January–June 2026)

The ranking is close to the reverse of the construction table. Ireland's prices, the highest of the markets modeled here, would put the model facility's bill at about $26.3 million a year, more than twice the US average. Germany comes to about $22 million. France and Sweden, with abundant nuclear and hydro power, sit close to the US average, and Texas is cheaper still at $8.7 million. Those state-level differences are also why data center growth has become a fight over who pays for new grid capacity in parts of the US.

Dubai's bill at the standard 1.5 efficiency is about $15.7 million. At the Middle East's average efficiency of 1.79, it rises to about $18.8 million, level with the EU average. Pakistan's industrial tariff produces a bill of about $13.3 million, above the US average; at the commercial average rate it would be about $21.6 million, close to Germany's.

Over a building's life the power bill dominates. At the US average rate, ten years of electricity for the model facility costs about $113 million before any price changes — roughly what the building itself costs in most US hubs.

How much does an AI data center cost per gigawatt?

AI facilities change the arithmetic, because the chips cost far more than the building. On Nvidia's August 26 earnings call, chief executive Jensen Huang said that "each gigawatt of data center increased from, say, $30 billion about five years ago to now $60 billion today," for the full facility including its computing systems.

That is $60 million per megawatt. Set against Cushman & Wakefield's $17.6 million per megawatt for the facility itself, excluding chips, the building and its power infrastructure account for less than a third of an AI data center's cost; the IT equipment inside is the rest. It is why a single hyperscaler's capital spending now exceeds $100 billion a year, as TECHi found in Microsoft's latest annual report, and why chipmakers are extending credit and guarantees to help customers finance the buildout, as in Nvidia's $105 billion lease guarantee.

Data center rent per kW

Most companies do not build; they rent space and power in colocation facilities, priced per kilowatt per month. CBRE's Global Data Center Trends 2026 put first-quarter rents for a 250 to 500 kilowatt requirement at $190 to $235 in Northern Virginia and $200 to $230 in Chicago. Frankfurt had Europe's highest rates, at $235 to $265, and Singapore the highest in Asia-Pacific, at $330 to $475.

At Frankfurt's rates, leasing 10 megawatts would cost about $28 million to $32 million a year. Comparable current figures for the UAE, India and Pakistan are not published on a consistent basis, which is itself a sign of how much less transparent those markets remain.

How TECHi calculated these costs

Construction figures come from Turner & Townsend's 2025–26 index and Cushman & Wakefield's 2026 US and Asia-Pacific guides; each source's scope is stated in the table. The UAE figure is derived from an announced investment and should be treated as indicative. No construction figure is given for Pakistan because no credible benchmark exists.

Electricity costs use the price each market's large users pay: the EIA's average US industrial price, which includes demand charges; Eurostat's non-household prices for the 70 to 150 gigawatt-hour band, excluding VAT and recoverable taxes; DEWA's industrial top slab plus fuel surcharge, excluding VAT; and published regulator tariffs for India and Pakistan with fixed or demand charges added on 15 megawatts of contracted capacity, excluding sales tax. India's kVAh charge is treated as kWh, which assumes a power factor near one. Currencies are converted at rates of ₹95.56, Rs 277.27 and AED 3.6725 to the dollar and $1.16 to the euro, as of September 13, 2026.