--- title: "CDN Bandwidth Explained: What It Costs and How to Reduce It" description: What CDN bandwidth means on your bill, how providers meter it, typical costs per TB by region and practical ways to reduce bandwidth usage. image: https://blog.blazingcdn.com/hubfs/Gemini-Blog/image-Nov-01-2026-08-55-15-7298-AM.jpeg --- [![BlazingCDN](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/hubfs/Logo/blog-logo-w.png)](https://blog.blazingcdn.com?hsLang=en-us) [๐Ÿ“˜ Learn โ–พ](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/cdn-learn?hsLang=en-us) [CDN Fundamentals](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/cdn-fundamentals?hsLang=en-us) [By Content Type](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/by-content-type?hsLang=en-us) [Advanced Concepts](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/advanced-concepts?hsLang=en-us) [๐Ÿ“– Glossary](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/glossary?hsLang=en-us) [๐ŸŽฌ Video & Streaming โ–พ](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/video-streaming-cdn?hsLang=en-us) [๐Ÿ”ด Live Streaming](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/live-streaming?hsLang=en-us) [๐Ÿ“บ VOD & OTT](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/vod-ott?hsLang=en-us) [๐ŸŽž๏ธ Encoding & Players](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/encoding-players?hsLang=en-us) [๐ŸŽง Audio & Podcasts](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/audio-podcasts?hsLang=en-us) [๐Ÿ’ฐ Bandwidth & Costs](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/bandwidth-costs?hsLang=en-us) [๐Ÿ—๏ธ Infrastructure โ–พ](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/cdn-infrastructure?hsLang=en-us) [๐Ÿ—„๏ธ Storage & Origin](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/storage-origin?hsLang=en-us) [๐Ÿ“ฆ Large File Delivery](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/large-file-delivery?hsLang=en-us) [๐Ÿ’ธ Cloud Costs & Egress](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/cloud-costs-egress?hsLang=en-us) [๐ŸŒ Networking & ISP](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/networking-isp?hsLang=en-us) [โš™๏ธ DevOps & Cloud Infra](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/devops-cloud-infra?hsLang=en-us) [โšก Web Performance](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/web-performance?hsLang=en-us) [๐Ÿญ Industries โ–พ](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/cdn-industry-insights?hsLang=en-us) [๐Ÿ“บ Media & Broadcasting](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/media-broadcasting?hsLang=en-us) [๐Ÿ’พ Software & SaaS](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/software-saas?hsLang=en-us) [๐Ÿ“ฃ AdTech & Advertising](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/adtech-advertising?hsLang=en-us) [๐ŸŽฎ Gaming & Esports](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/gaming-esports?hsLang=en-us) [๐Ÿ“ฑ Mobile Apps & Developers](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/mobile-apps-developers?hsLang=en-us) [๐Ÿค– AI & Machine Learning](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/ai-machine-learning?hsLang=en-us) [๐Ÿ›๏ธ Enterprise & Corporate](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/enterprise-corporate?hsLang=en-us) [๐Ÿ“š E-Learning & EdTech](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/e-learning-edtech?hsLang=en-us) [๐ŸŸ๏ธ Sports & Live Events](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/sports-live-events?hsLang=en-us) [๐Ÿ’ฐ Pricing & Compare โ–พ](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/cdn-pricing-and-cdn-costs?hsLang=en-us) [Provider Pricing](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/provider-pricing?hsLang=en-us) [Cost Optimization](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/cost-optimization?hsLang=en-us) [Decision Support](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/decision-support?hsLang=en-us) [โšก Compare](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/cdn-comparison?hsLang=en-us) [Provider Comparisons](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/provider-comparisons?hsLang=en-us) [Strategy