CDN Cost Calculator
Content delivery network costs.
Calculate monthly CDN cost from data transferred, request volume, and storage at the per-GB price your provider charges.
What this tool does
Content delivery network costs are driven by three main factors: data transferred out, request volume handled, and storage capacity maintained. This calculator takes your monthly gigabytes transferred, the per-gigabyte rate you're charged, your monthly request count in millions, the per-million-request fee, and your stored gigabytes with their associated storage rate. It then models your total monthly CDN expenditure by summing these three cost components. The output shows your estimated bill broken down by transfer, request, and storage charges. Results assume consistent pricing throughout the month and don't account for volume discounts, regional pricing variations, or changes in usage patterns. Use this to understand how each usage dimension contributes to your overall CDN spending or to model different traffic and storage scenarios.
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Formula Used
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Disclaimer
Results are estimates for educational purposes only. They do not constitute financial advice. Consult a qualified professional before making financial decisions.
CDN (Content Delivery Network) pricing has three components: data transfer out to users, HTTP request count, and storage of cached files. Data transfer dominates for video and image-heavy sites; request count dominates for API-heavy sites. Typical pricing: 0.05-0.12/GB transfer, 0.50-2 per million requests, 0.02-0.05/GB storage monthly.
5,000 GB transfer × 0.08 = 400. 20M requests × 1 per million = 20. 500 GB storage × 0.023 = 11.50. Total ~432/month. Small ecommerce sites typically run 100-500 monthly CDN; mid-market streaming or news sites 2k-20k; major platforms 100k+. AWS CloudFront, Cloudflare, Fastly are the main providers with similar pricing.
Free tiers (Cloudflare free, AWS free tier) cover small sites entirely. Past small-scale, transfer volume scales costs fastest. Video streaming at 1080p burns 3-5 GB per user per hour; even modest streaming volumes produce meaningful CDN bills. Compression (Brotli, WebP images) and smart caching cut bills 30-50% for most sites.
Run it with sensible defaults
Using monthly gb transferred of 5,000, cost per gb of 0.08, monthly requests of 20, cost per million requests of 1, the calculation works out to 431.50. The defaults are meant as a starting point, not a recommendation.
The levers in this calculation
The inputs — Monthly GB Transferred, Cost per GB (£), Monthly Requests (millions), Cost per Million Requests (£), and Storage (GB) — do not pull with equal force.
How the math works
Total = (transfer × rate) + (requests × rate per million) + (storage × rate). All component-wise summed monthly.
What to do with a low result
A disappointing result is information, not a judgement. Pick the single input that dragged the figure down most and focus the next quarter on that one factor. Breadth-first improvement rarely works; depth-first on the worst input usually does.
What this doesn't capture
The score is a composite of the inputs you provide. Life context — job security, family obligations, health, housing — doesn't appear in the math but shapes the real picture. Use the number as a prompt, not a verdict.
5,000GB × ££0.08 + 20M requests × ££1 + storage = 431.50.
Inputs
This example uses typical values for illustration. Adjust the inputs above to match a specific situation and see how the result changes.
Sources & Methodology
Methodology
The calculator computes total monthly content delivery network costs by summing three independent components. Data transfer costs are calculated by multiplying monthly gigabytes transferred by the per-gigabyte rate. Request costs are derived by multiplying the volume of monthly requests in millions by the per-million-request rate. Storage costs are determined by multiplying total stored gigabytes by the per-gigabyte storage rate. The model treats each cost element as proportional to its usage metric and assumes rates remain constant throughout the period. It does not account for volume discounts, commitment-based pricing reductions, regional rate variations, or one-time setup fees. Results represent the sum of these three linear cost drivers and should be treated as an estimate of baseline expenses.
References
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I reduce CDN costs?
Cloudflare vs AWS vs Fastly?
Is free Cloudflare sufficient?
How do I estimate my usage?
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