Data Act switching charges end on 12 January 2027: what to check
Data Act switching charges, egress included, end on 12 January 2027. What the ban covers, what it leaves out and what to check in cloud contracts before then.
From 12 January 2027, Article 29 of the EU Data Act, Regulation (EU) 2023/2854, bans switching charges, data egress charges included, when a customer moves from a cloud or SaaS provider to another provider or to its own infrastructure. On 21 October 2026, the Permanent Representatives Committee (Coreper) agreed the Council’s negotiating mandate on the Digital Omnibus, a position rather than law, which keeps the ban but would write proportionate early termination penalties for fixed-term contracts into the Act, infrastructure services included. Leaving a cloud provider gets cheaper in January 2027, but it does not get shorter.
This post covers what the ban leaves out, which contracts it reaches, the Omnibus, the Swiss angle, why an exit still takes work, and what to check by when.
When do Data Act switching charges end?
The Data Act ban on switching charges is decided law. Article 29(1) reads: “From 12 January 2027, providers of data processing services shall not impose any switching charges on the customer for the switching process.” Until then, Article 29(2) and (3) allow reduced charges, capped at the provider’s costs “directly linked to the switching process concerned”.
Data egress fees are part of the ban: Article 2(36) defines switching charges as charges for moving to another provider or to on-premises infrastructure, “including data egress charges”.
Each Member State designates one or more authorities to enforce the Act and sets the penalties (Articles 37 and 40); a customer that considers its rights infringed can complain to the authority where it is established (Article 38).
| Date | Step | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 11 January 2024 | Entry into force; switching charges capped at the provider’s costs | Decided |
| 12 September 2025 | The Act applies, including the switching terms | Decided |
| 19 November 2025 | Commission proposes the Digital Omnibus | Proposed |
| 1 December 2025 | France caps cloud switching data transfer fees at zero euros | Decided (France) |
| 21 October 2026 | Coreper agrees the Council’s negotiating mandate | Proposed |
| 12 January 2027 | Switching charges, egress included, end | Decided |
What counts as a switching charge, and what does not
Switching charges are, in plain terms, cloud exit fees. Several costs stay outside the ban.
- Standard service fees. They remain due until the contract ends (recital 89), so you pay through the notice and transition periods.
- Proportionate early termination penalties. Excluded from the definition (Article 2(36)), allowed in fixed-duration contracts (recital 89) and disclosed before you sign (Article 29(4)).
- Your own effort, partners and extras. Nothing prevents “a customer from compensating third-party entities for support in the migration process”, and extra services you request at an agreed price are chargeable (recital 89).
- Egress for in-parallel use. In multi-cloud set-ups, Article 34(2) lets the provider pass on egress costs “without exceeding such costs”; the Commission’s non-binding Data Act FAQ (version 1.4 of 22 January 2026, question 54) reads this as continuing after 12 January 2027.
- Egress outside a switch. The ban covers “the switching process” (Article 29(1)). Traffic to your users, between regions or for a routine export stays priced by your contract.
- Custom-built services and test versions. Article 31(1) removes Article 29 for services mostly custom-built for one customer and not offered at broad commercial scale; Article 31(2) takes non-production test versions out of Chapter VI.
Which cloud and SaaS contracts does the ban cover?
The FAQ (question 58a) says the definition in Article 2(8) “covers IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS”, so SaaS contracts too must meet Article 25 and drop switching charges.
Contracts signed on or before 12 September 2025 are covered too: Article 50 gives Chapter VI no transitional rule, unlike Chapter IV, and the Omnibus proposal would spare some providers the need to “reopen and renegotiate” them (recital 17).
Since 12 September 2025, Article 25(2) has set minimum contract terms for switching:
- Notice. Two months at most.
- Transition. 30 calendar days at most, with the provider assisting, or up to seven months if the provider shows within 14 working days that 30 days is technically unfeasible (Article 25(4)).
- Retrieval and erasure. At least 30 calendar days to retrieve your data, then full erasure.
- Scope and support. An exhaustive list of the data and digital assets that can be ported, and support for your exit strategy.
Article 26(b) adds an online register of export formats, and Article 30(2) requires non-IaaS providers to offer open interfaces free of charge. Until common specifications are published, every provider must export all exportable data at your request, on a switch to a service of the same type, “in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format” (Article 30(5)). For a custom-built service or a test version, Article 31(3) requires the provider to say before signing which Chapter VI obligations do not apply. Ask for that in writing.
What would the Digital Omnibus change?
Everything in this section is proposed, not law. The Commission put forward the Digital Omnibus, COM(2025) 837, on 19 November 2025 (procedure 2025/0360(COD)).
Lighter regimes for older non-IaaS contracts
The proposal and the Council’s mandate both exempt non-IaaS services under contracts concluded on or before 12 September 2025 from Chapter VI and Article 34, “with the exception of Article 29”, where the service is custom-made, mostly “adapted by the provider to the specific needs of the customer” (Article 31(1a)), or the provider is an SME or small mid-cap (Article 31(1b) in the Council text). The charge ban stands. Do not confuse “custom-made” with the current “custom-built” exemption (Article 31(1)), which removes Article 29.
Early termination penalties
Today, the allowance for proportionate penalties in fixed-term contracts sits in recital 89, not in an article. The Commission proposed writing it into the Act for non-IaaS services only. The Council struck that clause and added Article 31(1c), which lets any provider, IaaS included, “include provisions on proportionate early termination penalties in a contract of fixed duration”. Recital (18) limits this to penalties that “do not constitute an obstacle to switching”. Either way, negotiate the term and the penalty before you sign, not at exit.