Comparisons](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/strategy-comparisons?hsLang=en-us) [๐Ÿ“Š Benchmarks](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/cdn-ratings-and-benchmarks?hsLang=en-us) [๐Ÿ”’ Security โ–พ](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/cdn-security?hsLang=en-us) [Attack Protection](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/attack-protection?hsLang=en-us) [Encryption & Access](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/encryption-access?hsLang=en-us) [Video & DRM Security](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/video-drm-security?hsLang=en-us) [๐Ÿ› ๏ธ Tools](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/cdn-tools?hsLang=en-us) [Get Started](https://blazingcdn.com/sign-up-contact-form/) [Pricing - Pricing & Costs](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/en-us/tag/pricing-pricing-costs) [Pricing - Cost Optimization](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/en-us/tag/pricing-cost-optimization) # CDN Bandwidth Explained: What It Costs and How to Reduce It Vadym Borovskyi Nov 1, 2026, 9:58:20โ€ฏAM ![\CDN Bandwidth Explained: What It Costs and How to Reduce It\](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/hubfs/Gemini-Blog/image-Nov-01-2026-08-55-15-7298-AM.jpeg) **How we compare, and who is writing.** BlazingCDN publishes this blog and sells a CDN, so it is one of the providers in any comparison here. Competitor prices in our articles are each provider's own published list price at the stated volume, before negotiated discounts. Price tables are ordered by that list price and are not a measurement of delivery quality. Treat the BlazingCDN figure like every other figure: a published number to verify on your own traffic. Official price lists, last re-read in November 2026: [bunny.net](https://bunny.net/pricing/), [CDN77](https://www.cdn77.com/pricing), [Amazon CloudFront](https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/pricing/), [KeyCDN](https://www.keycdn.com/pricing), [Cloudflare](https://www.cloudflare.com/plans/), [Fastly](https://www.fastly.com/pricing), [Gcore](https://gcore.com/cdn), [BlazingCDN](https://blazingcdn.com/pricing/). A figure in the article that carries an older date was not re-checked since that date. One gigabit per second sustained for a 30-day month moves 324 TB. Every one of those terabytes lands on the invoice as CDN bandwidth: bytes delivered from the edge to users, metered per GB, per TB, or per Mbps at the 95th percentile. The rate applied to those bytes, the regions they go to, and the way they are counted decide whether that month costs hundreds or tens of thousands of dollars. This brief covers the metering rules that can move a bill by up to 10%, a regional rate table, a break-even model for 95th percentile versus volume billing, the failure modes that inflate traffic, and a 90-day reduction plan. CDN bandwidth cost depends on three variables: how many bytes are delivered, where they are delivered, and how they are metered. On published price lists checked August 2026, 100 TB a month on Amazon CloudFront pay-as-you-go costs $6,965 for transfer alone, an effective $69.65 per TB. On flat per-TB providers the same volume costs $500 to $1,000 on bunny.net and $415 on BlazingCDN. ## **How CDN bandwidth is metered on your bill** The billable unit is egress: response bytes leaving the edge toward clients. Vendor documentation differs on whether response headers and TLS record overhead count. On small-object workloads such as APIs, thumbnails and HLS playlists, that overhead can be several percent of the total. Two other items appear on separate lines, and both are often missed in forecasts. Request fees are charged per 10,000 or per million requests. Origin egress is charged by your cloud provider whenever the CDN pulls from an origin outside its own network. ### GB vs TB: decimal or binary units Check whether your contract defines a GB as 10^9 bytes or 2^30 bytes. The binary definition is 7.4% larger at the GB level and 10% larger at the TB level. If your analytics count in decimal units and your vendor bills in binary ones, or the reverse, reconciliations drift by that margin every month. Unit mismatch is the most common