What an Equinix cabinet actually costs
Equinix reports monthly recurring revenue per billed cabinet every quarter, by region, in its earnings materials. It is the closest thing to a published Equinix price that exists, and it has a property no rate card has: it is what customers actually pay, after whatever they negotiated, averaged across the whole installed base.
| Region | MRR per billed cabinet, Q2 2026 | Same quarter, 2025 | Cabinets billing | Utilization |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Americas | $2,743/cabinet-mo | $2,570 | 127,600 | 81% |
| EMEA | $2,401/cabinet-mo | $2,223 | 110,000 | 78% |
| Asia-Pacific | $2,379/cabinet-mo | $2,269 | 70,000 | 73% |
| Worldwide | $2,538/cabinet-mo | $2,376 | 307,600 | 78% |
Source: Equinix Q2 2026 earnings presentation, non-financial metrics, published July 29, 2026. Equinix defines MRR per cabinet as the quarter's recurring revenues divided by three, over the average of cabinets billing at the start and end of the quarter, excluding xScale joint venture revenue, Equinix Metal, Infomart non-IBX tenant income and two recent acquisitions.
This figure carries a one-cabinet customer in a secondary metro and a two-hundred-cabinet customer in Ashburn inside the same number, and it includes interconnection revenue, which a rate card would not. It is the right benchmark for asking "is my quote normal", and the wrong number to quote back as though it were a list price.
Roughly a quarter of that bill is not space and power
Equinix reports revenue by service line and by region in the same filing, which makes the cabinet number separable. Divide each Americas service line by the same average cabinet count and the composition falls out.
| Americas service line | Q2 2026 revenue | Per billed cabinet per month | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colocation, meaning space and power | $747M | about $1,969 | 70% |
| Interconnection | $256M | about $675 | 24% |
| Managed infrastructure | $56M | about $148 | 5% |
| Other | $8M | about $21 | 1% |
Revenue by service is from Equinix's Q2 2026 results, filed with the SEC on Form 8-K, exhibit 99.1, July 29, 2026. The per-cabinet column is ours, calculated as quarterly revenue divided by three over 126,450 cabinets, the average of 125,300 at March 31 and 127,600 at June 30. Those four lines sum to $2,813 against the $2,743 Equinix reports, because Equinix's own measure strips out Equinix Metal and Infomart non-IBX tenant income and this arithmetic does not.
The useful consequence: a shortlist compared on cabinet rate alone is comparing about 70% of an Equinix bill. Interconnection is not a rounding error at Equinix, it is the reason the platform is worth a premium, and it is the part a buyer most often forgets to price.
Equinix does not publish the average power sold per cabinet, so nobody can turn $1,969 into a rate per kW honestly without saying what they assumed. On a 4 kVA draw cap, which is a standard Equinix cabinet rating, $1,969 of space and power is about $492 per kVA per month. On a 5 kVA cap it is about $394. Both sit above the $293 per kW that Digital Realty reported for sub-megawatt deployments in the same quarter, which is what you would expect: retail cabinets in a dense interconnection building are the expensive end of the market. See the retail versus wholesale spread for why.
The power that comes with the cabinet, and how it is counted
This part Equinix does publish, in detail, and it is worth reading before a quote arrives. Equinix sells a draw cap measured in kVA, not a circuit count and not kW. The cap applies to the total load across every circuit in the deployment at any one moment.
| Cabinet rating | Circuit, 120/208V | Usable power | Circuit, 240/415V | Usable power |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 to 3 kVA | 120V 30A single phase | 2.88 kVA | 240V 20A single phase | 4.79 kVA |
| 4 kVA | 208V 30A single phase | 4.99 kVA | 240V 20A single phase | 4.79 kVA |
| 5 to 6 kVA | Not offered | — | 240V 32A single phase | 7.67 kVA |
| 7 to 8 kVA | Not offered | — | 240V 40A single phase | 9.58 kVA |
| 9 to 12 kVA | Not offered | — | 415V 20A three phase | 14.38 kVA |
| 13 to 20 kVA, non-standard | Not offered | — | 415V 32A three phase | 23 kVA |
Source: Equinix Product Documentation, Colocation, Power, retrieved August 31, 2026. The largest non-standard circuit Equinix lists for the Americas is 415V 63A three phase at 45.28 kVA usable.
