Chicago has 35 data centers listed on DataColoc, operated notably by Equinix, Inc., CoreSite, Digital Realty, QTS Realty Trust, Inc., Printer's Square, 365 Data Centers. Compare colocation (rack, half-rack, 1U), pricing, certifications and connectivity, then get an instant costed estimate.
Server colocation in Chicago (server housing) means installing your own servers in a rack or cabinet (42U) inside a secure data center: redundant power, cooling, 24/7 security and multi-carrier connectivity. DataColoc lists 35 data centers offering colocation in Chicago, including Equinix, Inc., CoreSite, Digital Realty, QTS Realty Trust, Inc.. Its top-connected site lists 334 networks and 10 internet exchange points (IXPs).
a full rack is priced on electrical power (kVA), IP transit and cross-connects. Compare the 35 data centers in Chicago to get a costed quote.
None: “housing” and “colocation” mean the same thing — hosting your own servers in a third-party data center, as opposed to renting a dedicated server or public cloud.
1 of the 35 data centers listed in Chicago declare ISO 27001. Filter by certification (ISO 27001, HDS, PCI-DSS) in the comparator to keep only compliant sites.
Learn the basics: colocation, 42U rack, cross-connect, IP transit, Tier III/IV.
Costed answers: how much does a rack cost?, cross-connect pricing, colocation or cloud? — and the colocation price barometer.
Beyond listed prices, here is the computed cost of a standard 5 kW rack in Chicago, from our open market model (published method, version 2026.07-v1):
| Item | Estimate |
|---|---|
| 5 kW rack, per month | €661 – €1,081 |
| Cost per kW per month | €122 – €183 |
| Over 3 years (36 months) | €23,796 – €38,916 |
Amounts are in euros: the model is computed in EUR, including for markets outside the euro area. We do not show a USD conversion until a dated, sourced rate backs it.
What this covers: local industrial energy tariff, site efficiency (PUE), retail colocation margin and local market tightness. What it does not: IP transit, cross-connects, setup fees and PDUs — priced site by site in the comparator.
An estimate, not an offer. It is a model, with an open method and a version — not a contractual rate. A quote prices your actual configuration. Think the model is wrong? The method is published: tell us where.
Compare data centers in Chicago →Chicago has 35 data centers, operated by Equinix, Inc., CoreSite, Digital Realty, QTS Realty Trust, Inc.. Declared design level: Tier III. That level describes the building's redundancy, not a contractual availability commitment: only the contract carries one. Available formats range from 1 baie to 1 baie: you can start small here, without renting a whole rack.
334 networks are listed at the sites in Chicago according to public interconnection registries. That number drives your negotiating power: every carrier inside the building is one more quote, with no civil works. 10 Internet exchange points are reachable from these sites, which cuts latency to the large content networks and the cost of transit. The large networks reachable directly from these sites, without buying transit, are Amazon Web Services, DigitalOcean, Google, Hetzner, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, OVHcloud, Apple and 5 more: they are present at the exchange points where 11 of the 35 sites in the city are points of presence. Reaching your cloud over an exchange point rather than the public Internet changes latency, and above all the price of data egress.
Declared certifications: HIPAA, ISO 22301, ISO 27001, ISO 50001, PCI DSS, SOC 2. A certification is verified site by site and carries an expiry date: ask for the certificate, not the logo. Note: part of the operation falls under a US-jurisdiction company, hence under the CLOUD Act. Hosting in Europe is not enough to escape it: what counts is the provider's nationality, not the building's address.
A city has no electricity of its own: the sites in Chicago are connected to the national grid, itself interconnected with its neighbours. What is measured, and what decides, is therefore the country's generation mix. No single source dominates it: the largest, natural gas, supplies only 40% (2025). The detail: natural gas 40%, nuclear 17.4%, coal 16.3%, wind 10.3%, solar 8.6%, hydro 5.3%. Fossil fuels (coal, gas, oil) account for 57% of it. A kilowatt-hour there weighs 384 g of CO2, i.e. 1.2 times less than the world average (458 g), 2025 figure. Concretely: a 3 kVA rack, in a site with a PUE of 1.5, draws 35,478 kWh a year and therefore emits 13.6 tonnes of CO2 a year here. The same rack, same hardware, same PUE, would emit 16 tonnes on a world-average grid. The building has nothing to do with it: the country does.
Source: Ember / Energy Institute via Our World in Data, retrieved 2026-09-14. A site under a direct renewable purchase agreement may show a different balance: that is for the operator to declare.
No earthquake of magnitude 5 or above has been recorded within 200 km of Chicago since 1970, according to the US Geological Survey's global catalog. This record covers 56 years, which is short on a seismic timescale: no recorded earthquake does not mean no hazard. It does not replace the statutory zoning, which alone binds construction.
Source: U.S. Geological Survey, ANSS ComCat, retrieved 2026-09-14. Measured from the median coordinates of the city's sites.
No rate is published by the operators in this city: pricing is on request, and we do not estimate it on their behalf.
The nearest site outside Chicago is 18 km away, in Franklin Park (4 sites). Short distances matter: they drive the cost of a link between two buildings, and whether a backup site is workable.