reason a forecast built from analytics data misses the invoice. ### 95th percentile billing Under 95th percentile billing, the provider samples throughput every 5 minutes, which gives about 8,640 samples in a 30-day month. It then sorts the samples, discards the top 5% (432 samples, or 36 hours of peaks), and bills the highest remaining value in Mbps. Short bursts are free. Sustained peaks, such as a 3-hour live event every evening, are not. ### CDN bandwidth pricing models - **Pay-as-you-go:** per-GB list rates with no commitment. This model is flexible, but it is the most expensive at high volume. - **Tiered volume pricing:** the rate falls as monthly volume crosses thresholds, usually applied marginally like tax brackets. - **Committed usage:** a discount in exchange for a monthly or annual traffic commitment, with overage or shortfall terms to read carefully. - **95th percentile:** a per-Mbps rate applied to the trimmed peak, common in enterprise and transit-style contracts. - **Regional pricing:** separate rates per geography, with Asia, South America, the Middle East and Africa usually priced above North America and Europe. ## **CDN bandwidth cost by region: published rates** Regional multipliers often matter more than tier discounts. The table below shows first-tier list rates. The Amazon CloudFront North America and Europe rates match published price lists checked August 2026. The other cells reflect rates as published in 2025, so verify them before budgeting. | Region | Amazon CloudFront, first 10 TB (per GB) | bunny.net Standard (per GB) | BlazingCDN entry tier (per TB) | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | North America | $0.085 | $0.010 | $5.00 | | Europe | $0.085 | $0.010 | $5.00 | | Asia (Singapore, Hong Kong) | $0.120 | $0.030 | $5.00 | | India | $0.109 | $0.030 | $5.00 | | South America | $0.110 | $0.045 | See pricing page | | Middle East and Africa | $0.110 | $0.060 | See pricing page | Outside North America and Europe, per-GB list rates run 1.3 times (Amazon CloudFront) to 6 times (bunny.net Standard) the home-region rate, so a shift in audience mix can move the bill more than any tier discount. ## **95th percentile vs per-TB billing: a break-even model** One Mbps sustained for a 30-day month equals 0.324 TB. That conversion lets you compare a per-Mbps quote with a per-TB rate directly: **Break-even price per Mbps = 0.324 ร— effective price per TB รท peak-to-average ratio** Here, the peak-to-average ratio is your 95th percentile throughput divided by your monthly average throughput. A per-Mbps quote below the break-even figure beats volume billing. A quote above it loses. The table applies the formula to two effective rates at 100 TB a month: BlazingCDN at $4.15 per TB and Amazon CloudFront pay-as-you-go at $69.65 per TB, both from published price lists checked August 2026. | Peak-to-average ratio (typical profile) | Break-even vs $4.15 per TB | Break-even vs $69.65 per TB | | --- | --- | --- | | 1.5 (software updates, steady VOD) | $0.90 per Mbps | $15.04 per Mbps | | 2.5 (daily prime-time peak) | $0.54 per Mbps | $9.03 per Mbps | | 4.0 (live events, game launches) | $0.34 per Mbps | $5.64 per Mbps | The burstier the traffic, the cheaper a per-Mbps quote has to be to beat volume billing: a 4:1 live-event profile needs a rate about 2.7 times lower than a flat 1.5:1 profile. ## **What drives CDN bandwidth up, and what to track** The common cost drivers are oversized images and video renditions, uncompressed text, chatty or bloated API responses, client retries, full-build downloads for software and game updates, low cache hit ratios and fragmented cache keys. The last two deserve a precise distinction. Cache misses raise origin egress and cache-fill traffic, not the bytes users receive. Improving the hit ratio from 90% to 98% cuts origin pulls by 80%, from 10% to 2% of requests. The edge-to-user bandwidth line stays exactly where it was unless the vendor also bills cache fill. ### Metrics to track - Total CDN egress and origin egress, reconciled in the same units - Cache hit ratio by request and byte offload ratio by bytes - Bandwidth by region, URL prefix and content type - Bytes per page view, session or completed