Three rules in that document decide whether a quote does what a buyer thinks it does.
- In the Americas a 120/208V circuit is derated to 80% of its breaker size. On 240/415V circuits, and everywhere in EMEA and Asia-Pacific, the full breaker size is allowed. A 30 amp circuit is therefore not the same amount of power in Ashburn as in Amsterdam.
- Circuits are installed in primary and redundant pairs, and the pair may carry up to twice the draw cap. The installed capacity in the cabinet will look larger than what the contract permits you to draw. It is the cap that is billed and the cap that is enforced.
- The cap is in kVA and Equinix supports load to it whatever your power factor is. Equipment at a 0.9 power factor turns a 4 kVA cap into roughly 3.6 kW of real work, so a kW requirement has to be converted upward before it becomes a kVA order.
The overage rate is twice the contract rate
Published Equinix colocation terms, in the service guides Verizon files for the Equinix service it resells, are explicit and unusually harsh compared with the industry's ordinary "premium" language. Exceed the draw cap and you have 72 hours to get back under it. After that Equinix may either charge the overage at twice the then-current monthly recurring charge per kVA for space and power, or simply suspend your power until compliance is restored.
| Published term | What it says |
|---|---|
| Draw cap | Customer may not draw more power than the kVA or kW on the order |
| Cure period | 72 hours from notice, or as otherwise agreed |
| Overage charge | 2x the then-current MRC per kVA |
| Alternative remedy | Suspension of power to force compliance |
| Annual increase | At least 3% every 12 months |
| Power cost pass-through | If electricity cost rises more than 3%, power charges may rise by that full amount |
| Early termination | 100% of remaining monthly charges |
| Renewal | Automatic one-year renewals unless cancelled 120 days before expiry |
Sources: Verizon Business service guides Equinix Colocation Resale and Colocation, Equinix Data Centers, revision 20200210_04, copyright line 2019 to 2024, both retrieved August 31, 2026. Both documents state the draw cap and the 2x overage in the same words. Read these as resale terms, not as Equinix's own paper. Verizon is reselling Equinix space, so the 3% escalator and the termination charge are Verizon's commercial terms; the draw cap mechanic and the 2x overage describe the underlying Equinix product and are corroborated by Equinix's own draw cap documentation. Equinix does not publish its direct customer agreement.
A deployment sized to its cap with no headroom is one firmware update away from paying double on the excess. The negotiation that pays for itself is not ten dollars off the cabinet, it is the right to step the cap up mid-term at a price agreed on day one. Ask for the step-up schedule in the contract, not in an email.
Cross connects: the structure is published, the price is not
Equinix publishes precisely how cross connects are charged and never how much. Both halves are useful.
| Connection type | How it is charged |
|---|---|
| Standard, campus, diverse campus and extended cross connects | Monthly charge plus a one-time install charge |
| Intra-customer cross connects, between your own cages | Install charge only, no monthly charge |
| Intra-facility cabling and private patch panels | Install charge only, no monthly charge |
| Extended demarcation | Monthly charge plus install charge |
| Innerduct | Varies by region |
| Early termination of a cross connect | A one-time deinstallation fee |
Source: Equinix Product Documentation, Cross Connect, Pricing and Billing, retrieved August 31, 2026. Cross connect term commitments follow the colocation terms. In EMEA the intra-facility cabling rule can invert: pre-integration assets often carry the monthly charge and the cross connect does not.
For scale rather than for price, Equinix's own disclosures bound the number. In the Americas it earned $256 million of interconnection revenue in Q2 2026 across an average of 235,050 interconnections, which is about $363 per interconnection per month. Worldwide the same arithmetic gives about $292.
Interconnection revenue is not only cross connects. It also carries Equinix Fabric ports, virtual connections and Equinix Internet Access, and an internet access port costs multiples of a fibre jumper. Cross connections were 449,100 of the 522,700 interconnections in service worldwide, so physical cross connects dominate the count while the expensive products pull the average up. A physical cross connect sits somewhere below that $363, and Equinix has never said where.
Where a genuinely published per-connection figure does exist, it is a federal one from other providers rather than from Equinix: Iron Mountain's GSA schedule prices a cross connect at $122.96 and the GSA EIS vehicle carries fibre cross connects from $44.46 to $688.22 a month depending on the vendor. Those are useful as a sanity band and are not Equinix rates. They are set out with their contract numbers on our public sector pricing page.
