Colocation pricing per kW sets the monthly bill for wholesale data center space: the operator quotes a rate for each kilowatt of reserved power for each month, and the lease decides what else lands on top. CBRE put the average asking rate for 250 to 500 kW in primary North American wholesale markets at $196.25 per kW per month in the second half of 2025, up 6.6% in a year [1]. Public filings show the rest of the bill: the lease structure, how power is charged, one-time fees, escalators and the date billing starts [7, 9, 11, 12].
Two quotes at the same rate can produce different bills once power, fees and term are counted. Leases of hundreds of megawatts described in SEC filings, and one powered land lease, imply rates of about $141 to $165 per kW-month of critical IT load, below the asking rate for small requirements (derived from [13, 14, 15]).
How colocation pricing per kW is quoted
A kW-month is one kilowatt of reserved capacity for one month. A month averages 730 hours (8,760 ÷ 12), so one kilowatt drawn at full load for a month is 730 kWh. A 500 kW block reserved for 24 months is 12,000 kW-months. CBRE's $196.25 is an asking rate for 250 kW and up at N+1/Tier III requirements [1], and the Tier levels explainer sets out what Tier III covers.
In wholesale leases, rent often attaches to the reservation. Core Scientific's 10-K says wholesale leases are frequently paired with take-or-pay commitments, under which the customer pays for leased power capacity regardless of utilization [7]. Riot's third-quarter 2026 results release says rent under its 910 MW lease is payable on the full 910 MW irrespective of utilization [14]. The financeable contracts explainer reads take-or-pay terms from a lender's side.
Reserved capacity runs ahead of what servers draw. In NVIDIA's DGX B200 guide, a 415 V, 60 A circuit pair supports about 66 kW per rack, holds four systems at 57.2 kW peak demand and leaves 8.4 kW stranded [21]. The rack power explainer prices racks at CBRE's rate.
Retail, wholesale and hybrid colocation
Data center colocation pricing models follow deal size. Core Scientific's 10-K describes wholesale, retail and hybrid colocation, which differ by contract size, deployment scale and customer profile [7]. Wholesale deals often carry initial terms of 10 years or more for suites, halls or buildings, at several megawatts to hundreds of megawatts per customer [7].
Retail is sold as cabinet space and power [11]. Equinix's fourth-quarter 2025 monthly recurring revenue per cabinet was $2,694 in the Americas [11].
Rent per kW falls as deals grow. Digital Realty's leases in place on 30 September 2026 averaged $323 per kW per month up to 1 MW and $137 above 1 MW [10]. JLL's mid-2025 asking rents ran from $327 per kW per month below 250 kW, the one band it labels "all in", a term it does not define, to $129 above 20 MW [5].
Triple-net vs modified gross leases
Under a triple-net lease, the customer is generally responsible for substantially all operating expenses of the leased space, including power, maintenance, taxes and insurance [7]. Under a modified gross lease, the operator keeps certain facility-level operating expenses and bills power separately, in some cases with other variable costs [7]. CBRE reported in August 2026 that the traditional modified-gross-plus-electricity structure is evolving, with colocation operators beginning to adopt triple-net leases [2].
Cipher's February 2026 investor presentation describes a 15-year triple-net lease in which the tenant pays 100% of recoverable operating expenses, taxes and insurance premiums [15].
Power: all-in, metered or passed through
This explainer sorts quotes into three types by how power reaches the bill.
- All-in. One rate covers space and power, so the bill has no separate energy line.
- Metered. Equinix treats metered power as variable consideration, left out of its remaining performance obligations [11]. CBRE says tenants historically paid electricity on actual server-level use [2].
- Passed through. Core Scientific's agreements recover the cost of customer power usage [7], and Digital Realty passes the vast majority of its utilities expense directly through to customers [9].
Take-or-pay floors change the metered line. CBRE reports that minimum utilization floors of 60% to 85% of allocated power are becoming increasingly common in the U.S. [2].
At EIA's August 2026 U.S. average industrial price of 9.64 cents per kWh, 730 kWh costs about $70, and about $49 at a 70% average draw (derived from [24]). At the commercial average of 14.47 cents, the same figures are about $106 and $74 (derived from [24]).
Facility overhead is why a gross kilowatt and an IT kilowatt differ. Uptime Institute's 2025 survey put the weighted average power usage effectiveness (PUE), total facility power divided by IT power, at 1.54 [18]. WhiteFiber's glossary counts lighting, building systems and cooling in gross load, and only customers' IT equipment in IT load [12].
