CDN pricing compared: cost per GB across 7 providers
The first-tier data transfer out rate for the major CDNs, side by side. Metered rates run from $0.005/GB (Bunny Volume) to $0.12/GB (Fastly) in North America and Europe, with Cloudflare outside the per-GB model entirely on unmetered plans. Every figure is verified from the provider's own pricing page, July 2026.
Which CDN is cheapest?
For metered per-GB pricing, Bunny.net is cheapest at $0.005/GB (Volume) or $0.01/GB (Standard) in NA/EU. Google Cloud CDN, Azure Front Door, and AWS CloudFront cluster around $0.08 to $0.085/GB, and Fastly is the priciest at $0.12/GB.
Cloudflare sits outside the per-GB model: bandwidth is unmetered on every plan, so you pay a fixed monthly fee ($0, $25, or $200) not per GB. For fully cacheable content at scale, that flat fee usually wins outright.
Model your egress volume → or compare object-storage egress →.
Data transfer out to internet, first tier · excludes request & base fees · GCP in GiB
[01]Per-provider detail
The headline per-GB rate is only part of the bill. Request fees, base fees, cache-fill charges, and free tiers all move the real cost. Here is what each provider actually charges.
Cloudflare
No per-GB egress on any plan, or on R2 object storage. You pay a fixed monthly plan fee (Free, $25/mo Pro, $200/mo Business on annual billing, or Enterprise), never for traffic volume.
Bunny.net (Volume)
The 10-PoP Volume network is the cheapest metered rate here: $0.005/GB for the first 500 TB, falling to $0.004 (500 TB to 1 PB) and $0.002/GB above 2 PB. Fewer edge locations than the Standard network.
Bunny.net (Standard)
The 119-PoP Standard network: $0.01/GB in NA/EU, $0.03 in Asia and Oceania, $0.045 in South America, $0.06 in the Middle East and Africa.
Google Cloud CDN
Cache egress is $0.08/GiB in NA/EU for the first 10 TiB, plus $0.01/GB cache fill on misses and $0.0075 per 10,000 HTTP lookups. Billed in GiB, not GB, so normalise before comparing (1 GiB is about 1.074 GB).
Azure Front Door
$35/mo Standard base fee ($330 Premium, which bundles the WAF), plus $0.0825/GB out of Zone 1 (NA/EU) for the first 10 TB and $0.009 per 10,000 requests on Standard.
AWS CloudFront
$0.085/GB in US/EU for the first 10 TB, tiering down to $0.020 above 5 PB, plus $0.0075 to $0.01 per 10,000 requests. No monthly base fee, and the largest always-free allowance of any CDN here.
Fastly
$0.12/GB in NA/EU for 100 GB to 10 TB, rising to $0.19 to $0.28/GB in Asia, Africa, and India, plus $0.01 per 10,000 requests. The highest per-GB rate here; committed-use packages start at $1,500/mo.
Rates are first-tier data transfer out to internet, North America / Europe, verified July 2026 against each provider's pricing page. Regional rates and volume tiers vary; see each provider page for the full table.
[02]Three pricing models, one bill
CDN cost is not one number. Providers split into three models, and the cheapest choice flips depending on your traffic shape, cache hit ratio, and request pattern.
CloudFront, Fastly, Bunny, Cloud CDN
Every GB out is billed, tiered down with volume and priced by region. Best when traffic is spiky or low, because you pay only for what you serve. Request fees stack on top.
Azure Front Door
A fixed $35/mo (Standard) or $330/mo (Premium, with WAF) profile fee on top of per-GB transfer and requests. The base fee only makes sense once volume is high enough to amortise it.
Cloudflare
Unmetered bandwidth on every plan; you pay $0, $25, or $200/mo for features, not traffic. Unbeatable for high-volume cacheable content, but you buy the plan tier, not granular usage.
Two charges the headline per-GB rate hides: request fees (typically $0.0075 to $0.02 per 10,000 requests, which dominate for high-RPS APIs returning small payloads), and cache fill (origin pull on a cache miss, charged separately by Google Cloud CDN at $0.01/GB). A low cache hit ratio quietly inflates both.
