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🔌 API Cost Calculator

Estimate your REST API infrastructure costs including compute servers, database, CDN, bandwidth, and monitoring. Plan your tech stack budget accurately.

📊 Infrastructure Cost Estimator
Traffic & Usage
Compute
Database & Storage
Networking
Other
📈 Monthly Cost Breakdown
Total Monthly Infrastructure Cost
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Cost Distribution
Monthly vs Annual
⚠️ Prices shown in USD — all major cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Vultr) bill in USD globally. Estimates are approximate; actual costs vary by region, reserved vs on-demand pricing, and traffic patterns.
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Configure your infrastructure to see cost estimates

About

API Infrastructure Cost Factors

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Compute Costs

The largest cost driver. Consider auto-scaling to handle variable traffic without paying for idle capacity. Reserved instances (1-3 year commitments) save 30-70% vs on-demand. Serverless (Lambda, Cloud Run) suits spiky traffic. Hetzner and DigitalOcean are 3-5× cheaper than AWS/GCP for equivalent specs. Cloudflare Workers at $5/mo for 10M requests is compelling for edge-native APIs.

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Database Costs

Usually the 2nd biggest expense. Read replicas improve performance but add cost. Connection pooling (PgBouncer, RDS Proxy) reduces connection overhead. Multi-region replication costs 2-3× single region. Consider caching (Redis) to reduce DB load.

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Bandwidth & CDN

Egress (outbound) bandwidth is typically charged; ingress is free. AWS/GCP/Azure charge $0.08–0.11/GB; Hetzner charges ~$0.01/GB; Cloudflare Workers and R2 have zero egress fees. CDN reduces origin load and latency. Compress responses with gzip/brotli to minimize bandwidth usage.

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about API Cost calculations

What is the cheapest way to host an API?
For low traffic: Serverless (AWS Lambda + API Gateway, Google Cloud Run) can be near-free under free tier limits (1M requests/month free). For steady traffic: reserved VMs on DigitalOcean, Hetzner, or Vultr are often 3-5× cheaper than AWS/GCP on-demand. Cloudflare Workers at $5/month for 10M requests is compelling for globally distributed APIs — with zero egress fees. Always compare reserved instance pricing vs on-demand for predictable workloads.
How do I reduce API hosting costs?
Key strategies: (1) Use auto-scaling to pay only for what you use; (2) Enable response compression (60-80% bandwidth savings); (3) Implement caching at CDN and application layer; (4) Use reserved instances for predictable baseline load; (5) Optimize database queries to reduce compute time; (6) Switch from AWS S3 to Cloudflare R2 or Backblaze B2 — R2 has zero egress, B2 is 4× cheaper than S3; (7) Consider Hetzner for compute at 3-5× savings vs AWS.
What is egress pricing and why does it matter?
Egress is the cost of data transferred OUT from your cloud provider to the internet. AWS charges $0.09/GB (us-east-1), $0.109/GB (Mumbai), $0.114/GB (Tokyo). Hetzner charges $0.01/GB — about 10× cheaper. Cloudflare Workers and Cloudflare R2 have zero egress fees. For a high-traffic API serving 5KB responses at 1M requests/day (150GB/month): ~$13.50/month on AWS us-east-1, vs ~$1.50/month on Hetzner, vs $0 on Cloudflare.
Should I use serverless or traditional VMs for my API?
Use serverless when: traffic is unpredictable or spiky, you have <100K requests/day, or you want zero ops overhead. AWS Lambda costs $0.20 per 1M requests + compute time — at 100ms/512MB, 1M requests/day runs ~$24/month. Use VMs when: traffic is steady and predictable (reserved VMs are 5-10× cheaper at scale), you need persistent connections, or have heavy background processing. Cloudflare Workers is a strong middle ground: edge-native, zero egress, $5/month for 10M requests.

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