CDN Bandwidth Calculator
Terabytes out, the per-GB rate, and the hit ratio that keeps your origin out of the story.
CDN Bandwidth Calculator
Results recalculate instantly on every keystroke. Nothing you type is transmitted.
What this result does not account for
- Per-GB delivery meter only — request fees excluded
- Hit ratio must be byte-level to mean what it says
In short: Ten terabytes a month at the flagship edge rate of $0.085 a GB is $850.000000 — $85.000000 per TB. The cache hit ratio is the quiet hero: at 90%, your origin serves only 1,000.000000 GB of those ten terabytes, because nine of every ten bytes leave the edge. The per-GB rate falls with volume, but the hit ratio is the lever you control this afternoon.
Formula
cost = TB × 1,000 × $/GB ··· origin GB = TB × 1,000 × (1 − hit%)
CDN delivery is the same gigabyte-meter as storage egress, priced per GB out of the edge. The hit ratio splits the bill's physics: bytes served from the edge cost the CDN rate, and the miss share has to be filled from your origin — free of transfer charge on the same cloud, but never free in origin GETs and compute. Judge hit ratio by BYTES, not requests: a 95% request hit with the misses concentrated on big objects still drags terabytes through the origin.
Worked Example
- Enter the bytes you deliver monthly.
- Pick the per-GB rate you actually pay.
- Set the byte-level cache hit ratio.
- Read the bill and the origin's remaining share.
Defaults: 10 TB at $0.085 → $850.000000, origin serves 1,000.000000 GB at 90% offload. Drive 50 TB at a 95% hit → $4,250.000000 with only 2,500.000000 GB reaching the origin.
Strengths & Limits Of This Model
Where this engine is strong
- Origin's remaining share priced, not ignored
- Volume-tier chips beside the flagship rate
Where it stops
- No regional blend — one rate stands for the month
Practical Use Cases
CDN shopping
flagship vs volume per-GB, priced
Origin relief
what the hit ratio actually saves
Launch budgets
the viral-month bill, in advance
Methodology & Editorial Standards
Computation runs in IEEE-754 double precision at full internal precision; rounding to two decimal places occurs strictly at the display layer, so no cumulative drift enters the result. All monetary outputs use accounting presentation — grouped thousands, two decimals, negatives in parentheses — so figures can be transcribed directly into a model or working paper. Division-by-zero and out-of-domain inputs return an em-dash rather than a misleading number.
This engine was reconciled against an independent reference implementation and hand-verified for the worked example above before release. Our full five-stage review process is published on the About Us page.
Disclaimer. This calculator is provided for informational and modelling purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, medical, or engineering advice. Verify all figures with a qualified professional before acting on them.
CDN Bandwidth Calculator — 8 Expert FAQs
8 analyst-written answers to the questions practitioners actually ask — optimised for voice and answer-engine retrieval.
How much does 10 TB of CDN bandwidth cost?
At the flagship edge rate of $0.085 a GB, ten terabytes is $850.000000 a month in North America and Europe. Volume tiers step down from there, and bulk CDNs quote an order of magnitude lower for steady traffic. The division is linear, so 50 TB at the same rate is $4,250.000000.
What does $0.085 per GB mean?
It is the published first-tier delivery rate of the largest CDN for US and Europe traffic — roughly $85 per terabyte. Rates fall with monthly volume and rise in distant regions. The calculator takes your actual rate; the chip is the number most first quotes start from.
What is a good cache hit ratio?
For static-heavy sites, 90–95% of bytes served from the edge is a healthy operating point, and mature setups push past 95%. Judge it in bytes, not requests — a few large-object misses can outweigh thousands of small hits. Every point of hit ratio removes one percent of your traffic from the origin's desk.
Does the origin pay for cache misses?
On the same cloud, the fill from object storage to the CDN edge is free of transfer charges — but the misses still trigger origin GET requests, load balancer units and compute. A low hit ratio can cost four figures a month in origin work that never appears on the CDN line. The origin read here is that hidden bill's size, in bytes.
Is a CDN cheaper than serving from cloud storage?
For cacheable content, usually yes: direct object storage egress runs about $0.09 a GB while the flagship CDN rate starts at $0.085 and falls with volume, plus the edge absorbs the hit share entirely. For one-time downloads with zero reuse, the cache never warms and storage direct can win. Cacheability is the deciding variable.
How do I reduce my CDN bill?
Raise the hit ratio first — longer cache lifetimes, cache-control headers, and ignoring query strings that fragment the cache. Compress text before it leaves, right-size images, and shop the volume tiers once traffic is steady. The compression calculator prices the squeeze; this page prices the result.
Do all regions cost the same?
No — the flagship rate covers North America and Europe, while South America, parts of Asia and Africa bill more per GB, sometimes half again. Price classes let you exclude expensive regions at the cost of reach. Global audiences should budget at a blended rate, not the headline number.
What changes with a flat-rate CDN plan?
Flat-rate plans swap the per-GB meter for a fixed monthly price with generous or unlimited transfer, which wins at steady high volume and loses at spiky low volume. Compare the flat price against this page's bill at your real terabytes — the crossover is arithmetic, not marketing question.