download - API response size multiplied by request frequency - Video bitrate distribution by device class - Error, retry and partial-content (206) rates Start by ranking URL prefixes by bytes. In most catalogs a small set of assets accounts for most of the bandwidth, and that set is where every later tactic should be aimed. ## **Failure modes that inflate CDN bandwidth** The failures below inflate the bill without breaking anything a user would notice. That is exactly why they go undetected until finance asks about the invoice. | What breaks | How it shows up | How to confirm | | --- | --- | --- | | Compression silently disabled after a deploy | Bytes per page view jump while request counts stay flat | Text responses lack a Content-Encoding header, or Vary is missing Accept-Encoding | | Range and retry amplification on large files | Delivered bytes exceed file size times completed installs by more than 20% | Share of 206 responses and client retry counts per download | | Adaptive bitrate over-serving | Top rendition dominates on phones | Bitrate distribution split by device class and screen size | | Hotlinking and scrapers | Bandwidth grows faster than active users | Bytes by referrer and user agent; unknown referrers above a few percent | | Cache key fragmentation and multi-CDN fill | Origin egress rises with each added CDN or query parameter | Distinct query strings per path; origin requests per object per CDN | Most bandwidth overruns are configuration regressions, not organic growth, so alert on bytes per session rather than on total terabytes. ## **How to reduce CDN bandwidth usage: tactics by bytes saved** Only tactics that shrink the bytes sent to users lower the CDN line item. The ranges below are estimates from typical published results, so measure them on your own content. | Tactic | Typical reduction on affected bytes | Prioritize when | | --- | --- | --- | | Enable gzip or Brotli on uncompressed text and JSON | 60 to 80% | Any text response ships uncompressed | | Brotli instead of gzip for static text | 15 to 25% beyond gzip | Text exceeds 10% of bytes | | AVIF or WebP with responsive sizing | 25 to 50% vs JPEG | Images exceed 30% of bytes | | AV1, VP9 or HEVC plus a tuned bitrate ladder | 30 to 50% vs H.264 at equal quality | Video exceeds 50% of bytes and client decode support is known | | Delta updates for software and game builds | 50 to 90% per patch vs full build | Releases ship weekly or faster | | Long browser TTLs on versioned URLs | Removes repeat downloads entirely | Returning visitors exceed 30% of sessions | Format and codec changes save the most bytes per engineering hour on media-heavy workloads, while compression fixes are the cheapest win everywhere else. Cache work still pays, but on the origin line. Strip irrelevant query parameters, cookies and headers from cache keys. Use stale-while-revalidate so expired objects are served while a single refresh runs. Put an origin shield in front of cloud storage so that misses collapse into one fetch. In multi-CDN setups, align cache rules across providers and steer traffic by both cost and performance. Otherwise each CDN refills its cache from your origin independently. ## **Where the per-TB rate fits in the decision** Once bytes are minimized, the remaining lever is the rate itself. Budget owners should model it at their real volume and regional mix, then add request fees, which flat per-TB vendors typically do not charge. As of November 2026, BlazingCDN bills bandwidth on progressive tiers from $5 per TB down to $2.50 per TB at volume, with one rate for the US, Europe and Asia and no request fees, regional multipliers or long-term contract. At those rates 100 TB a month costs $415 and 200 TB costs $765; current rates are on the [**BlazingCDN CDN bandwidth pricing page**](https://blazingcdn.com/pricing/). The platform includes gzip, Brotli and zstd compression, origin shield with request coalescing, and on-the-fly image resizing at no extra charge, which covers several of the tactics above. The trade-offs are real. Below about 46 TB a month, flat plans such as Amazon CloudFront Business ($200 for 50 TB) or Cloudflare Pro ($25 a month) can cost less. BlazingCDN also does not