{
  "slug": "cloud-egress-cost",
  "title": "Cloud Egress Bandwidth Cost Calculator",
  "heading": "Cloud Data Egress Cost Calculator",
  "category": "financial",
  "url": "https://www.revenuelab.fyi/toolbox/cloud-egress-cost",
  "summary": "Find out what shipping data out of the cloud actually costs you.",
  "description": "Inbound data transfer is free on every major cloud, but outbound (egress) to the internet is metered and tiered, and it's the line item that blindsides teams serving video, APIs, or file downloads at scale. This calculator applies a simple tiered structure similar to AWS/GCP/Azure: a free allowance, then a first tier priced higher, then a lower rate above a volume threshold. Enter your total monthly egress in GB and it walks through each tier to compute the real blended cost, plus your effective price per GB once the free tier and volume discount are factored in. This is the number product and infra teams actually need when deciding whether to add a CDN in front of an origin — CDN edge pricing is usually cheaper than origin egress once you clear a few terabytes a month, and this tool shows you the origin-only cost to compare against.",
  "formula": "Cost = Σ over tiers of (GB in tier × tier rate), after subtracting the free allowance from total GB.",
  "dateModified": "2026-09-30",
  "run_url": "https://www.revenuelab.fyi/api/public/calc?tool=cloud-egress-cost",
  "inputs": [
    {
      "id": "totalGb",
      "label": "Total monthly egress",
      "kind": "number",
      "hint": null,
      "default": 5000,
      "unit": "GB",
      "min": 0,
      "max": null
    },
    {
      "id": "freeGb",
      "label": "Free tier allowance",
      "kind": "number",
      "hint": null,
      "default": 100,
      "unit": "GB",
      "min": 0,
      "max": null
    },
    {
      "id": "tier1Gb",
      "label": "Size of first paid tier",
      "kind": "number",
      "hint": null,
      "default": 10000,
      "unit": "GB",
      "min": 1,
      "max": null
    },
    {
      "id": "tier1Rate",
      "label": "First tier rate",
      "kind": "number",
      "hint": null,
      "default": 0.09,
      "unit": "$/GB",
      "min": 0,
      "max": null
    },
    {
      "id": "tier2Rate",
      "label": "Rate above first tier",
      "kind": "number",
      "hint": null,
      "default": 0.085,
      "unit": "$/GB",
      "min": 0,
      "max": null
    }
  ],
  "outputs": [
    {
      "id": "total_cost",
      "label": "Monthly egress cost",
      "format": "currency",
      "hint": null,
      "primary": true
    },
    {
      "id": "billable",
      "label": "Billable GB after free tier",
      "format": "number",
      "hint": null,
      "primary": false
    },
    {
      "id": "effectiveRate",
      "label": "Effective $/GB (blended)",
      "format": "currency",
      "hint": null,
      "primary": false
    },
    {
      "id": "annual",
      "label": "Annualized egress cost",
      "format": "currency",
      "hint": null,
      "primary": false
    }
  ],
  "worked_example": {
    "inputs": [
      "Total monthly egress: 5000 GB",
      "Free tier allowance: 100 GB",
      "Size of first paid tier: 10000 GB",
      "First tier rate: 0.09 $/GB",
      "Rate above first tier: 0.085 $/GB"
    ],
    "outputs": [
      "Monthly egress cost: $441.00",
      "Billable GB after free tier: 4,900",
      "Effective $/GB (blended): $0.0882",
      "Annualized egress cost: $5,292.00"
    ]
  },
  "how_to": {
    "title": "How to use this",
    "steps": [
      "Enter total monthly egress (GB).",
      "Enter free tier allowance (GB).",
      "Enter size of first paid tier (GB).",
      "Enter first tier rate ($/GB).",
      "Enter rate above first tier ($/GB).",
      "Read your monthly egress cost on the right — it updates as you type.",
      "Hit Share to keep the scenario or send it to someone."
    ]
  },
  "scenarios": [
    {
      "name": "Conservative",
      "description": "Lower-end numbers — what if things land soft?",
      "values": {
        "totalGb": 3000,
        "freeGb": 60,
        "tier1Gb": 6000,
        "tier1Rate": 0.054,
        "tier2Rate": 0.051000000000000004
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "Typical",
      "description": "Defaults — the most common real-world setup.",
      "values": {
        "totalGb": 5000,
        "freeGb": 100,
        "tier1Gb": 10000,
        "tier1Rate": 0.09,
        "tier2Rate": 0.085
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "Ambitious",
      "description": "Higher-end numbers — what if things really pop?",
      "values": {
        "totalGb": 8000,
        "freeGb": 160,
        "tier1Gb": 16000,
        "tier1Rate": 0.144,
        "tier2Rate": 0.136
      }
    }
  ],
  "limitations": [
    "Results are estimates before tax, fees, and inflation unless an input explicitly covers them.",
    "Rates are treated as fixed for the whole period — variable-rate products will drift from this projection.",
    "This is educational maths, not financial advice. Check anything contractual with the lender or your accountant."
  ],
  "faq": [
    {
      "q": "Why is egress so much more expensive than storage?",
      "a": "Cloud providers price ingress at zero and storage cheaply to make it easy to get data in and keep it there, then charge for egress because that's genuinely their variable network cost and also because it creates switching friction — moving petabytes out to another provider or on-prem is expensive by design, not accident."
    },
    {
      "q": "Does using a CDN change this calculation?",
      "a": "A CDN shifts most delivery traffic to the CDN's edge network, which is usually billed at a lower per-GB rate than cloud origin egress, especially at volume. Origin egress then only applies to cache misses, typically 5-15% of total requests for cacheable content, which can cut your egress bill 70-90%."
    },
    {
      "q": "Are inter-region and inter-AZ transfers included here?",
      "a": "No, this models internet egress only. Cross-region and cross-availability-zone transfer within the same cloud has its own separate pricing, usually $0.01-$0.02/GB, and cross-region replication for backups or multi-region apps should be modeled separately since it recurs continuously rather than scaling with end-user traffic."
    }
  ],
  "related": [
    "https://www.revenuelab.fyi/toolbox/cloud-vm-monthly-cost",
    "https://www.revenuelab.fyi/toolbox/bandwidth-for-n-users",
    "https://www.revenuelab.fyi/toolbox/video-streaming-storage-calculator"
  ],
  "license": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "citation": "RevenueLab — Cloud Egress Bandwidth Cost Calculator (https://www.revenuelab.fyi/toolbox/cloud-egress-cost)"
}