CalcEngine All Calculators

Bandwidth Cost Calculator

Performance

Enter your monthly data transfer volume and per-GB price to get an instant bandwidth cost estimate. Works with AWS, GCP, Azure, Cloudflare, and any pay-per-GB provider.

Last updated: April 2026

This calculator is designed for real-world usage based on typical engineering scenarios and publicly available documentation.

The bandwidth cost calculator gives you the monthly egress bill for any cloud provider or CDN in seconds. Enter your transfer volume, per-GB price, and optional free tier allowance — the calculator handles the arithmetic and shows you exactly what you will be billed. Cloud egress is consistently one of the most underestimated line items on infrastructure bills. AWS charges $0.09/GB for outbound transfer in us-east-1; GCP charges $0.08–$0.12/GB depending on destination; Cloudflare and Bunny CDN start as low as $0.01/GB. A service pushing 50 TB/month can see monthly bandwidth costs swing from under $500 to over $4,500 depending purely on provider and delivery strategy. Use this calculator before choosing a CDN or cloud region, when planning a migration, or when investigating a surprise bill spike. The free-tier field handles the first-N-GB-free structure used by most cloud providers — enter zero to model straightforward pay-per-GB plans without any included allowance. For a fuller picture of infrastructure cost, pair this calculator with the Throughput Calculator to understand transfer rates over time, and the Latency Budget Calculator to model the performance tradeoffs of your CDN and origin strategy.

How to Calculate Bandwidth Cost

Bandwidth Cost — how it works diagram

1. Find your provider's per-GB egress price — check the AWS EC2 data transfer page, GCP Network pricing, or your CDN's pricing documentation. 2. Estimate your monthly outbound transfer in GB. Use your monitoring dashboard, or multiply average response size × daily requests × 30. 3. Enter any free tier allowance — AWS gives 100 GB/month free on EC2; Cloudflare's CDN includes unlimited free egress to end users. 4. The calculator subtracts the free tier from your total transfer to get billable GB. 5. Multiply billable GB by the per-GB price to get your monthly bandwidth cost. 6. Scale to an annual projection by multiplying your monthly result by 12.

Formula

Billable GB   = max(0, Monthly Transfer GB − Free Tier GB)
Monthly Cost  = Billable GB × Price per GB

Monthly Transfer GB — total outbound data transferred in a calendar month
Free Tier GB        — GB included at no charge (enter 0 if your plan has none)
Price per GB        — provider's egress rate (e.g. $0.09 for AWS us-east-1 to internet)

Example Bandwidth Cost Calculations

Example 1 — AWS EC2 egress at 5 TB/month

Monthly Transfer:   5,120 GB  (5 TB)
Free Tier:            100 GB  (AWS free tier)
Billable GB:        5,020 GB
Price per GB:         $0.09  (EC2 us-east-1 to internet)
─────────────────────────────────────
Monthly Cost: $451.80   →   $5,421.60/year

Example 2 — CloudFront CDN at 50 TB/month

Monthly Transfer:  51,200 GB  (50 TB)
Free Tier:          1,000 GB  (CloudFront free tier)
Billable GB:       50,200 GB
Price per GB:         $0.009  (CloudFront first 10 TB tier, blended)
─────────────────────────────────────
Monthly Cost: $451.80   →   Same bill, 10× more transfer — CDN caching reduces origin egress 80%+

Example 3 — Cloudflare R2 (zero egress)

Monthly Transfer:  51,200 GB  (50 TB of static assets)
Free Tier:         Unlimited  (R2 egress to Cloudflare CDN is free)
Billable GB:            0 GB
Price per GB:           $0.00
─────────────────────────────────────
Monthly Cost: $0.00   →   R2 storage ($0.015/GB/month) replaces all bandwidth charges for static content

Tips to Reduce Bandwidth Costs

Notes

Frequently Asked Questions

What is egress bandwidth and why does it cost money? +
Egress bandwidth is data leaving a cloud or CDN data center to the internet or another region. Providers charge for it because network transit capacity — especially at high-traffic edge nodes — is expensive to provision. Ingress (data flowing in) is almost always free. Designing to minimise egress, using CDN caching, or choosing zero-egress storage like Cloudflare R2 are the main levers. Pair with the Throughput Calculator to model transfer rates alongside cost.
How do I estimate monthly data transfer in GB? +
Multiply your average response size in MB by daily request count, then multiply by 30 and divide by 1,000 to convert to GB: (avg_response_MB × daily_requests × 30) ÷ 1,000. For video streaming, use: (bitrate_Mbps × 0.125) × avg_session_seconds × daily_sessions ÷ 1,000. Cross-check against your CloudWatch, GCP Monitoring, or CDN analytics dashboard for actual measured numbers.
Which cloud provider has the cheapest egress bandwidth in 2026? +
Cloudflare R2 and Backblaze B2 offer zero egress fees when delivering through Cloudflare's CDN, making them the lowest-cost option for static assets. For compute egress, Hetzner and OVH are typically 5–10× cheaper than AWS or GCP in Europe (~$0.01/GB vs $0.09/GB). AWS, GCP, and Azure all charge $0.08–$0.09/GB for standard internet egress from major regions.
Does AWS charge for data transfer within the same region? +
Most same-region transfers within the same VPC are free in AWS. However, transfers between Availability Zones within the same region cost $0.01/GB each way. Inter-region transfers cost $0.02/GB or more depending on destination. Always check the EC2 data transfer pricing page for exact rates between your source and destination. Placing your compute, databases, and storage in the same AZ eliminates these hidden intra-region charges.
How much bandwidth does a typical SaaS app use per user per month? +
It varies widely by product type. A mostly-text SaaS app might use 100–500 MB per active user per month. A data-heavy dashboard with charts and file exports might use 1–5 GB. A video or media platform can use 50–500 GB per active user. Start by measuring per-request payload size in your CDN or server logs, then multiply by your DAU and average sessions per user to get a monthly total.