Where the file stands
As of 22 October 2026, Parliament has no position: the Legislative Observatory shows “Awaiting committee decision” and no vote date. Agence Europe reported in its Europe Daily Bulletin of 22 October 2026 that talks can start “once MEPs have adopted their own position”. Until a text is adopted and published, the current Data Act applies, including on 12 January 2027.
Does the Data Act cover Swiss organisations?
It depends on who signs. Article 1(3)(f) covers providers “irrespective of their place of establishment” that serve “customers in the Union”, and Article 2(30) makes the customer the party that “has entered into a contractual relationship” with the provider.
- An EU subsidiary of a Swiss group that signs in its own name is a customer in the Union, and the ban protects it.
- A Swiss entity that signs alone is not clearly covered; do not assume the ban applies.
- A group contract signed in Switzerland for EU use is a question for counsel.
AWS already draws that line. Since 5 March 2024, it has waived charges for data transfer out to the internet for eligible customers moving off AWS. Its terms as updated on 8 October 2026 also cover leaving one AWS service, give eligible customers outside the EU 180 days, and send EU customers switching under the Data Act to its EU Data Act Addendum, which covers payer accounts whose account country is an EU Member State.
Regulated organisations need an exit anyway: FINMA expects banks and insurers that outsource significant functions to be able to bring them back or move them, and DORA Article 28 requires EU financial entities to hold exit strategies, with tested exit plans, for ICT services that support critical or important functions. Where it applies, the Data Act makes those plans cheaper to use, not easier to write.
Free egress does not make an exit short
The FAQ (question 58b) is explicit: the Act places no responsibility on a source provider “to assist the customer in rebuilding their data processing service in the environment of the destination provider”. Functional equivalence applies to IaaS only, and only to features the two services share (Article 30(1), recital 86).
So the real cost of leaving stays where it was: translation. A proprietary SaaS product holds your data in its own model, next to workflows and integrations that exist only inside it. An export is a file, not a working service.
Open source changes what a switch is. An open-source app is not tied to whoever runs it: the same Nextcloud, PostgreSQL or Keycloak runs on your premises or with another operator, so changing operator is an export and a restore of the same database and files, at the same version. Where the interface is an open standard, such as the S3 API that Garage speaks, even the software can differ. The Act itself calls for interoperability rules “to overcome vendor lock-in” (recital 90). Avoiding lock-in means, in practice, a destination that can read what you take out.
An exit is still a project, with a fallback, scheduled exports, a runbook and a test: an exit strategy. Keep a copy outside the provider, as the Swiss Federal Audit Office recommended for the federal administration’s Microsoft 365. From 12 January 2027, leaving costs less, so a tested exit becomes usable at the next renewal or after a price rise, not only a paragraph in the vendor file.
What to check in your contracts, and by when
Legal dates come from the Data Act; the others are our suggested timetable.
- By 30 November 2026: list your cloud and SaaS contracts. For each, record the signing entity (EU or Swiss), service model, fixed term, penalty, notice period and data held.
- By 15 December 2026: check the Article 25 terms against the minimums above. Ask for the Article 26(b) format register, the Article 29(4) statement of fees and penalties and, for any custom-built service or test version, the Article 31(3) list of obligations that do not apply.
- Before 12 January 2027: if a switch is planned, ask in writing which charges apply. Under the Data Act, charges at cost remain allowed until that date (Article 29(2) and (3)). In France, an order of 17 November 2025 under the SREN law has capped data transfer fees on a change of cloud provider at zero euros since 1 December 2025 (in French; summary ours).
- By 31 March 2027: name a destination for each critical service. Record what the export contains and whether the destination can run it without translation. Where it cannot, that gap is the length of your exit.
- By 30 June 2027: run one export test and record its cost. Export, restore into the destination and time it. Outside a switch, the export is priced by your contract, so the invoice shows what scheduled exports cost; on a real switch, check that no switching charge appears.
- At every renewal: negotiate the exit. Keep penalties proportionate and in-parallel egress at cost. As a reference, use the Switching & Exit and Termination clauses of the Commission’s non-binding draft recommendation of 19 November 2025.
- Throughout: follow the Omnibus. When a final text is published, check whether your older contracts fall under the new regimes and how penalties are worded.
How Pilae fits
The Data Act removes the fee for leaving, not the work. Pilae operates open-source and source-available apps on your premises or on dedicated machines in Pilae Cloud in Switzerland and the EU, and builds the fallback for the providers you keep.
- An exit plan per provider. A documented fallback on open-source or source-available apps you control, with the target, the runbook and a test that proves it works, fed by scheduled exports in open formats stored in your chosen country.
- A move with a price and a date. A migration with fixed scope and price in writing, a parallel run, a cutover with a rollback, and counts compared between source and target.
- Leaving Pilae is written in too. Every plan includes a written exit plan: your data back in open formats, the configurations handed over and deletion confirmed. Another operator or your own team can take over the same apps without rebuilding them.
You can keep a provider and hold the fallback in reserve. To find out what leaving would take, talk to an engineer: we look at your critical dependencies, propose a fallback for each and quote the exit plans at a fixed price.
This post is general information, not legal advice. For the official text, read Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 on EUR-Lex.