Switching charges under the Data Act: what applies when changing cloud and SaaS providers from 12 January 2027

Most coverage of the Data Act has treated it as a law for connected machines and devices. Its Chapter VI, by contrast, affects almost every company, because it governs switching between cloud and software services, from rented server infrastructure to the CRM running in a browser. On 12 January 2027 this chapter reaches its most important date: from then on, the old provider may no longer charge for the switch.

For mid-sized companies this has two sides. As a customer, you can reprice a switch that used to fail on exit costs. As a provider, for example of a customer portal, an IoT platform or an industry solution of your own, you need to have changed your price lists and contracts by that day. This article sets out what is banned from that date, what still costs money, whom the rule applies to, why the Digital Omnibus does not change it and what a breach can cost in Germany.

What changes on 12 January 2027?

From that day, providers of data processing services may not impose any switching charges on the customer for the switching process (Article 29(1)). Until then they may impose reduced switching charges, which must not exceed the costs incurred by the provider that are directly linked to the switching process concerned (paragraphs 2 and 3).

What falls under the ban follows from the definition in Article 2(36): switching charges are charges a provider imposes on a customer for the actions the regulation mandates for switching to another provider or to on-premises ICT infrastructure, expressly including data egress charges. These are the fees for extracting the customer’s data through the network from the provider’s infrastructure (point 35), usually called egress fees. Recital 88 names the costs of transferring data and of specific support actions during switching as common examples.

The date is no coincidence. The regulation entered into force on 11 January 2024, and recital 88 provides for switching charges to be abolished three years later. The rest of Chapter VI has applied since 12 September 2025, the general date of application (Article 50). Switching clauses, information duties and export formats have therefore been mandatory since then; on 12 January 2027 the last charge disappears.

Which cloud and SaaS services does the ban cover?

All data processing services within the meaning of Article 2(8): digital services that give a customer ubiquitous, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable, scalable and elastic computing resources. Recital 81 assigns them to the three delivery models Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS). That covers the hyperscalers just as much as the CRM, the accounting software or the ticketing system from the cloud.

A customer is any natural or legal person in a contractual relationship with a provider to use such a service (point 30). The rules therefore apply between businesses too, and Chapter VI has no size-based exemption. The exemption for micro and small enterprises in Article 7 only concerns Chapter II, meaning connected products.

Article 31 contains two exceptions:

• Custom-built services. Article 29 does not apply to services whose main features have mostly been custom-built to the needs of an individual customer, or whose components were all developed for that customer, provided the provider does not offer them at broad commercial scale via its service catalogue (paragraph 1). The provider must tell the customer before the contract is concluded which obligations do not apply (paragraph 3).
• Test versions. Services provided as a non-production version for testing and evaluation purposes and for a limited period are exempt from the whole chapter (paragraph 2).

A free tier, by contrast, is no exception. Article 23(c) expressly requires that customers can port their data even after having benefited from a free-tier offering.

What counts as a switching charge, and what does not?

The line runs between the price of the switch and the price of the service. Article 2(36) expressly excludes two items, and recitals 88, 89 and 99 draw the remaining lines.

For planning purposes, the second-to-last row matters most. Anyone running several clouds in parallel, for example storing data with one provider and analysing it with a second, keeps paying for that ongoing data flow after 2027. The regulation explains this by noting that data egress for parallel use can be an ongoing activity, unlike the one-off egress of a switch (recital 99). The provider may, however, only pass on the costs actually incurred.

Does switching cloud providers become free from 2027?

No. Only what the old provider charges for the switch itself becomes free. The other costs of a switch remain:

• standard service fees until the contract ends, including during the transitional period in which the contract continues to apply under Article 25(2)(a),
• a proportionate penalty if a fixed-term contract ends early,
• the new service, which runs in parallel during the transitional period,
• your own effort and that of a migration partner: data mapping, interfaces, testing and training.

For the process itself, the Data Act sets the frame. Under Article 25(2), the contract must include, among other things, a maximum notice period for initiating the switch of no more than two months, a subsequent transitional period of no more than 30 calendar days during which the contract continues and the provider assists with the switch, and a data retrieval period of at least 30 calendar days after that. If the transitional period is technically unfeasible, the provider must justify this within 14 working days and indicate an alternative period of no more than seven months (paragraph 4); the customer itself may extend the transitional period once (paragraph 5).

Without extensions this gives a manageable window. A company that announces its switch in mid-January 2027 reaches, with all maximum periods used up, the start of the transition by mid-March at the latest and its completion by mid-April, and still has access to its data for at least 30 days after that.

Does the Data Act guarantee that everything works the same after switching?

Only for infrastructure services. Under Article 30(1), IaaS providers must take all reasonable measures in their power so that the customer achieves functional equivalence with the new provider. For PaaS and SaaS this duty does not apply (recital 86). These providers must instead make open interfaces available free of charge (Article 30(2)) and, as long as no common specifications or harmonised standards have been published, export all exportable data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format on request (paragraph 5). Exportable data are the input and output data, including metadata, generated by the customer’s use of the service, excluding data and assets protected by the provider’s or third parties’ intellectual property rights or constituting a trade secret (Article 2(38)).

We see the difference on our own website. Code and content sit entirely in a Git repository, so exporting them would be a non-issue. The security headers with the hashes of our scripts and the redirect rules sit there too, but in files that follow the format of our host, Cloudflare Pages. Settings such as page prefetching are in no file at all; they live in the provider’s dashboard. In a switch, exactly these parts would have to be rebuilt and tested with the new provider. The Data Act lowers the price of leaving, not the effort of translating.

