Skip to content
ENExplore Calculators

Artifact Retention Calculator

Work out artifact retention instantly with clear inputs, formula shown and shareable results.

About Artifact Retention Calculator

With a fixed retention window, artifact storage reaches a steady state at daily production multiplied by retention days, because expiry balances creation. The policy decision is which artifacts genuinely need long retention: release builds usually do for audit and rollback, while every pull-request build does not, and separating the two typically cuts storage by an order of magnitude.

Formula

Artifact storage

steady state = artifacts per day x size x retention days; monthly cost = GB x price per GB-month

Worked example

With the default values below, Artifact Retention Calculator returns Steady-state storage of 1.02 TiB. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.

Inputs used

Artifacts produced per dayminimum 1
220
Average artifact sizeminimum 0.01 MB
85 MB
Retention periodminimum 1 days
60 days
Storage price per GB-monthminimum 0
0.023

Results

Steady-state storage
1.02 TiB
Monthly storage cost
$25.81
Daily growth before expiry
17.42 GiB
Artifacts retained
13,200

Step by step

  1. 1Values used
  2. 2Artifact storage
  3. 3Steady-state storage= 1,122,000,000,000
  4. 4Monthly storage cost= 25.81
  5. 5Daily growth before expiry= 18,700,000,000
  6. 6Artifacts retained= 13,200

Assumptions and limits

  • The result is derived only from the 4 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
  • In particular, this calculator does not take inflation, tax or fees or charges into account.
  • Figures are rounded for display to 2 decimal places, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.

How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long should build artifacts be kept?

Pull-request artifacts for days, mainline builds for weeks, and released versions for as long as you support them — which may be years.

Do artifacts need to be immutable?

Yes for anything released. Reproducible builds plus immutable storage is what lets you prove which binary was deployed.

Related Calculators

Artifact Retention Calculator | Calcrivo