Use case · video streamingUpdated 2026-04
Video streaming egress: per-viewer-hour cost
HLS streaming bitrates: 720p = ~2 Mbps, 1080p = ~5 Mbps, 4K = ~15 Mbps. One viewer-hour at 1080p = ~2.25 GB egress. At $0.085/GB CloudFront NA/EU, that is $0.19 per viewer-hour. Across 1 million viewer-hours / month, that is ~$190k.
Egress per viewer-hour by quality
| Quality | Bitrate | GB / hour | CF cost / hr | R2 cost / hr | Bunny CDN / hr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 480p SD | 1.0 Mbps | 0.45 GB | $0.038 | $0 | $0.005 |
| 720p HD | 2.5 Mbps | 1.13 GB | $0.096 | $0 | $0.011 |
| 1080p Full HD | 5 Mbps | 2.25 GB | $0.191 | $0 | $0.023 |
| 1440p QHD | 9 Mbps | 4.05 GB | $0.344 | $0 | $0.041 |
| 4K UHD (HEVC) | 15 Mbps | 6.75 GB | $0.574 | $0 | $0.068 |
| 4K UHD (AV1) | 12 Mbps | 5.40 GB | $0.459 | $0 | $0.054 |
Per-hour numbers exclude free-tier offsets. CloudFront rates first 10 TB NA/EU. Bunny CDN low-tier $0.005/GB volume pricing. R2 includes Workers media bandwidth.
Million viewer-hour / month workload
One million viewer-hours / month at 1080p = 2.25 PB of egress. Cost by provider:
Provider
Monthly cost (2.25 PB)
Cloudflare R2 (zero egress)
$0 (plus storage)
Bunny CDN at $0.005/GB
$11,520
Fastly large-volume
~$23,040 ($0.01/GB at scale)
AWS CloudFront high-tier
~$57,344 ($0.025/GB blended above 1 PB)
AWS S3 direct
~$115,200 ($0.05/GB blended at PB scale)
GCP Cloud CDN
~$46,080 ($0.02/GB above 500 TB)
For OTT / VOD platforms above 1M viewer-hours / month, third-party CDNs (Bunny, BunnyStream, Mux) consistently undercut hyperscaler CDNs by 5 to 10x.