Zero Egress Is Not a Gimmick. It Is the Entire Point.
When Cloudflare launched R2, the pitch sounded too good to be true. S3-compatible object storage with zero egress fees, ever, at any volume. No bandwidth ratio tricks like Wasabi. No partner-network workarounds like Backblaze B2 plus Cloudflare. Just zero.
Three years later, in 2026, that promise has held up. R2 has become the default storage choice for any workload where data leaves the bucket more than it sits in it. Content delivery platforms, AI inference pipelines, SaaS applications serving assets to users -- these workloads have migrated to R2 in droves because the math is unambiguous.
But R2 is not the cheapest option for every workload. The $0.015/GB storage rate is 2.5x higher than Wasabi and nearly 2.5x higher than Backblaze B2. If your data mostly sits untouched, you are paying a premium for an egress benefit you do not use.
This post breaks down every R2 cost so you can determine whether the zero-egress model actually saves you money at your specific scale and access pattern. For the full multi-provider comparison, see our complete 2026 cloud storage pricing comparison.
Cloudflare R2 Pricing Breakdown: Every Fee in One Place
Here is every cost you will encounter on R2 as of April 2026. All prices are in USD.
Storage
| Tier | Cost per GB/month | Cost per TB/month |
|---|---|---|
| Standard (only tier) | $0.015 | $15.00 |
| Free tier | $0.00 (first 10GB) | -- |
R2 has a single storage class. There is no Standard-IA, no Glacier, no Nearline. You store data and it is immediately accessible. This simplicity is a feature -- no lifecycle policy misconfiguration, no retrieval fees, no minimum storage duration penalties.
Egress (Data Transfer Out)
| Destination | Cost per GB |
|---|---|
| Internet | $0.00 |
| Other Cloudflare services | $0.00 |
| Any destination | $0.00 |
Zero. No conditions. No fair-use caps. No throttling at high ratios. This is the single most important line item in R2's pricing and the reason it exists.
API Operations
| Operation Type | Cost | Free Tier |
|---|---|---|
| Class A (PutObject, ListBuckets, CreateMultipartUpload, etc.) | $4.50 per million | 1 million/month |
| Class B (GetObject, HeadObject, etc.) | $0.36 per million | 10 million/month |
Class A operations are writes and metadata mutations. Class B operations are reads. At moderate request volumes, these costs are negligible. At very high volumes (hundreds of millions of requests per month), they become a meaningful line item.
What Is Not Charged
- Egress bandwidth: $0, always
- Minimum storage duration: none
- Data retrieval fees: none (single storage class)
- Deletion fees: none
- Infrequent access surcharges: none
Real-World R2 Cost Modeling
Let me show you what R2 actually costs at three common scale points, and how it compares to the alternatives.
1TB Stored, 500GB Monthly Egress
| Provider | Storage | Egress | API (est.) | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare R2 | $15.00 | $0.00 | ~$1.50 | $16.50 |
| AWS S3 Standard | $23.00 | $45.00 | ~$1.50 | $69.50 |
| Wasabi | $6.99 (1TB min) | $0.00 | $0.00 | $6.99 |
| Backblaze B2 + CF | $6.00 | $0.00 | ~$0.50 | $6.50 |
At 1TB with moderate egress, R2 is cheaper than S3 but more expensive than Wasabi and Backblaze. The zero-egress advantage has not yet overcome the per-GB storage premium.
10TB Stored, 10TB Monthly Egress (1:1 Ratio)
| Provider | Storage | Egress | API (est.) | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare R2 | $150.00 | $0.00 | ~$10.00 | $160.00 |
| AWS S3 Standard | $230.00 | $900.00 | ~$8.00 | $1,138.00 |
| Wasabi | $69.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $69.00 |
| Backblaze B2 + CF | $60.00 | $0.00 | ~$5.00 | $65.00 |
At a 1:1 egress-to-storage ratio, R2 is 7x cheaper than S3. Wasabi and Backblaze are still cheaper on raw cost, but Wasabi is at its egress ratio limit here -- exceed this and you risk throttling.
