CDN bandwidth cost calculator

Why the per-request charge matters

Most CDN comparisons quote only the per-GB egress rate, which is the number providers put on their pricing page. For a site serving many small files, the per-request charge can exceed the bandwidth charge entirely.

A site serving 1,000 GB across 10 million requests pays for both. At Fastly's list rates that is roughly $120 of egress and $8 of requests. Serve the same 1,000 GB across 200 million tiny requests and the request charge becomes the larger line.

What this estimate leaves out

Stated plainly, because a cost tool that hides its assumptions is worse than no tool:

• Committed-use discounts. Every provider here negotiates below list at volume. If you are spending four figures a month, these numbers are high.
• Origin egress. If your CDN hit rate is 90%, you still pay your host for the other 10% leaving the origin.
• Free tiers. Cloudflare's bandwidth is unmetered on paid plans, which is why it shows a flat figure. That is a genuine structural difference, not a rounding choice.
• Regional mixes. Traffic rarely comes from one region. Run the calculation per region and add the results.

Before you switch providers

Bandwidth cost is usually not the reason to move. Cache-hit ratio, origin shielding, purge latency, and how quickly support answers at 3am matter more once the monthly figure is small relative to your time.