How much does colocation cost in Charlotte?
Recent quotes we received for Southeast ran $180 to $220 per kW per month for up to 500 kW, falling to $140 to $160 above 1 MW.
| Deployment | Monthly rate | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 500 kW | $180 to $220/kW-mo | Our quotes |
| Over 500 kW to 1 MW | $160 to $190/kW-mo | Our quotes |
| Over 1 MW | $140 to $160/kW-mo | Our quotes |
We have no published Charlotte asking-rent band to cite, so the Southeast Region quotes are the figure to plan with.
Smaller deployments cost more per kW. These are recent quotes we received, not a statement that space is available. Cross-connects, remote hands and one-time setup are extra. Operators often give 2–3 free months on a new term. See every region's quote ranges.
Charlotte cabinet and cage prices
Smaller deployments are priced per cabinet or per cage rather than per kW. Use these monthly ranges to set a first-pass budget. They are not provider offers, and a building on this page is not a claim that space is available in it.
| Requirement | Monthly range | Power and bandwidth assumed |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 2U | $130 to $225/mo | 1 to 3 A at 120 V, 1 to 5 TB of transfer |
| Half cabinet, 24U | $1,115 to $1,375/mo | 2 to 3 kW, 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps |
| Full cabinet, 48U | $1,445 to $1,865/mo | 2 to 5 kW, 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps |
| High-density cabinet, 48U | $2,420 to $4,740/mo | 10 to 17 kW, three-phase |
| Private cage, 4 racks | $5,000 to $5,975/mo | 5 kW per rack, 1 Gbps |
| High-density private cage, 4 racks | $15,220 to $20,805/mo | 20 kW per rack, 1 Gbps |
Based on quotes we received in the 30 days before 21 October 2026. Taxes, cross-connects, remote hands and one-time costs are extra. Replace these ranges with a normalized written quote before approval. How power is billed is covered in how colocation power is billed.
Get Charlotte colocation prices for your setup
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Who is actually plugged in across Charlotte
A building existing and a building being connected are different facts, and only one of them decides whether your traffic can get where it needs to go cheaply. These figures come from PeeringDB, which the network operators themselves maintain. Any building below can be looked up there by name.
| Measure | Figure | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Buildings listed | 16 | Registered in PeeringDB across Charlotte, by 10 operators |
| Buildings with a network present | 11 | 5 carry no network presence, which usually means single tenant or simply unregistered |
| Network presences | 53 | Counted per building, so a carrier in three buildings counts three times |
| Internet exchange presences | 7 | Where you can reach many networks through one port instead of many cross-connects |
| Carrier presences | 7 | The physical transport choice you can buy without leaving the building |
| In the densest building | 26% | Digital Realty CLT (113 N Myers St) holds 14 of the market's network presences |
The most connected buildings here
| Networks | Building | Operator | Exchanges | Carriers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 | Digital Realty CLT (113 N Myers St) | Digital Realty | 1 | 2 |
| 8 | CENTRA CLT01 - Charlotte NC (701 E Trade) | CENTRA Digital Interconnect | 1 | 1 |
| 7 | CLT2 | LUMOS Networks, Inc. | 0 | 1 |
| 6 | Digital Realty CLT (125 N Myers St) | Digital Realty | 0 | 0 |
| 5 | Flexential - Charlotte/South (CLT1/2/3) | Flexential Corp. | 1 | 1 |
| 5 | Flexential - Charlotte/North (CLT4/5) | Flexential Corp. | 2 | 1 |
| 3 | TierPoint Charlotte - Center Park | TierPoint, LLC | 1 | 0 |
| 2 | TierPoint Charlotte - North Myers | TierPoint, LLC | 1 | 1 |
From PeeringDB, which is maintained by the network operators present in these buildings rather than by the landlords, which is what makes it worth more than a directory. Two limits. Entries are voluntary, so a building showing no networks may be single tenant or may simply never have registered. And a network being present says nothing about whether the building has space, power or a price for you: that is still a call.
Market profileWhy Charlotte is a market at all
Charlotte is a banking town. Bank of America and Truist are headquartered here, and Wells Fargo runs one of its largest operations outside California here. Honeywell, Nucor, Lowe's and Duke Energy also keep head offices in the metro. That creates demand for regulated workloads, disaster recovery and back office production, not a hyperscale market.
The multi-tenant layer is modest. It sits in and around the city, in buildings sized for enterprise cabinets and cages rather than training clusters. The state's campus-scale projects are single tenant and rural.
Charlotte City Council rezoned 156 acres off Moores Chapel Road in May 2025 for a Digital Realty campus of up to 3 million square feet and, on the company's figures, up to 400 MW. That one approval is larger than the metro's entire operating multi-tenant base. It is also years of phased construction away, so the table below shows pressure on the utility, not a shortlist.
