The EU Data Act's cloud switching provisions (Chapter VI) impose specific obligations on cloud service providers when a customer wants to leave. These "cloud exit" requirements are designed to make switching practical — covering the full process from initiation through data portability, transition support, and egress fee treatment.
What "Cloud Exit" Means Under the Data Act
A cloud exit occurs when a customer wants to move their data and workloads from one cloud provider to another — or to an on-premises environment. The Data Act establishes:
- A framework for how the exit process must work
- Maximum timelines for the transition period
- Data portability requirements that make the exit technically feasible
- Prohibition on contractual terms that prevent or penalise exit
- Egress fee elimination by September 2027
Prohibited Lock-In Provisions
As of 12 September 2025, contractual terms that prevent or unreasonably impede cloud exit are void by operation of law. Providers do not need to be ordered to remove them — they are unenforceable from the application date.
Specific provisions that are void:
Disproportionate termination penalties. Early termination fees that go beyond a reasonable reflection of actual committed costs are not enforceable. A penalty that represents a significant proportion of the total contract value simply to discourage switching is void.
Unreasonable minimum notice periods. Notice requirements that extend significantly beyond what is needed to provide an orderly transition are void. A 30-day notice requirement is typically reasonable. A 180-day notice requirement with no legitimate operational justification is not.
No-competition restrictions during transition. Customers cannot be prevented from operating on a competing platform simultaneously while migrating. Parallel operation is part of a low-risk migration strategy.
Restrictions on using migration tools. Providers cannot prevent customers from using third-party migration tools or services to facilitate their exit.
The Transition Period Framework
When a customer initiates a cloud exit:
Default period: 30 days from the date the customer provides notice of exit.
Extended period by agreement: The default 30 days can be extended by mutual agreement — up to a maximum of 180 days for complex migrations. This cannot be imposed unilaterally by the provider; it requires the customer's agreement.
No further extension: Beyond 180 days, the Act does not provide for extended transition. If a migration genuinely requires longer, this is a commercial negotiation outside the Act's framework — but the provider cannot use a transition period extension to trap the customer.
Continued service during transition: The provider must maintain the customer's service at the contracted service level during the full transition period. Degrading performance, limiting functionality, or reducing support to make migration more difficult is prohibited.
Data Portability During Cloud Exit
At exit, the customer has the right to receive all their data in a portable format:
Complete dataset: The provider must make available the customer's complete data — all data stored, generated, or processed for the customer. Selective or partial exports do not satisfy this requirement.
Standard format: The format must be commonly used and open, or interoperable — enabling the data to be imported by another provider without custom tooling.
Direct transfer: Where technically feasible, the provider must support direct transfer to the new provider, not requiring the customer to download and re-upload. For large datasets, direct transfer is materially simpler and cheaper for customers.
Transfer documentation: The provider must provide documentation sufficient for the new provider (or the customer's technical team) to understand the data structure, schema, and configuration needed to replicate the service.
Functional Equivalence Documentation
Beyond the data itself, providers must give customers documentation needed to replicate the service's functionality. This is separate from the data export:
What it must cover:
- Service architecture relevant to the customer's implementation
- API schema and integration points
- Data model and relationships
- Configuration options and settings
- Any custom processing logic applied to the customer's data
What it does not require:
- Source code disclosure
- Disclosure of proprietary algorithms or underlying technology
- Competitor analysis of how your service compares to alternatives
The purpose is practical: a customer moving to a new provider should be able to brief the new provider on what they need without being entirely dependent on the current provider's documentation.
Egress Fees During and After Exit
September 2025 to September 2027 (transition period):
- Egress fees for exit/switching data transfer must be reduced to the actual cost of data transmission
- No commercial margin permitted on exit egress
- Fee structure must be transparently disclosed
From 12 September 2027:
- Egress fees for switching/exit are prohibited entirely
- Ongoing operational egress fees (for production workloads, API calls, etc.) are not affected — those remain commercial
- Only the exit/switching data transfer becomes free
For providers: the practical question is what it costs to provide a full customer data export at scale. Some large customers may have petabytes of data; the egress cost at cloud provider bandwidth rates can be significant. Providers need to model this and incorporate it into pricing before 2027.
What Providers Must Do Now
Before September 2025:
- Review all standard contracts for void lock-in provisions — update or remove them
- Build or confirm a structured data export capability covering the complete customer dataset
- Establish a formal cloud exit process: how customers initiate, who manages it, what the steps are
- Assess current egress fee structure — reduce to cost-only for switching scenarios
- Create or update functional equivalence documentation for the service
Before September 2027:
- Model the cost of zero-egress data exports at customer scale
- Plan the pricing strategy to absorb egress costs without charging customers
- Update contracts to reflect the 2027 zero-egress commitment
- Test the full cloud exit process end-to-end with a pilot customer