voidly
Economic-impact calculator

Cost of an internet shutdown

Estimate the economic cost of an internet shutdown in any country. Methodology follows the CIPESA / NetBlocks COST tool: GDP × internet-economy share × hours offline.

Estimated loss
$1.7M
per 1-hour internet shutdown in Iran

Other reference points for Iran

Inputs used
Country
Iran (IR)
Nominal GDP
$367B
Internet-economy share
4%
Source
IMF 2024 est.
Hours of shutdown
1
Formula
GDP × share × hours / 8760

Methodology + honest caveats

The formula is the same one used by CIPESA and NetBlocks COST: annualized economic loss divided pro-rata by shutdown duration. This is a back-of-envelope estimate, not a precise figure.

What it captures: Direct GDP impact of an internet outage on the digital-economy share of national output.

What it misses: Secondary effects (cancelled flights, supply-chain disruption, loss of services like mobile money in regions where that's critical), human costs (lost communications during emergencies, suppressed journalism), and non-linear effects (the first hour costs less than the 24th because organizations have buffers).

The internet-economy share defaults to 10% (Brookings global average) where a higher per-country figure isn't documented. For countries with smaller digital economies (CU, SD, MM, SS) we use lower estimates from IMF working papers. Email research@voidly.ai with sources if you spot a number worth updating.

License: CC BY 4.0 — cite as “Voidly Atlas Cost of Shutdown, CIPESA/NetBlocks COST methodology, 2026”. Raw GDP table on GitHub at landing/lib/cost-of-shutdown.ts.

Related