RISE with SAP: Is It Really Cheaper? 7 Questions to Ask Before You Sign.

If you run SAP ECC, someone has already pitched you RISE with SAP. It sounds easy: one contract, one subscription, and SAP takes care of the rest.

Easy is nice. But you're about to sign a deal worth millions that will run for years. So before you sign, let's ask the questions your rep is hoping you won't.

First, what is RISE in plain words?

RISE with SAP is a bundle you rent. Instead of buying licenses and running SAP yourself, you pay a yearly subscription that includes S/4HANA in the cloud, the hosting, some tools and some support.

In short: you move from owning your SAP to renting it.

Why is everyone talking about it now?

Because of a date:

• December 31, 2027: mainstream maintenance for SAP ECC ends.
• 2028 to 2030: you can keep extended maintenance, but you have to opt in, and it costs extra. Several advisors describe it as a surcharge of about 2 percentage points on your maintenance base. (Crowe, UpperEdge)

A deadline is great for sales. It's terrible for careful decisions. So slow down and ask these seven questions.

Question 1: Is it actually cheaper over five years?

Often, no. One independent benchmark found RISE was not cheaper inside a five-year window. In their example, it cost about $3.4 million more than staying on ECC with extended maintenance. Their verdict: RISE is a deadline decision, not a savings decision. (Redress Compliance)

Your numbers will differ. But if someone tells you RISE "saves money," ask them to show you the five-year math, in writing.

Question 2: What's NOT in the subscription?

This is where budgets break. Advisors regularly point to costs outside the RISE price:

• Implementation partners. Often 1.5 to 3 times the first-year subscription, by advisors' estimates. (Redress Compliance, Cleverence)
• Running two systems. Old ECC and new S/4HANA side by side for 12 to 24 months while you switch over.
• Pay-as-you-go extras. Some platform services are charged by usage, and the meter can run without a cap.

Ask for a full list of everything you'll pay for that isn't in the subscription.

Question 3: How much can the price go up at renewal?

Commentators note that RISE contracts commonly allow 5 to 7% yearly price increases. Without a cap in your first contract, a five-year deal could cost 25 to 35% more when you renew. (Cleverence, Redress Compliance)

Ask for a written cap on increases. If they won't give one, that tells you something.

Question 4: How are users counted?

RISE prices users in "Full User Equivalents," a points system where different kinds of users count differently. It's a common source of surprise bills at renewal, when the count gets checked. (Redress Compliance)

Ask for a worked example using your real users, not a sample.

Question 5: What happens to all our custom code?

This is the biggest swing in the whole bill. Companies with years of custom changes in ECC pay the most to move, on any path. (Redress Compliance)

Every custom report, approval rule and special screen has to be checked, rewritten and retested. And once you've moved it, you've rebuilt the same problem that makes every future upgrade painful. (We dug into this in the SAP 2027 deadline article.)

Question 6: How hard is it to leave?

When you rent, leaving is the hard part. Advisors flag exit terms, getting your data out, and converting your users back as harder to recover than with licenses you own. (Redress Compliance)

Ask: "If we leave in year five, what exactly do we take with us, and what does it cost?"

Question 7: What could we build beside SAP instead?

Here's the question that changes the whole conversation.

A lot of what makes the move expensive is the custom stuff: approvals, pricing rules, portals, inspections. What if that didn't go into the new SAP at all?

SAP's own advice is to keep the core "clean": keep SAP standard for finance, inventory and the books, and build the things that make you different beside it, connected through standard interfaces. Less custom code to move means a smaller, cheaper, faster migration, on any path you pick.

Your options, side by side

That last row used to be the hard part. Building dozens of side modules meant another big project. Now it doesn't have to.

Where Defender fits

Defender builds the modules that sit beside SAP. AI agents write the requirements, design how each module connects to SAP, build and test it, and deploy it to your own cloud, while your team approves every step. Each module comes with documentation and a full audit trail, and you own all the code.

Use it to strip custom code out before you migrate, and your move gets smaller, whichever option you choose.