📤 Bandwidth / Data Transfer Cost Calculator

Estimate monthly cloud data-transfer-out (egress) costs across AWS, GCP, Azure, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, and Cloudflare. This tool estimates COST in dollars for moving data out to the internet — not download time (see our Bandwidth Calculator for that).

📤 Transfer Details
Typical 2026 egress rates after small free tiers, ignoring volume discounts. Actual contracts vary.
📈 Cost Estimate
Monthly Egress Cost
Data Transferred (GB)
Annual Cost
Cost per TB
Cost per GB
Cheapest Provider
Most Expensive Provider
Monthly Cost by Provider (same volume)
⚠️ Egress prices are 2026 typical on-demand rates, ignoring small free tiers and volume-discount tiers — verify current rates on each provider's pricing page. This calculator estimates cost only. For estimating how long a transfer takes at a given connection speed, use our Bandwidth Calculator instead.
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Enter your details and click Calculate to see results

Guide

About the Data Transfer Cost Calculator

"Bandwidth" is used loosely across the internet to mean two very different things: how fast data moves (a speed/time question) and how much a cloud provider charges you for moving it (a cost question). Our separate Bandwidth Calculator answers the first question — how long a file takes to download or upload at a given connection speed. This Data Transfer Cost Calculator answers the second — given a monthly volume of data leaving your cloud environment to the internet, what will that egress actually cost you in dollars across AWS, GCP, Azure, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, and Cloudflare.

How It Works

Enter your expected monthly data transferred out (in GB or TB) and select a provider. The calculator multiplies your volume by that provider's typical per-GB egress rate — AWS ~$0.09/GB, GCP ~$0.12/GB, Azure ~$0.087/GB, DigitalOcean ~$0.01/GB, Hetzner ~$0.001/GB (effectively near-free at normal volumes), and Cloudflare R2/CDN at $0/GB — to produce your monthly cost, then projects an annual total and a per-TB rate. It also recalculates the identical volume against every other provider so you can see the cost spread at a glance in the comparison chart.

Why It Matters

Egress fees are one of the most variable and easy-to-underestimate line items in a cloud bill, and the differences between providers are enormous — moving 10TB out through AWS can cost roughly 90x what the same transfer costs through Cloudflare, and roughly 9x what it costs through Hetzner. For data-heavy applications — video streaming, large file downloads, API responses with big payloads, or AI inference services returning large outputs — the choice of hosting provider based on egress pricing alone can be the difference between a healthy margin and a loss-making feature.

Tips for Accurate Results

  • Most hyperscalers include a small free egress tier (often around 100GB/month) — this calculator estimates cost on your full entered volume for a conservative, upper-bound estimate.
  • Volume-discount tiers can lower your effective per-GB rate at very high volumes (100TB+/month) — check your provider's tiered pricing table if you're at that scale.
  • If your traffic is served through a CDN, your effective egress rate may differ from raw cloud egress — CDN pricing is often lower per GB, especially at scale.
  • Don't confuse this cost estimate with download speed or transfer time — use our Bandwidth Calculator if you need to know how long a transfer will take.
  • Combine this with our Cloud Storage Cost Calculator for a full picture of storage + egress cost, since many workloads incur both simultaneously.
About

Understanding Egress Pricing

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Ingress is (usually) Free

Nearly all cloud providers charge nothing to move data into their platform. The cost appears only on the way out (egress) — a pricing model designed to make it cheap to start using a cloud and expensive to leave or serve data externally.

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Hyperscaler Premium

AWS, GCP, and Azure charge roughly $0.087-$0.12/GB for standard egress — dramatically more than budget providers like Hetzner (~$0.001/GB) or DigitalOcean ($0.01/GB), reflecting different business models and target customers.

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Zero-Egress Providers

Cloudflare pioneered zero-egress pricing on its R2 storage and CDN products specifically to undercut hyperscaler lock-in. For egress-heavy workloads, this can be the single biggest cost lever available.

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about data transfer cost calculations

How is this different from the Bandwidth Calculator?
Our Bandwidth Calculator estimates how long a file takes to download or upload at a given connection speed (time, in seconds/minutes). This Data Transfer Cost Calculator estimates how much money a cloud provider charges you for moving a given volume of data out to the internet each month (cost, in dollars).
Why is Hetzner's egress cost so much lower than AWS or GCP?
Hetzner is a European infrastructure provider that includes a large amount of free traffic with its plans and charges a very low per-TB overage rate (roughly $1/TB) versus AWS ($90/TB) or GCP ($120/TB). Hyperscalers price egress high partly as a profit center, while budget providers compete on low, simple bandwidth pricing.
Does Cloudflare really charge zero for data transfer?
For content served through Cloudflare's CDN and R2 storage, yes — Cloudflare does not charge standard egress fees, a deliberate competitive strategy against the hyperscalers. Some specific products or very high-volume enterprise agreements may have different terms.
Are there free egress tiers I should account for?
Yes — most providers include a small monthly free egress allowance (commonly around 100GB on AWS/GCP/Azure) before per-GB charges apply. This calculator estimates cost on your full entered volume as a conservative, upper-bound estimate.
What's the cheapest way to reduce egress costs?
Use a CDN with cached edge delivery to reduce origin egress, compress assets before serving them, choose a provider with low or zero egress fees for data-heavy workloads, and negotiate committed-use egress discounts with hyperscalers if you're at high volume.

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