Smart Hands: every billing rule published, no rate
Equinix's remote hands service is called Smart Hands, and its documentation is unusually specific about mechanics while stating no hourly rate anywhere.
- Billed hourly in 30-minute increments, with a 30-minute minimum. Within a single order you are only charged again once total logged time passes each 30-minute boundary, so four short tasks totalling 55 minutes bill as 60.
- After-hours work costs more, at IBX sites that are not staffed 24 hours.
- Power tasks are a fixed fee, not labour. Energizing or de-energizing a circuit bills at one quarter of the standard hourly rate per circuit, with no labour charge on top.
- Prepaid hours discount the rate by 5% to 40%, and scheduled rather than urgent work discounts it further. Urgent requests can carry an extra fixed charge.
- Billing is per cage. Work in two cages cannot share a ticket, which quietly doubles the minimum charge on a multi-cage deployment.
Source: Equinix Product Documentation, Smart Hands, Pricing and Invoices, retrieved August 31, 2026. The published federal comparator, again not an Equinix rate, is Iron Mountain's GSA remote hands line at $157.11 per hour for government fiscal year 2026.
What is actually negotiable, and what is not
Equinix's published material and its published performance answer this more usefully than any negotiation folklore.
Term length, on the express product: no
Equinix's own ordering documentation for Secure Cabinet Express says term runs from 24 to 60 months and that "your term length selection does not affect the pricing of the current order". Prices are then guaranteed for the term. On that product, trading years for a discount is wasted effort; on a negotiated cage deal it is not.
Prepaid Smart Hands hours: yes, and it is published
A 5% to 40% discount band is stated in Equinix's own documentation. That is the only discount range Equinix puts a number on anywhere, which makes it the easiest one to ask for by name.
The interconnection line: yes, structurally
Intra-customer cross connects carry no monthly charge. On Fabric, an Unlimited port includes unlimited local connections and Unlimited Plus adds free remote connections within the United States and Canada. Buying the right port package is a bigger lever than arguing per connection.
The headline cabinet rate: hardest right now
Americas utilization was 81% at quarter end, monthly recurring revenue churn was 1.8%, and Equinix attributes rising revenue per cabinet to "higher densities and firm pricing". A near-full building with almost no churn is not a building that discounts space.
Sources: Equinix Product Documentation, Ordering Secure Cabinet Express, Equinix Fabric Pricing and Billing and the Smart Hands page above, all retrieved August 31, 2026; utilization, churn and the pricing quotation from the Q2 2026 earnings presentation.
Two further published details are worth putting in a term sheet. Fabric standard ports are co-terminus with the colocation cage, so a port bought late in a term inherits the cage's end date rather than starting a new one. And Fabric terms auto-renew unless cancelled 90 days before the end, against 120 days on the colocation service in the resale terms above. Two different notice periods on one deployment is how an unwanted renewal happens.
What Equinix does not publish, stated plainly
Everything above exists because we could source it. These we could not, and no number should be invented to fill them.
- No list price for a cabinet, anywhere. Equinix's portal shows a monthly recurring charge per kVA for space and power at each IBX, but only to a logged-in customer against a billing account. There is no public rate card, and the reseller rate cards that circulate online are confidential documents rather than published ones.
- No cross connect price and no install fee. Equinix confirms that both a monthly and a one-time charge exist and never states either.
- No Smart Hands hourly rate. Every rule about how the hour is counted is published. The hour itself is not priced.
- No Fabric port or virtual connection price. Equinix publishes the pricing factors, the packages and the term structure, and puts the numbers behind a login and a pricing tool.
- No direct customer agreement. The contract terms quoted on this page come from Verizon's published resale service guides. Equinix's own master agreement is not public, so the escalator and termination terms an Equinix direct customer signs may differ from the ones above.
- No average power per cabinet. Which is why the per kVA figures on this page are labelled as illustrations against a stated cabinet rating rather than presented as a rate.
If you have an Equinix quote in hand, the fastest way to know whether it is normal is to compare its cabinet line against the $2,743 Americas average above, then check what share of the total the interconnection lines represent. For everything outside Equinix, see the colocation pricing guide and the market benchmarks.