support HTTP/3 or sell a WAF, so teams keep their security stack and run it beside that stack for heavy files. ## **A 30/60/90-day CDN bandwidth reduction plan** **Days 0 to 30:** Reconcile units between analytics and invoices. Rank URL prefixes by bytes, fix compression gaps, convert the heaviest images, and set alerts on bytes per session. **Days 31 to 60:** Redesign cache keys, lengthen TTLs on versioned assets, add origin shielding, cap bitrate ladders by device class, and split large front-end bundles. **Days 61 to 90:** Compute your peak-to-average ratio, apply the break-even formula to renewal quotes, price your regional mix against alternative providers, and run a production-traffic test before committing. ## **FAQ: CDN bandwidth cost and pricing** ### How much does CDN bandwidth cost per TB? CDN bandwidth costs from roughly $2.50 to more than $85 per TB depending on vendor, volume and region. On published price lists checked August 2026, Amazon CloudFront pay-as-you-go averages $69.65 per TB at 100 TB a month, while flat per-TB providers deliver the same 100 TB for $415 to $1,000. Asia, South America and Africa usually cost more. ### How does CDN bandwidth pricing work with 95th percentile billing? Under 95th percentile CDN bandwidth pricing, the provider samples throughput every five minutes, discards the highest 5% of samples (about 36 hours a month), and bills the next highest value per Mbps. It favors steady traffic. For bursty live events, volume billing usually wins unless the per-Mbps rate sits well below the break-even level. ### Does a higher cache hit ratio reduce CDN bandwidth costs? A higher cache hit ratio mainly reduces origin egress, not CDN bandwidth delivered to users. Raising hit ratio from 90% to 98% cuts origin pulls by 80%, which lowers cloud egress and origin load. The CDN bandwidth line drops only through smaller responses, fewer repeat downloads from browser caching, or vendors that bill cache fill. ### Why is my CDN bandwidth bill higher than my analytics traffic? CDN bandwidth bills usually exceed analytics totals because of unit definitions, overhead and invisible traffic. Binary terabytes are 10% larger than decimal ones, headers and TLS overhead may be billed, and retries, range requests, bots and hotlinked assets consume bandwidth without registering as page views in client-side analytics tools. ### Is CDN bandwidth billed in decimal or binary units? CDN bandwidth billing units vary by vendor, so check the contract definition. A GB can mean 10^9 bytes or 2^30 bytes, a 7.4% difference that grows to 10% at the TB level. Mixing definitions between analytics exports and invoices is the most common cause of monthly reconciliation gaps on large bandwidth bills. ## **Price your CDN bandwidth on your own traffic** This week, export 30 days of edge logs and compute three numbers: bytes by region, bytes by content type, and your peak-to-average throughput ratio. Apply the break-even formula to every quote on the table, and multiply each regional byte share by the vendor's regional rate instead of the headline price. That exercise usually shows whether the bigger savings come from shrinking bytes or from changing the rate. If the per-TB rate turns out to be your largest lever, the [**BlazingCDN cost calculator for CDN bandwidth**](https://blazingcdn.com/cdn-cost-calculator/) prices your monthly volume on progressive tiers starting at $5 per TB. 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The CDN for video and large traffic 100 TB a month at list price - BlazingCDN**$415** - [bunny.net](https://bunny.net/pricing/) Volume**$500** - [CDN77](https://www.cdn77.com/pricing), plan to 250 TB**$990** - [KeyCDN](https://www.keycdn.com/pricing), NA and Europe**$2,600** - [CloudFront](https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/pricing/pay-as-you-go/) pay as you go**$6,965** Each provider's published list price for transfer, lowest first, checked November 2026. BlazingCDN publishes this blog. Up to 50 TB a month a flat plan such as CloudFront Pro ($15) can cost less. [Calculate your cost](https://blazingcdn.com/cdn-cost-calculator/?