Charlotte sits between Northern Virginia and Atlanta. That makes it a credible third site for an organization already in both. It is inland, a different risk profile from the coastal markets, on the same fiber routes.
Buying power inside a vertically integrated market
North Carolina has no retail electric choice. Duke Energy generates, transmits and distributes, and the North Carolina Utilities Commission sets its rates. South Carolina, twenty minutes south of uptown, works the same way. The Carolinas sit outside any regional transmission organization, so no PJM or ERCOT capacity auction feeds your rate. Large-load costs are decided in Duke's public resource plan and rate cases.
Your operator's power cost is a published tariff, so ask which one and ask to see it. Special terms for very large loads arrive as a new tariff class that binds your operator and can be read in the docket in advance. A new large service runs on a utility construction timeline that money cannot compress.
Ask whether the capacity offered is energized at the building today or waits on a utility upgrade. Energized capacity is unaffected by the queue. Capacity waiting on a substation is in a line set by the commission and a construction schedule, and no contract clause shortens it.
Two do not: no permit collector covers Mecklenburg County or its neighbors, and our facility inventory stops short of this market. Announced capacity is hand-collected from linked sources. The interconnection snapshot comes from PeeringDB for buildings registered in Charlotte; Rock Hill stays on the South Carolina page. Neither shows available space or power. See how we verify capacity.
What has been announced in Charlotte
Announcements are not filings. Nobody has to build what they announce, the figure is the one the developer chose to publish, and the date moves. They are here because megawatts are what a requirement is measured in, and because the size of what is coming changes who will take your call. Every figure below links to a published report that states it, and was checked against at least one other independent report before it was written down.
| Capacity | Operator | Project | What was announced |
|---|---|---|---|
| 400 MW | Digital Realty | Moores Chapel campus | 156 acres off Moores Chapel Road in west Charlotte, zoned for up to 3 million SF across two phases. Charlotte City Council approved the rezoning on 19 May 2025 |
One row, and the two projects quoted most often in this market are deliberately not in it. 5C describes its Charlotte campus as opening at 50 MW of critical IT capacity on a 161 acre site designed to scale to 1,600 MW. That ceiling is a design intention rather than capacity anyone has announced building, and the phase one date the company published has passed without a confirmation, so counting it would flatter this market by a factor of four. Amazon's campus at Hamlet is the largest project in the state at $10 billion and has no published megawatt figure at all, which is why it has no row. It is also 80 miles east of the city and single tenant, so it adds nothing a Charlotte buyer can lease. Read the reporting.
Announced capacity is collected by hand from trade reporting and company statements, and each figure links to the report it came from. It is never added to a permit count: a permit is a document a jurisdiction issued, an announcement is a plan a company published. Neither is availability.
Where the multi-tenant buildings actually are
North Charlotte and the University area
The University Research Park corridor is where most of the metro's purpose-built colocation ended up, and it is where Flexential and TierPoint both hold positions. It suits enterprise production and recovery workloads and is the first stop for a requirement measured in cabinets and cages rather than megawatts.
South Charlotte
The second cluster, closer to the corporate campuses along the southern arc of the city. Easier for staff to reach from the office parks, with generally smaller floor plates. Worth testing when people need to touch the deployment.
The airport and west side
Industrial land, good road access and the utility infrastructure that came with a century of manufacturing. This is where conversions and larger single-tenant footprints tend to appear, and where a wholesale requirement is more likely to find a shell than a fitted suite.
The greenfield ring
Cabarrus, Iredell, Rowan, Gaston and York County across the South Carolina line. This is where campus-scale proposals go, on land the city does not have, and almost none of it is colocation. Treat activity out here as information about the utility and the politics, not as inventory you can shortlist.
When Charlotte is right, and when it is the wrong choice
- Right if your business is here. A bank, insurer, health system or manufacturer with staff in the metro gets enterprise-grade buildings, easy staff access and a utility with a long operating record.
- Right as a third site for an organization already in Northern Virginia and Atlanta.
- Wrong if you are buying on the state's headline projects. They are single tenant, an hour or more from the city, and add no space you can rent. The rest of the state, including Catawba County and the Research Triangle, is in the North Carolina outside Charlotte guide.
- Wrong if the requirement is network led. Test Ashburn, Chicago or Los Angeles first.
- Ask which Duke tariff serves the building and get the rate schedule. It is the cost basis of every quote.
- Get energized or waiting in writing, with a date. Ask whether a new large-load tariff class approved during your term can be passed through, and on what notice.
- Ask about growth in the same room. The usual constraint here is the next four cabinets, not the next four megawatts.