Does the Digital Omnibus overturn the ban?

No. On 19 November 2025 the Commission proposed amendments to the Data Act in proposal COM(2025) 837, including two reliefs for switching. Both expressly leave Article 29 in place:

• For services other than IaaS whose features and functionalities have mostly been adapted to the customer’s needs, Chapter VI and Article 34 would not apply where the contract was concluded on or before 12 September 2025, “with the exception of Article 29” (new Article 31(1a)).
• The same would apply to providers that are SMEs or small mid-caps, again only for contracts concluded on or before 12 September 2025 and again with the exception of Article 29 (new Article 31(1b)).

In both cases, contract terms contrary to Article 29 would be null and void. Recital 18 of the proposal explains that switching charges, including egress charges, are a serious obstacle to switching and that the lighter regimes should not undermine their gradual withdrawal. A further provision would clarify that fixed-term contracts may include proportionate early termination penalties, which is what recital 89 of the current text already says.

None of it has been adopted. On 20 October 2026 procedure 2025/0360(COD) stood at “Awaiting committee decision” in the European Parliament (Legislative Observatory). For planning, the published text applies. The other part of the omnibus package, which amends the AI Act and has already been adopted as Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, is covered in our article on the EU Digital Omnibus.

What should cloud customers do before 12 January 2027?

1. List your contracts. Every cloud and SaaS contract with its term, its notice periods and its prices for export, data transfer and exit.
2. Check the switching clauses. Since 12 September 2025 every contract must contain the minimum content of Article 25(2). If the notice period, transitional period, retrieval period or the exhaustive list of exportable data categories is missing, ask for it.
3. Rehearse the export. Ask for the information on switching procedures and the online register of data formats under Article 26, and test an export before you need it.
4. Recalculate postponed switches. If a switch was put off because of exit costs, plan it for after 12 January 2027, keeping fixed terms and possible penalties in view.
5. Treat parallel use separately. Charges for multi-cloud data flows remain permitted, capped at cost.
6. Check invoices after the deadline. If a switching or export charge appears after it, the Bundesnetzagentur is the place to turn to.

What do providers of their own cloud services need to change by 12 January 2027?

Anyone providing software to customers as a service, such as a customer portal, an IoT platform or an industry solution, can be a provider of data processing services; the definition in Article 2(8) decides. If you are one, this list applies to you:

1. Clean up price lists. All charges for switching, export and data transfer on exit go on 12 January 2027. Until then they may not exceed the costs directly linked to the switch and must be stated clearly before the contract is concluded, where applicable in a dedicated section of your website (Article 29(3), (4) and (6)).
2. Adapt contracts. The minimum content of Article 25(2) belongs in every contract, and the contract must be made available before signing in a way that lets the customer store and reproduce it (paragraph 1).
3. Provide export and interfaces. Open interfaces free of charge for all customers and destination providers (Article 30(2)), export in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format (paragraph 5), and an up-to-date online register of data structures and formats (Article 26).
4. Document exceptions. Anyone relying on the exception for custom-built services must tell the customer before the contract is concluded which obligations do not apply (Article 31(3)).
5. Separate additional services. Migration help beyond the obligations may still be charged if the customer requests it and agrees to the price in advance (recital 89). It belongs in a separate service schedule, not in an exit flat fee.
6. Define the process. If 30 days are technically not enough, the justified notice must reach the customer within 14 working days of the switching request (Article 25(4)).

One more duty is often overlooked: under Article 28, providers must state on their website which jurisdiction the ICT infrastructure they use is subject to, and which measures they take against international governmental access to non-personal data held in the Union where it would conflict with Union or national law.

What happens if a provider keeps charging for switching?

In Germany the Bundesnetzagentur is competent (section 2 DADG). The Datenverordnung-Anwendungs-und-Durchsetzungs-Gesetz, Germany’s act implementing the Data Act, was promulgated on 29 May 2026 in Federal Law Gazette 2026 I No. 157. Customers can complain to the authority under Article 38 of the regulation. It examines compliance on a complaint or on its own initiative, requests a remedy and can order the necessary measures, enforceable with a penalty payment of up to 500,000 euros (section 9). Contravening an enforceable order is an administrative offence with a fine of up to 500,000 euros (section 15(1) no. 2 and (4)).

What is missing from the list of fines is worth noting: Article 29 itself. From Chapter VI, section 15 covers other duties:

In our reading, a switching charge after the deadline still does not go unpunished. The second sentence of Article 23 prohibits providers from imposing commercial or contractual obstacles that inhibit customers from terminating the contract, concluding a contract with a new provider or porting their data, and recital 88 states that unjustified charges inhibit customers from switching. A prohibited switching charge can therefore fall under no. 19. There can be no enforcement practice on this before 12 January 2027.

What is still open as of 20 October 2026

Three points are unsettled. First, the Digital Omnibus: if the legislator changes the special rules for older contracts from what was proposed, that shifts which switching duties apply to existing contracts; the Commission proposal leaves the ban on switching charges expressly untouched. Second, the boundary of custom-built services under Article 31(1): when most main features count as tailored to one customer, and what counts as an offer at broad commercial scale, is a question of interpretation for each service. Third, the consequences of a prohibited charge: our classification as an obstacle under Article 23 is one reading, and the current text of Chapter VI contains no express rule that contrary contract terms are void. The Omnibus proposal introduces such a rule only for its new special regimes.

Frequently asked questions about switching charges under the Data Act