Installation fees and other one-time charges
Equinix charges installation fees on a customer's initial deployment, generally paid upfront and recognized over the contract term [11]. The service order WhiteFiber describes in its 10-K counts non-recurring installation services inside its contract value [12]. The licenses Core Scientific describes in its April 2026 supplement credit tenant-paid development costs against base license fees, up to $1.5 million per MW [8], and Cipher's presentation has its tenant pay construction costs above a capex allowance of $9.5 million per IT MW [15]. No source opened for this explainer gives typical installation fee amounts.
Escalators, renewals and term
Core Scientific's supplement describes licenses with its GPU cloud tenant that start at $100 per kW per month with 3.5% annual increases over 12-year terms [8]. At that rate the year-12 fee is about 1.46 times the first, and the 12-year average about 1.22 times (derived from [8]). Digital Realty's contracts run generally 2 to 5 years up to 1 MW and 5 to 10 or more years above it [9]. Equinix contracts run one to five years and then renew automatically in one-year increments [11]. Renewals reprice: Digital Realty's third-quarter 2026 renewals rose 11.8% on a cash basis [10].
When billing starts
Billing starts at commencement, which can trail signing by more than a year. Leases Digital Realty signed in the third quarter of 2026 had a weighted-average lag of 17 months to their contractual commencement date [10]. WhiteFiber's 10-K, filed in March 2026, expected billing for a 40 MW phase to start in June 2026, subject to construction and commissioning [12]. In November 2026 it said commissioning issues had interrupted billing for the first 20 MW data hall [26]. The licenses in Core Scientific's supplement set late-delivery credits of $20,000 a day for days 31 to 60 past the target date and $30,000 a day from day 61 [8].
Rates implied by contracts in SEC filings
| Filer | Figures in the filing | Derived per kW-month |
|---|---|---|
| Applied Digital | $36.2 billion, 1,410 MW critical IT, 15 years | about $143 |
| Riot | $1.8 billion average annual rent, 910 MW critical IT, 15 years, a powered land lease in which the tenant builds the compute deployment [14] | about $165 |
| Cipher | $5.5 billion, 216 MW critical IT or 300 MW gross, 15 years | about $141 per IT kW, $102 per gross kW |
| WhiteFiber | $865 million over 10 years, 40 MW phase | about $180 (gross kW, by the glossary default) |
Sources: [12, 13, 14, 15]. Derived and approximate: the contract total divided by kilowatts and months. Riot's, Cipher's and WhiteFiber's totals include escalators (Cipher's presentation gives a 3.0% annual rent escalator), and WhiteFiber's also includes installation services [12, 14, 15]. Applied Digital's total covers its whole base term, so it includes any escalation, and its filing does not say whether the total includes power recoveries [13].
These leases run 10 to 15 years at tens to hundreds of megawatts [12, 13, 14, 15]. Their lower rates fit the by-size pattern at JLL and Digital Realty [5, 10]. WhiteFiber's glossary says its megawatt figures are gross unless a contract specifies otherwise, and its description of this contract specifies no other basis and does not say whether the $865 million covers only that phase [12]. Cipher's two figures show the kilowatt basis moving the rate by about 39% (derived from [15]).
Comparing two quotes built on different structures
Put every quote on one unit: dollars per reserved kW per month over the whole term. The table builds a base-plus-metered quote from public inputs, on an assumed 70% average draw.
| Line | Input | Per kW-month |
|---|---|---|
| Base rent | CBRE asking rate, H2 2025 [1] | $196.25 |
| Energy | 511 kWh at 9.64 cents [24] | $49.26 |
| Total | $245.51 |
Illustrative and derived. An all-in quote below about $246 costs less at that draw (derived from [1, 24]). An 85% take-or-pay floor raises the break-even to about $256, and the commercial power price to about $270 (derived from [2, 24]). Then spread one-time fees over the term (every $12,000 adds $1 per kW-month on a 500 kW block over 24 months), add each quote's escalators over the term, check the start month and confirm whether each kilowatt is IT or gross. The rent or buy method carries the same CBRE rate into a cost per GPU-hour.
Rillor sources and contracts GPU colocation in 250 kW, 500 kW and 1 MW blocks, liquid-cooled or rear-door cooled, on a 24-month standard term and priced per kW-month, and each quote states the block, cooling, term, price per kW-month and start month.
Read the full report
The full report adds the cost lines of each lease structure, Digital Realty's new, renewal and in-place rents by size, the escalator and quote comparison tables, and all 27 sources.