How Much Does Commercial CCTV Installation Cost?

Commercial CCTV cost is driven by three things: the number of cameras, the cabling and infrastructure, and the storage requirement. Cameras themselves are often the smallest single line on the invoice.

A rough guide by site size

• Small single-site office (4–6 cameras, indoor + one external): £2,500–£4,500 fitted, with a small NVR and one-month local storage.
• Small retail unit or restaurant (6–10 cameras, mix of indoor + external + LPR at door): £4,500–£8,500 fitted.
• Warehouse or industrial unit (10–20 cameras, external, PoE, thermal / low-light): £8,000–£18,000 fitted.
• Multi-site business (per site + central management): as above per site, plus £1,500–£3,000 for centralised management.

Where the real cost goes

• Cabling and containment — often 30–40% of the total on a fresh install.
• Storage — 30-day retention on 4K cameras adds up quickly.
• Mounting and civil works — brackets, poles, cherry-picker hire on tall external sites.
• Licences and PSIA-compliant SIA cover if you use remote monitoring.
• Compliance — signage, DPIA, retention policy, subject-access process.

Buy outright or lease?

CCTV can be leased over 3 or 5 years, in the same way as phone hardware. The rules are the same: lease if it protects cashflow and includes replacement cover; buy if you want to keep the kit long-term. Watch out for auto-rolling leases on hardware that has technically been fully paid for.

Maintenance and monitoring

• Annual health-check visit and firmware updates — critical, and often skipped.
• Remote monitoring by an SIA-approved central station for out-of-hours cover.
• Retention checks — cameras that stop recording quietly are surprisingly common.
• Clear escalation path for incidents so someone answers when it matters.