In an approach for derivation of progressively variant dark data utility for legacy system candidate microservices, a processor analyzes a variability of data stored in a legacy system for a plurality of data metrics. A processor measures, for each data metric, a utility of the data using an intra-analysis and a meta-analysis. A processor correlates the plurality of data metrics to candidate microservices. A processor generates insights for the candidate microservices based on the utility of the data.