The honest answer: for most businesses of twenty to two hundred people next to nothing, for some quite a lot. It does not depend on your size, but on your role. Below, per role, what the law asks of you, where the costs are, and what Brussels is still changing.
Talk about the Data Act is usually about switching costs: from 12 January 2027 your software provider may not charge you anything when you leave. That is covered in Data Act: from 2027, switching must cost nothing. But the question we hear more and more is a different one: what does it cost to comply with the law yourself?
That question has no single answer, because the Data Act is not a law that gives every business the same obligations. It divides obligations across roles. Most SMEs have one, some have two. Which role you have decides whether you count in hours or in a development budget.
CRM, accounting, project software, document storage. The obligations sit with your provider, you get rights.
cost: a few days of your own timeMachines, installations or devices that collect usage data, plus the app or service that comes with them.
cost: product development, unless you are smallA customer portal, a SaaS product or hosting you rent out to customers. Then you are the provider.
cost: export, contracts and exit processMost Dutch SMEs only have this role. You rent software and your business data is in it. The Data Act then puts the obligations on the provider: a notice period of at most two months, your data in a structured and machine-readable format, cooperation in good faith, and from 12 January 2027 no more switching charges. For you there are no forms, no registration and no audit.
The costs are elsewhere. The law does nothing by itself: your existing contract does not change on a fixed date. If you want to get anything out of your rights, you have to use them. That means listing the notice and renewal dates per system, asking each provider in writing which data can be exported in which format, and running one real test export. Count on a few days of work, spread over a few weeks of waiting for answers.
There is also an advantage that is often overlooked. If you, as a small or medium-sized business, request data from a manufacturer, for example the usage data of a machine you bought, they may charge you at most the cost of making it available, without a margin.
If you make devices, machines or installations that collect usage data, the story is different. Since 12 September 2026, new connected products placed on the market must be designed so that the user can access their own data by default. On top of that you must share that data with the user on request, and with a third party if the user asks for it.
This is where real costs sit: changes to firmware and software, a way to make data available, contract terms and someone to handle requests. But the law spares the smallest businesses. Micro and small enterprises that are not part of a larger group are exempt from the sharing obligation. For a medium-sized business the exemption only applies in the first year it is medium-sized, and for a product in the first year after it is placed on the market. A manufacturer of fifty to two hundred people is therefore usually covered by the rules.
The role that is most often missed. If you rent out a customer portal, your own SaaS product or hosting to customers, you are a provider of a data processing service and the switching rules apply to you. Even if you are small, because there is no general SME exemption for this. Your customers must be able to leave with their data within the statutory periods, your contracts must state those rights, and from 12 January 2027 you may not charge anything for that departure.
The costs sit in three things: an export function that delivers genuinely usable data, contracts that are amended, and an exit process you can carry out within thirty days. For services that are largely custom-built for a single customer, part of those obligations does not apply. Whether your service falls under that is a question for a lawyer.
Switching rules apply to providers of software and hosting, including for existing contracts.
Connected products placed on the market now must give the user access to their data by default.
A provider may no longer charge anything for a switch, not even for exporting your data.
The rules against unfair data terms also start to apply to long-running contracts from before September 2025.
The law is not standing still. With the Digital Omnibus, the European Commission wants to simplify a range of digital rules, and the Data Act is one of them. On 11 September 2026 the Council presented a new compromise text. Two points are relevant to SMEs. Small and medium-sized providers of software and platform services, so not of pure infrastructure, do not have to reopen contracts concluded before 12 September 2025. And providers may include a proportionate early termination fee in fixed-term contracts.
The first is good news if you are a provider yourself. The second is the point for a buyer to watch: free switching does not mean free cancellation in the middle of a term. The text is not yet final and may still change. The advice therefore stays the same: look at the term of your contracts and do not wait for Brussels.
For a buyer, the cost of compliance is low. The cost of doing nothing is not. The Data Act removes the price tag of leaving, but it does not give you a place to go. Anyone who gets a free export on 12 January 2027 and does not know where it should go has a file, not a system.
That is why the most useful investment in this period is not legal but practical: a place where your business data sits in an open format, separate from the package you use to look at it. What that involves is explained in what is a data layer, and how a transfer works in practice in the data migration plan.
Do not start with the legal text, start with the question of which of the three roles you have. Only a buyer: plan a few days to get your contracts and exports in order, and use the months until January to decide on a destination for your data. Maker or provider: then this is a project with a budget, and it makes sense to bring in a lawyer now.
How we fill in that destination, with an open data layer on PostgreSQL in-house, to which your software connects and from which it can be disconnected again, is on the page about the AI Native Data Layer. This article explains what the rules mean in practice and is not legal advice.
For a business that only buys software, such as a CRM, accounting package or hosting, compliance costs next to nothing, because the obligations sit with the provider. What you do spend is time to use your rights: listing your contracts, requesting the export specification and running a test export. Real compliance costs sit with businesses that make connected products themselves or provide software, hosting or a platform as a service.
Yes, but not equally everywhere. Micro and small enterprises that are not part of a larger group are exempt from the obligation to share data from their connected products. Medium-sized businesses only have that exemption in their first year. The switching rules for anyone who provides software or hosting as a service do apply to every business, including a small provider.
The Digital Omnibus is a European proposal to simplify digital rules. In the Council compromise text of September 2026, small and medium-sized providers of software and platform services do not have to reopen contracts concluded before 12 September 2025, and providers may include a proportionate early termination fee in fixed-term contracts. The text is not yet final.
You are not obliged to do anything, but without action the law gives you nothing either. Your existing contract does not change by itself. If you want to benefit from free switching from 12 January 2027, list your notice and renewal dates now, ask each provider in writing which data can be exported in which format, and run a test export to see whether that data is usable without the provider.
The whitepaper on the AI Native Data Layer explains what an open data layer in-house looks like, what happens to your existing systems and how to start small, so that switching becomes a choice rather than a project.
Download the whitepaper