Not necessarily. Many small and mid-size businesses pay nothing in SQL Server licensing at all.

• SQL Server Express is free and supports databases up to 10 GB, five times Access’s 2 GB limit. That is plenty for many Access back ends.
• SQL Server Standard is for larger or busier systems and is licensed per core or per server plus user licenses.
• Azure SQL Database is billed monthly based on performance tier and storage, and smaller databases can run at modest cost.

The bigger cost is usually the migration work itself, not the software. Even then, a back-end migration typically costs less than a full rebuild, because your existing Access forms and reports stay in place.

It’s also worth counting what SQL Server saves: less time lost to corruption and crashes, fewer emergency repairs, automated backups, and the ability to grow without hitting a hard size limit.

We recommend the lowest-cost option that meets your needs, and we design the migration so you can move up to a larger edition or Azure tier later if your data grows. Learn more about Access to SQL Server migration.