In preparation of ITER operation, large machines have replaced their wall and divertor material to W (ASDEX Upgrade) or a combination of Be for the wall and W for the divertor (JET). Operation in these machines has shown that the influx of W can have a significant impact on the discharge evolution, which has made modelling of this impact for ITER an urgent task. This paper reports on such modelling efforts. Maximum tolerable W concentrations have been determined for various scenarios, both for the current ramp-up and flat-top phase. Results of two independent methods are presented, based on the codes ZIMPUR plus ASTRA and CRONOS, respectively. Both methods have been tested and benchmarked against ITER-like Ip RU experiments at JET. It is found that W significantly disturbs the discharge evolution when the W concentration approaches ∼10−4; this critical level varies somewhat between scenarios.