OBJECTIVES: About 52.6% or 125,434 people of the population in Burgenland is physical inactive. As a risk factor for several chronic diseases like cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, depression, back-pain, hypertension, breast cancer and colorectal carcinoma physical inactivity can potentially be a substantial public health burden. Furthermore, it is one of the greatest risk factors for global mortality. Hence, the aim of the analysis was to estimate the direct health-care costs saved, the number of diseases and premature death saved each year attributable to a health promotion program focusing on walking (“3,000 steps” more). METHODS: The evaluation of the health-economic impact was performed using a cost-of-illness analysis. We have used relative risk (RR) estimates from the literature to evaluate the effects of physical inactivity on the above mentioned diseases. Afterwards, the population-attributable fraction (PAF) for each illness to estimate the risk factor on the given disease was computed. Direct medical costs were considered from the health care system perspective. Costs were calculated bottom-up for the year 2012. We have calculated effects of a reduction in inactivity level by 10,000 physical inactive people in Burgenland. RESULTS: Results show that physical inactivity causes 27,542 cases of illness as well as 50 premature deaths in population of Burgenland, leading to a total cost-of-illness of 58.9 million Euro (6.3% of total health expenditure). Reducing the inactive group by 10,000 people, 2,221 cases of illness and cases of death will be reduced by four. Moreover the cost of illness could be reduced by 6.40 million Euro each year of which 5.03 million Euro are directly related to diminish physical inactivity.  CONCLUSIONS: Physical inactivity represents an important public health burden in Austria. Even modest reductions in inactivity levels could result in substantial cost savings.