100TB Stored, 200TB Monthly Egress (Content Delivery / AI Inference)
| Provider | Storage | Egress | API (est.) | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare R2 | $1,500.00 | $0.00 | ~$100.00 | $1,600.00 |
| AWS S3 Standard | $2,300.00 | $16,000.00+ | ~$80.00 | $18,380.00 |
| Wasabi | $690.00 | Throttled/uncertain | $0.00 | Unpredictable |
| Backblaze B2 + CF | $600.00 | $0.00 | ~$50.00 | $650.00 |
At heavy egress, R2 saves over $16,000 per month compared to S3. Wasabi cannot reliably handle a 2:1 egress ratio. Backblaze B2 via Cloudflare is technically cheaper, but R2 offers native Cloudflare integration (Workers, Cache, CDN) that eliminates the extra hop.
When R2 Is the Right Choice
R2 delivers the best total cost of ownership in these scenarios:
Content delivery and media serving. If your application serves images, video, documents, or any assets to end users, the zero-egress model means your costs scale with storage, not traffic. A viral moment that 10x your bandwidth does not 10x your bill.
AI inference output. Models that generate and serve outputs (images, text, embeddings) to downstream consumers produce high egress-to-storage ratios. R2 keeps this predictable.
SaaS file hosting. Any platform where users upload and download files benefits from zero egress. Your per-user storage cost becomes deterministic.
Multi-region or multi-CDN architectures. Pulling data from storage to serve through edge networks is pure egress. With S3, this egress cost often exceeds the storage cost. With R2, it is zero.
When R2 Is Not the Right Choice
Cold archival storage. If you store 50TB and access 1% of it per month, Wasabi at $0.0069/GB or Backblaze B2 at $0.006/GB costs a fraction of R2's $0.015/GB. The zero-egress benefit is irrelevant when egress is minimal.
Deep ecosystem integration with AWS, GCP, or Azure. R2 is S3-compatible at the API level, but it does not integrate natively with services like AWS Lambda triggers, S3 Event Notifications to SNS/SQS, S3 Access Points, or S3 Object Lambda. If your architecture depends on these, switching to R2 requires rearchitecting.
Compliance workloads requiring specific durability SLAs. AWS S3 publishes 11 nines (99.999999999%) durability. Cloudflare's durability commitments for R2 are not published at the same granularity. For regulated workloads with contractual durability requirements, verify R2 meets your compliance needs.
R2 Free Tier: What You Actually Get
The R2 free tier is generous enough for real development work:
- 10GB storage -- enough for a staging environment, small project, or proof of concept
- 1 million Class A operations/month -- roughly 33,000 writes per day
- 10 million Class B operations/month -- roughly 333,000 reads per day
This is meaningfully more useful than S3's free tier (5GB storage for 12 months only) and makes R2 attractive for side projects and early-stage startups that want to avoid surprise bills.
R2 Optimization Tips
Even with zero egress, there are ways to optimize your R2 spend:
Use multipart uploads for large objects. Each part of a multipart upload counts as a Class A operation. Use appropriate part sizes (at least 10MB) to minimize the number of operations per upload.
Cache aggressively with Cloudflare CDN. While R2 egress is free, reducing reads to R2 by caching through Cloudflare's CDN reduces your Class B operation costs. At hundreds of millions of reads, this matters.
Compress before storing. R2 charges per GB stored. Compressing text, JSON, logs, and other compressible data before upload directly reduces your storage bill. A 50% compression ratio cuts your storage cost in half.
Set appropriate TTLs. Delete data you no longer need. Unlike Wasabi, R2 has no minimum storage duration, so there is no penalty for deleting data early.
The Bottom Line
Cloudflare R2's pricing model is simple: you pay $0.015/GB for storage, a modest fee for API operations, and absolutely nothing for egress. The moment egress becomes a meaningful percentage of your cloud storage bill, R2 starts saving you money -- often dramatically.
For the complete comparison across all major providers including AWS S3, Wasabi, Backblaze B2, GCP, and Azure, read our full 2026 cloud storage pricing comparison.
If you are spending more than $2,000 per month on cloud storage and are not sure you are on the right provider or tier, our cloud cost optimization team can audit your storage spend and typically cut costs by 30-50% within 90 days. We have moved dozens of workloads to R2 where it made sense -- and kept them on S3 or other providers where it did not.
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