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Video Streaming Bandwidth Cost Calculator

What delivering hundreds of terabytes of video a month costs on each cloud and CDN, from CloudFront and Front Door to Cloudflare and Hetzner.

Updated · By Niraj Kumar · 14 sources

Where

Servers and users inServers and users in
Enter volumes inEnter volumes in

Traffic to users

GB / month

Everything your servers, storage and CDN send to users and other services on the internet.

%
No CDNAll of it

Each provider's own CDN: CloudFront, Cloud CDN, Front Door, Cloudflare or Spaces CDN.

%
0%100%

Misses are fetched from your servers. Google bills that cache fill per GB; AWS and Azure do not.

Traffic inside the cloud

GB / month

Replication, backups and calls to services in a different region.

GB / month

Service-to-service calls, load balancing and database replicas in other zones of the same region.

NAT and servers

GB / month

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.

Cheapest cloud with serversHetzner Cloud$223 a month, $2,674 a year
AWS
$12,422 a month
$149,067 a year
Google Cloud
$10,439 a month
$125,263 a year
Microsoft Azure
$9,961 a month
$119,531 a year
Every provider on this traffic, per month, North AmericaHover or focus a row for its line items.
  1. 1Cloudflarebandwidth only$0.00Cloudflare runs no servers, so region, zone and NAT traffic is priced on whatever compute sits behind it.
  2. 2Hetzner Cloud$223Hetzner has no self-service CDN, so the cached share is priced as origin egress.
  3. 3Akamai Cloud (Linode)$914Linode has no self-service CDN, so the cached share is priced as origin egress.
  4. 4Oracle Cloud$1,671Oracle has no self-service CDN, so the cached share is priced as origin egress.
  5. 5DigitalOcean$2,043DigitalOcean has no managed NAT gateway to bill; servers reach the internet on their own addresses.
  6. 6Microsoft Azure$9,961
  7. 7Google Cloud$10,439
  8. 8AWS$12,422
Line by line, per month
ProviderInternet egressCDN deliveryCDN origin fetchInter-regionCross-AZNAT gateway hoursNAT data processedTotal
Cloudflare–––––––$0.00
Hetzner Cloud$223––––––$223
Akamai Cloud (Linode)$914––––––$914
Oracle Cloud$1,671––––––$1,671
DigitalOcean–$2,043–––––$2,043
Microsoft Azure–$9,832–$40.96–$65.70$22.50$9,961
Google Cloud–$10,240$102$40.96$20.48$12.26$22.50$10,439
AWS–$12,252–$40.96$40.96$65.70$22.50$12,422

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 rate

This page uses the same method as the Cloud Egress Cost Calculator, which explains each term and assumption in full.

Worked example

A video service delivering 200 TB a month, all of it through a CDN with a 95% cache hit ratio, on six origin servers across two availability zones, replicating 2 TB of new video to a second region. Priced on AWS in North America.

  1. 1CDN delivery: $12,252
  2. 2Inter-region: $40.96
  3. 3Cross-AZ: $40.96
  4. 4NAT gateway hours: $65.70
  5. 5NAT data processed: $22.50
  6. 6Total: $12,422 a month

$12,422 a month on AWS, $149,067 a year. The cheapest cloud listed that runs servers, Hetzner Cloud, would cost $223 a month.

Frequently asked questions

How much bandwidth does streaming video use?

Roughly 0.7 GB an hour at 1080p (about 1.5 Mbps average after adaptive bitrate), 1.5 to 3 GB an hour at higher-bitrate 1080p, and 7 GB an hour at 4K. Multiply by viewing hours: 100,000 hours a month of 1080p at 2 GB an hour is about 200 TB, the volume this page starts with.

Why does CDN price per GB fall so much at high volume?

Every CDN tiers its rates. CloudFront drops from $0.085 per GB for the first 10 TB to $0.04 between 150 TB and 500 TB, and Azure Front Door Standard falls to about $0.014 past 150 TB. At hundreds of terabytes, private pricing from any CDN usually beats list, so use these figures as a ceiling to negotiate from.

Which cloud is cheapest for the data transfer of video streaming?

On this page's workload (200 TB a month to the internet, 100% of it through a CDN, 2 TB to another region, 2 TB across zones, 500 GB through NAT), the lowest monthly transfer bills are Cloudflare $0.00, Hetzner Cloud $223, Akamai Cloud (Linode) $914. The cheapest that also runs the servers is Hetzner Cloud at $223, against $12,422 on AWS, at prices checked September 28, 2026.

Sources

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