[03]Cheapest CDN by scenario
| If your workload is | Usually cheapest | Why |
|---|---|---|
| High-volume, fully cacheable static content | Cloudflare | Unmetered bandwidth; a fixed plan fee beats any per-GB rate once volume is large. |
| Cost-driven, metered, price-sensitive | Bunny.net | $0.005 to $0.01/GB in NA/EU, an order of magnitude below the hyperscalers. |
| Already on AWS, low or bursty traffic | AWS CloudFront | 1 TB + 10M requests free every month, no base fee, and free S3-origin pulls in-account. |
| Already on Azure, need built-in WAF | Azure Front Door | Premium bundles WAF and bot management into the $330/mo base with no per-request WAF charge. |
| Already on GCP, high cache hit ratio | Google Cloud CDN | $0.08/GiB cache egress plus cheap $0.01/GB fill; wins over direct GCS egress above ~70% hit ratio. |
| Latency-critical, edge-compute heavy | Fastly | Highest per-GB rate, but instant purge and VCL edge logic justify it for some real-time workloads. |
Guidance is directional; the cheapest choice depends on your exact volume, region mix, request pattern, and cache hit ratio. Model your own numbers first.
[04]Frequently asked
Q.01Which CDN is cheapest per GB in 2026?
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For metered per-GB pricing, Bunny.net is the cheapest: $0.005/GB on the Volume network and $0.01/GB on the Standard network in North America and Europe. Google Cloud CDN ($0.08/GiB), Azure Front Door ($0.0825/GB), and AWS CloudFront ($0.085/GB) cluster together in the middle, and Fastly is the most expensive at $0.12/GB for the first tier. Cloudflare sits outside the per-GB model entirely: bandwidth is unmetered on every plan, so you pay a fixed monthly plan fee ($0, $25, or $200) rather than per GB. For fully cacheable content at scale, Cloudflare's flat fee usually works out cheapest of all.
Q.02Why is Cloudflare's CDN bandwidth free when others charge per GB?
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Cloudflare does not meter CDN bandwidth on any plan, and charges no egress fees on R2 object storage. Its business model prices on features and plan tier (Free, Pro at $25/mo, Business at $200/mo on annual billing, Enterprise) rather than on traffic volume. The hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, Google) and pay-as-you-go CDNs (Fastly, Bunny) instead bill outbound data transfer per GB. This is the core reason a high-traffic static site can run on Cloudflare for a fixed monthly fee while the same traffic on CloudFront or Fastly scales linearly with bandwidth.
Q.03How do CDN pricing models differ?
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There are three models. Pay-as-you-go per GB (AWS CloudFront, Fastly, Bunny, Google Cloud CDN) bills every GB of data transfer out, usually tiered down with volume and varying by region. Base fee plus per-GB (Azure Front Door) adds a fixed monthly profile fee on top of per-GB transfer. Flat plan fee (Cloudflare) charges a fixed monthly amount with unmetered bandwidth. On top of data transfer, most CDNs also charge request fees per 10,000 requests, and Google Cloud CDN separately charges cache fill (origin pull) on cache misses.
Q.04Is a CDN cheaper than direct object storage egress?
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For cacheable content, usually yes. Direct S3 egress is $0.09/GB and direct Azure Blob egress is $0.087/GB, while CloudFront ($0.085/GB) and Front Door ($0.0825/GB) start slightly cheaper and fall faster with volume, plus CloudFront adds a 1 TB free tier. The bigger win is cache hit ratio: once content is cached at the edge, the CDN serves it without hitting your origin again, so you avoid repeated origin egress. Bunny and Cloudflare undercut direct storage egress by a wide margin. The trade-off is request fees, cache-fill charges on misses, and, for Azure and Cloudflare paid plans, a monthly base fee to amortise.
Q.05Do CDN prices vary by region?
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Yes, sharply. Every metered CDN here prices North America and Europe cheapest, with Asia, South America, the Middle East, Africa, and India costing 30 to 230 percent more per GB. Fastly runs $0.12/GB in NA/EU but $0.28/GB in India and South Korea; Bunny Standard is $0.01/GB in NA/EU but $0.06/GB in the Middle East and Africa; CloudFront prices by edge location, from $0.085/GB in the US to $0.140/GB in Africa. Only Cloudflare's unmetered model is region-flat. If your audience is global, weight the per-GB rate by where your traffic actually lands.
Rates verified July 2026 against each provider's published pricing: cloudflare.com/plans, bunny.net/pricing, cloud.google.com/cdn/pricing, the Azure retail prices API, aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/pricing, and fastly.com/pricing.