Electro-hydrostatic compact drives are an emerging technology within a range of industrially available translational drive solutions, combining the specific advantages of hydraulic and electromechanical screw drives. Compared to electromechanical screw drives, hydrostatic drives can vary their transmission ratio with comparably little effort, giving them the key advantage of downsizing the electric drive components for a given load cycle. This paper provides a guideline on how to calculate the downsizing potential of electric motors and inverters arising from variable transmission ratio based on the load regime of a given application. Furthermore, a comprehensive systematisation of the actual switching process is described for systems that are switched by means of switching valves. The presented set of methodology is applied to demonstrators in order to validate the general findings.