RTO
Recovery Time Objective
The target maximum time for restoring a service after disruption.
Plain English
How quickly the service should be back.
In context
RTO guides recovery design and response priorities by stating an acceptable outage duration.
Example
“The checkout service has a 30-minute RTO.”
When you'll hear this
- disaster recovery
- business continuity
- architecture review
Common misunderstanding
RTO is a target and not a guarantee that every incident resolves within it.
Also known as
recovery time objective
Commonly used by
Related terms
Often compared with
Updated: 2026-08-25
