SaaS API Egress Cost Calculator
The full network bill for an API backend: responses to customers, CDN for static assets, NAT for outbound calls, replication and zone traffic.
Updated · By Niraj Kumar · 14 sources
https://checkpre.com/ai/saas-api-egress-cost-calculator
Where
Traffic to users
Everything your servers, storage and CDN send to users and other services on the internet.
Each provider's own CDN: CloudFront, Cloud CDN, Front Door, Cloudflare or Spaces CDN.
Misses are fetched from your servers. Google bills that cache fill per GB; AWS and Azure do not.
Traffic inside the cloud
Replication, backups and calls to services in a different region.
Service-to-service calls, load balancing and database replicas in other zones of the same region.
NAT and servers
Outbound calls, package and image pulls from private subnets.
Usually one per availability zone.
Sets pooled transfer allowances and Cloud NAT's per-VM fee.
- AWS
- $671 a month
- $8,048 a year
- Google Cloud
- $713 a month
- $8,551 a year
- Microsoft Azure
- $676 a month
- $8,112 a year
- 1Cloudflarebandwidth only$0.00Cloudflare runs no servers, so region, zone and NAT traffic is priced on whatever compute sits behind it.
- 2Oracle Cloud$0.00Oracle has no self-service CDN, so the cached share is priced as origin egress.
- 3Akamai Cloud (Linode)$0.00Linode has no self-service CDN, so the cached share is priced as origin egress.
- 4Hetzner Cloud$0.00Hetzner has no self-service CDN, so the cached share is priced as origin egress.
- 5DigitalOcean$10.12DigitalOcean has no managed NAT gateway to bill; servers reach the internet on their own addresses.
- 6AWS$671
- 7Microsoft Azure$676
- 8Google Cloud$713
| Provider | Internet egress | CDN delivery | CDN origin fetch | Inter-region | Cross-AZ | NAT gateway hours | NAT data processed | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | $0.00 |
| Oracle Cloud | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | $0.00 |
| Akamai Cloud (Linode) | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | $0.00 |
| Hetzner Cloud | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | $0.00 |
| DigitalOcean | – | $10.12 | – | – | – | – | – | $10.12 |
| AWS | $314 | $43.52 | – | $20.48 | $102 | $98.55 | $92.16 | $671 |
| Microsoft Azure | $303 | $162 | – | $20.48 | – | $98.55 | $92.16 | $676 |
| Google Cloud | $404 | $123 | $3.07 | $20.48 | $51.20 | $18.40 | $92.16 | $713 |
How is cloud data transfer billed?
monthly = tiered(internet egress) + CDN delivery + misses × origin fetch + inter-region GB × rate + cross-AZ GB × rate + NAT gateways × hourly × 730 + NAT GB × processing rateThis page uses the same method as the Cloud Egress Cost Calculator, which explains each term and assumption in full.
Worked example
An API returning 5 TB a month, with 30% of it (static assets and cacheable GETs) behind a CDN. Six servers across three availability zones, one NAT gateway per zone carrying 2 TB of calls to third-party APIs, and 1 TB of database replication to a standby region. Priced on AWS in North America.
- 1Internet egress: $314
- 2CDN delivery: $43.52
- 3Inter-region: $20.48
- 4Cross-AZ: $102
- 5NAT gateway hours: $98.55
- 6NAT data processed: $92.16
- 7Total: $671 a month
$671 a month on AWS, $8,048 a year. The cheapest cloud listed that runs servers, Oracle Cloud, would cost $0.00 a month.
Frequently asked questions
What drives network cost for a SaaS backend?
Often not the API responses themselves, which are small and compress well. The larger lines tend to be internal: services calling each other across availability zones, database replicas in other zones or regions, and outbound calls to third-party APIs through a NAT gateway, which pay a processing fee on top of egress. The calculator shows each line so you can see which one to attack first.
Which cloud is cheapest for the data transfer of a SaaS API backend?
On this page's workload (5 TB a month to the internet, 30% of it through a CDN, 1 TB to another region, 5 TB across zones, 2 TB through NAT), the lowest monthly transfer bills are Cloudflare $0.00, Oracle Cloud $0.00, Akamai Cloud (Linode) $0.00. The cheapest that also runs the servers is Oracle Cloud at $0.00, against $713 on Google Cloud, at prices checked September 28, 2026.
Sources
- AWS, EC2 on-demand pricing: data transfer · checked
- AWS, Amazon CloudFront pay-as-you-go pricing · checked
- AWS, Amazon VPC pricing (NAT gateway) · checked
- Google Cloud, all networking pricing · checked
- Google Cloud, Cloud CDN pricing · checked
- Google Cloud, Cloud NAT pricing · checked
- Microsoft, Azure bandwidth pricing · checked
- Microsoft, Azure Front Door pricing · checked
- Microsoft, Azure NAT Gateway pricing · checked
- Cloudflare, R2 pricing · checked
- Oracle, OCI networking price list · checked
- DigitalOcean, bandwidth billing · checked
- Akamai, network transfer usage and costs · checked
- Hetzner, Cloud billing FAQ · checked
Related calculators
- AWS NAT Gateway Cost CalculatorWork out what your NAT gateways cost a month in hourly and per-GB processing fees, and compare with Cloud NAT, Azure NAT Gateway and clouds that charge nothing.
- Kubernetes Network Cost CalculatorThe network bill for a multi-zone Kubernetes cluster: cross-zone service traffic, NAT for image pulls and egress, priced on each cloud.
- Cloud Egress Cost CalculatorEnter your traffic once and see the monthly data transfer bill on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, Cloudflare, Oracle, DigitalOcean, Linode and Hetzner side by side.
- AWS vs GCP Egress Cost CalculatorAWS against Google Cloud on the same traffic: internet egress tiers, CDN, inter-region, cross-zone and NAT charges, line by line.
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