Commercial Surveillance Sizing Benchmarks 2026
A transparent set of reference scenarios showing how camera count and bitrate compound into storage and PoE requirements. These are planning benchmarks, not vendor performance claims.
| Scenario | Cameras | Mbps each | 30-day raw storage | +20% storage headroom | Camera watts | +25% PoE headroom |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small retail / office | 8 | 4 | 10.37 TB | 12.44 TB | 64 W | 80 W |
| Medium retail / multi-zone | 16 | 4 | 20.74 TB | 24.88 TB | 128 W | 160 W |
| High-bitrate 16-camera 4K | 16 | 8 | 41.47 TB | 49.77 TB | 128 W | 160 W |
| Parking lot / exterior campus | 24 | 4 | 31.10 TB | 37.32 TB | 192 W | 240 W |
| Large local system | 32 | 4 | 41.47 TB | 49.77 TB | 256 W | 320 W |
Methodology
Storage assumes constant configured bitrate, 24-hour recording and 30 days of retention. Decimal terabytes use 1 TB = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. The storage-planning column adds 20% headroom for practical system margin. PoE examples assume 8 W average camera draw and add 25% power-budget headroom.
What the benchmarks show
Camera count and bitrate multiply directly. Doubling 16 cameras from 4 Mbps to 8 Mbps doubles theoretical storage from about 20.7 TB to 41.5 TB before headroom. This is why a recorder can support a certain number of channels yet still be poorly matched to a long retention requirement.
What the benchmarks do not show
Variable bitrate, motion-only recording, audio, metadata, RAID layout, drive formatting, analytics load and actual camera power draw vary by deployment. Use these rows as reference points, then use the NVR calculator, PoE calculator and commercial cost calculator for project-specific inputs.
Related commercial research: Commercial Security hub · 16-camera PoE systems · parking-lot planning.