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).
Enter your details and click Calculate to see results
"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). This data transfer cost calculator answers the cost question — 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.
It multiplies your monthly egress volume by a provider's typical per-GB rate to produce a monthly cost, projects an annual total, and recalculates the identical volume against all 6 providers so you can see the cost spread at a glance.
Backend engineers choosing a hosting provider for a data-heavy service, DevOps teams budgeting a video streaming or download platform, startup founders comparing hyperscaler egress against budget alternatives, and anyone deciding whether a CDN or zero-egress provider is worth adopting need this egress-cost math.
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.
How this calculator turns monthly egress volume into a dollar estimate
Ingress (data moving into the cloud) is free on virtually every provider — this formula only prices egress, the data leaving your cloud environment to the internet.
Nearly all cloud providers charge nothing to move data into their platform. The cost appears only on the way out — a pricing model designed to make it cheap to start using a cloud and expensive to leave.
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).
Cloudflare pioneered zero-egress pricing on its R2 storage and CDN products specifically to undercut hyperscaler lock-in.
From entering your volume to comparing all 6 providers
Type the total volume of data you expect to transfer out to the internet each month, such as 5, 50, or 500.
Select the unit that matches your entry — the calculator converts TB to GB internally at 1,024 GB per TB.
Pick from AWS, GCP, Azure, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, or Cloudflare R2/CDN — each option shows its typical per-GB egress rate directly in the dropdown.
The calculator multiplies your volume by the selected provider's egress rate to produce monthly cost, then projects an annual total and per-TB/per-GB rate.
Review the auto-detected cheapest and most expensive provider for your exact volume, and scan the bar chart ranking every provider side by side.
Using the calculator's own default scenario — 5 TB monthly egress on AWS
Suppose you transfer 5 TB of data out to the internet each month on AWS ($0.09/GB).
Explanation: At 5TB/month, switching from AWS ($460.80/mo) to Hetzner ($5.12/mo) or Cloudflare ($0.00/mo) would eliminate nearly all egress cost — a savings of over $5,400/year. This is exactly the kind of gap that makes egress pricing worth comparing before committing to a hosting provider for a data-heavy application.
What your projected monthly egress bill generally implies
| Monthly Egress Cost | What It Generally Means | Recommended Next Step |
|---|---|---|
| Under $50 | Low-traffic app or budget-provider hosting | Egress isn't a priority optimization target yet |
| $50 – $500 | Moderate-traffic production service | Compare providers; consider a CDN for cacheable content |
| $500 – $5,000 | Data-heavy application at meaningful scale | Seriously evaluate zero-egress or budget-provider alternatives |
| $5,000 – $20,000 | Large-scale streaming/download service | Negotiate committed-use egress discounts with your provider |
| Over $20,000 | Very high-volume, egress-dominated workload | Migrate egress-heavy assets to a zero-egress or CDN-fronted provider |
If the cheapest provider is far below your current bill: the gap shown here is exactly what a migration or CDN adoption could save — weigh that against migration effort and any other benefits your current provider offers.
If you're near a hyperscaler's free-tier threshold: your actual first bill may run slightly lower than this estimate, which conservatively assumes the full volume is billed.
These are typical 2026 on-demand rates ignoring volume discounts. Always confirm current rates on the provider's own pricing page before finalizing a budget.
This calculator estimates cost only, not transfer time — use the Bandwidth Calculator for download/upload speed estimates. Actual charges depend on your provider's live pricing, region, and any negotiated rate on your account.
Where comparing egress pricing up front genuinely helps
Budget the egress cost of delivering video content to viewers at scale.
Estimate monthly bandwidth cost for a software distribution or file-hosting service.
Budget egress for an image, audio, or video generation service returning large payloads.
Compare the same expected volume across AWS, GCP, and Azure before choosing a host.
Quantify the exact dollar savings of moving egress-heavy traffic to a budget or zero-egress provider.
Weigh a CDN's caching benefits against origin egress cost for cacheable content.
Bring concrete volume-based numbers into a committed-use discount negotiation.
Budget data transfer for a mobile app backend serving media or large API responses.
Estimate cross-region or cross-cloud replication egress cost.
Fold projected egress cost into a startup's monthly infrastructure burn-rate model.
Use it in a course to make egress pricing and provider differences concrete for students.
Re-run the numbers as traffic grows to catch when a provider switch becomes worthwhile.
What this data transfer cost calculator does well, and where it can't replace a live quote
Approximate 2026 typical on-demand egress rates
| Provider | Egress Rate $/GB | Cost for 5TB/mo | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare R2/CDN | $0.000 | $0.00 | Egress-heavy, internet-facing workloads |
| Hetzner | ~$0.001 | $5.12 | Budget-conscious European hosting |
| DigitalOcean | $0.010 | $51.20 | Small-to-mid apps wanting simple pricing |
| Azure | $0.087 | $445.44 | Enterprise workloads already on Azure |
| AWS (EC2/CloudFront) | $0.090 | $460.80 | Workloads needing AWS's broader ecosystem |
| GCP | $0.120 | $614.40 | Workloads needing GCP-specific services |
Summary: This data transfer cost calculator gives you an instant, free comparison of cloud egress pricing across 6 providers from budget options to hyperscalers, surfacing the true dollar gap between them at your exact volume. Pair it with the Cloud Storage Cost Calculator and Cloud Cost Calculator for a complete infrastructure budget.
Common questions about data transfer cost calculator estimates
Official documentation to complement this calculator
Explore other AI & infrastructure tools