CDN Cost Guide: Pricing, Calculator Inputs, and Provider Comparison

Start with a calculator if you need a first-pass estimate, then use this guide to validate the assumptions and catch the billing traps.

This guide is the CDN bill-boundary page: edge bandwidth, request fees, and origin egress should be modeled as separate cost surfaces instead of one blurred delivery number.

Use this page when you need to decide what belongs inside the full CDN delivery bill before you compare providers, simplify to per-GB math, price requests, estimate traffic volume, or untangle origin egress.

Short answer: what decides CDN cost first?

• If responses are large, bandwidth usually dominates.
• If responses are small and request volume is high, request fees often dominate.
• If cache hit rate is low, origin egress can erase expected CDN savings.

If you searched for CDN cost, CDN pricing, CDN cost comparison, or CDN cost calculator, you will usually find "$/GB" tables first. In practice, a decision-ready estimate needs three buckets:

• Edge bandwidth: GB delivered from the CDN edge to end users.
• Request fees: request-based charges (common on some plans).
• Origin egress (cache fill): bytes pulled from your origin to the CDN (billed by your origin provider).

Provider choice belongs on comparison. Blended bandwidth-rate math belongs on per-GB pricing. Request-fee math belongs on request pricing. Traffic evidence belongs on bandwidth measurement. Concept confusion belongs on origin egress vs CDN bandwidth.

CDN pricing guide vs CDN cost calculator

• Use this guide if you still need to separate bandwidth, request, and origin-egress assumptions.
• Use the calculator once you already know your monthly GB, requests, and effective rates.
• Use both when you are comparing providers and need the same traffic profile across each option.

Fast answer: what this page helps you decide

• Use this page if you need to understand the bill before you touch a calculator.
• Use the calculator next if you already know your traffic assumptions and want a monthly estimate.
• Use comparison pages next if your real question is which provider is cheaper for the same workload.

Quick formula snapshot

• Total CDN edge cost = bandwidth cost + request fees.
• Bandwidth cost = edge GB/month x $/GB.
• Request fees = requests/month x request unit rate.
• Complete delivery cost view = CDN edge cost + origin egress cost.

CDN pricing shortcuts (fast sanity checks)

• Cost per GB = bandwidth charges / GB delivered (use this as a blended rate).
• Requests cost = (requests/month / 10,000) x $ per 10k (or per 1M if priced that way).
• If you only have RPS or Mbps, convert to monthly units before pricing (see the tools linked below).

CDN cost comparison: the fastest useful framework

• Keep one workload profile: same GB, requests, region mix, and hit rate across providers.
• Separate edge from origin: CDN edge pricing and origin egress are different cost paths.
• Compare baseline and peak windows: not only one blended monthly average.
• Include adjacent charges: WAF, logs, invalidations, image optimization, and edge functions.

If your main question is "which CDN is cheaper for the same traffic profile?", start with CDN cost comparison, then come back here to validate the pricing inputs that matter most.

CDN pricing per GB vs per request

• Bandwidth-heavy traffic: $/GB usually dominates.
• Small-object, request-heavy traffic: request pricing can become the bigger line item.
• Low cache hit rate: origin egress can erase apparent edge-side savings.

If you are specifically comparing CDN prices, CDN cost per gigabyte, or CDN costs per GB, use this page with CDN cost per GB so your per-GB assumptions stay separate from request and cache-fill costs.

Step 1: Estimate bandwidth (GB/month)

Bandwidth is the anchor input for almost every CDN cost calculator. Get it from CDN analytics if you have them. If you only have throughput charts (Mbps), convert Mbps to GB/month using the Units Converter or this guide: estimate CDN bandwidth.

Then price it with CDN Bandwidth Cost Calculator.

Step 2: Estimate request fees (requests/month)

Many pricing pages list request fees as "$ per 10k" or "$ per 1M". If you have requests/month from analytics or logs, use it. If you only have RPS, convert it with RPS to Monthly Requests.

Then price it with CDN Request Cost Calculator.

Step 3: Model origin egress (cache fill) if you pay for it

The most common under-estimate is forgetting that cache misses (and cache fill) move bytes from your origin to the CDN. That traffic is typically billed as origin egress by your origin provider (object storage, load balancer, VM, etc.).

A simple starting point if you do not have metrics yet:

• Origin egress (GB/month) ~ CDN bandwidth (GB/month) x (1 - cache hit rate)

You can estimate this quickly with the CDN Origin Egress Calculator, then price it using your origin provider's $/GB rate.

For a deeper explanation (and common double-counting mistakes), see origin egress vs CDN bandwidth.

Validate your estimate (before you trust the number)

• Confirm whether your origin provider bills origin-to-CDN traffic as internet egress, inter-region transfer, or a special CDN integration line item.
• If you use multiple origins (API + static assets), estimate origin egress per origin (they often have different $/GB).
• Sanity check with logs/metrics: cache hit rate, origin request rate, and bytes served from origin.

Other line items that can matter

• WAF / bot protection: often billed per request and can spike with bot traffic.
• Logs / analytics: delivery, retention, and query/scan charges depending on provider.
• Optimization add-ons: image optimization, video packaging, signed URLs, functions, etc.
• Invalidations: sometimes billed, sometimes free within limits.

Worked example (quick sanity check)

Suppose you expect 4,000 GB/month delivered and 300M requests/month:

• Bandwidth: 4,000 x $0.06/GB = $240/month
• Requests: 300,000,000 / 10,000 x $0.0075 = $225/month
• Total (before origin egress): about $465/month

If your cache hit rate is 85%, a rough cache-fill estimate is 4,000 x (1 - 0.85) = 600 GB/month of origin egress, priced at your origin provider's rate.

Decision matrix: what to optimize first

• Bandwidth-heavy workload: optimize image/video size and long-tail cacheability before request tuning.
• Request-heavy workload: reduce dynamic misses, collapse duplicate calls, and tune cache keys.
• Origin egress-heavy workload: improve cache hit rate and origin shield strategy first.
• Incident-prone workload: model peak retries and failover traffic as a separate budget line.

Failure patterns to check before procurement

• One blended rate hides regional price spread and overstates savings.
• Edge bandwidth and origin egress are merged into one number.
• Cache miss ratio is copied from a normal day and not from launch or incident windows.
• Request pricing units (per 10k vs per 1M) are mixed in the same sheet.

Provider shortcuts for CDN pricing research

Validation workflow (7-day sample)

1. Collect edge bandwidth, requests, and cache hit metrics for 7 days.
2. Split traffic into baseline and top 2 peak windows.
3. Recompute effective rates from bill line items for each window.
4. Update calculator assumptions only where variance is repeatable.

Cloud CDN comparison worksheet

• Step 1: keep identical traffic inputs across providers (GB, requests, region split, hit rate).
• Step 2: separate edge delivery and origin egress assumptions.
• Step 3: compare baseline and peak windows, not only monthly averages.
• Step 4: include adjacent costs (WAF, logs, invalidations) before final selection.

Direct comparison starter: CloudFront vs Cloudflare CDN cost.

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More CDN guides

Educational use only. Always confirm billable units (GB vs GiB, request class, per-10k vs per-1M) and regional pricing in your provider documentation.

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