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=sidebar&utm_campaign=blog_sidebar&utm_content=compare_calc) ## Related posts [![Reducing CDN Costs with BlazingCDN's Volume Pricing](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/hubfs/Gemini-Blog/image-Nov-02-2026-02-55-19-3035-AM.jpeg)](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/en-us/reducing-cdn-costs-blazingcdn-flexible-pricing?hsLang=en-us) Pricing - Pricing & Costs ### [Reducing CDN Costs with BlazingCDN's Volume Pricing](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/en-us/reducing-cdn-costs-blazingcdn-flexible-pricing?hsLang=en-us) The most direct way to reduce CDN costs at scale is to stop paying one headline rate on every terabyte and to remove ... 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All rights reserved. ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@id" : "https://blazingcdn.com/#organization", "@type" : "Organization", "description" : "High-volume CDN for video, live streaming, OTT/IPTV, software, games, SaaS and large-file delivery.", "logo" : { "@id" : "https://blazingcdn.com/#logo", "@type" : "ImageObject", "height" : 560, "url" : "https://blazingcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/logo-560-560.png", "width" : 560 }, "name" : "BlazingCDN", "sameAs" : [ "https://www.linkedin.com/company/blazingcdn", "https://x.com/BlazingCdn", "https://www.reddit.com/r/BlazingCDN/", "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q141711074" ], "url" : "https://blazingcdn.com/" } ``` ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@id" : "https://blog.blazingcdn.com/#website", "@type" : "WebSite", "inLanguage" : "en-US", "name" : "BlazingCDN Blog", "publisher" : { "@id" : "https://blazingcdn.com/#organization" }, "url" : "https://blog.blazingcdn.com/" } ``` ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@id" : "https://blog.blazingcdn.com/en-us/cdn-bandwidth-understanding-costs-and-how-to-optimize-usage#article", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@id" : "https://blog.blazingcdn.com/en-us/author/blazingcdn#person", "@type" : "Person", "description" : "Vadym Borovskyi is Chief Product and Marketing Officer at BlazingCDN, where he has led product strategy and growth since 2021. He has more than 11 years of experience in IT product management and B2B marketing. On this blog he writes about CDN pricing and egress costs, video and software delivery, cache configuration, and how teams evaluate and switch CDN providers. He is based in Warsaw, Poland.", "image" : "https://143144902.fs1.hubspotusercontent-eu1.net/hubfs/143144902/vadym-borovskyi.jpg", "jobTitle" : "Chief Product and Marketing Officer", "knowsAbout" : [ "Content Delivery Networks (CDN)", "CDN pricing", "Video streaming delivery", "Software and game distribution", "Cache optimization", "Product Management", "B2B Marketing", "Digital Marketing", "Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC)", "Google Ads", "Search Engine Marketing (SEM)", "Marketing Strategy", "Artificial Intelligence (AI)", "Cloud Management", "SaaS Development", "IT Consulting", "Computer Networking", "Project Management", "Startups" ], "name" : "Vadym Borovskyi", "sameAs" : [ "https://www.linkedin.com/in/axelt/" ], "url" : "https://blog.blazingcdn.com/en-us/author/blazingcdn", "worksFor" : { "@id" : "https://blazingcdn.com/#organization" } }, "dateModified" : "2026-11-09T14:54:41Z", "datePublished" : "2026-11-01T08:58:20Z", "description" : "What CDN bandwidth means on your bill, how providers meter it, typical costs per TB by region and practical ways to reduce bandwidth usage.", "headline" : "CDN Bandwidth Explained: What It Costs and How to Reduce It", "image" : "https://143144902.fs1.hubspotusercontent-eu1.net/hubfs/143144902/Gemini-Blog/image-Nov-01-2026-08-55-15-7298-AM.jpeg", "inLanguage" : "en-us", "isPartOf" : { "@id" : "https://blog.blazingcdn.com/#website" }, "mainEntityOfPage" : { "@id" : "https://blog.blazingcdn.com/en-us/cdn-bandwidth-understanding-costs-and-how-to-optimize-usage", "@type" : "WebPage" }, "publisher" : { "@id" : "https://blazingcdn.com/#organization" }, "wordCount" : 2305 } ``` ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@id" : "https://blog.blazingcdn.com/en-us/cdn-bandwidth-understanding-costs-and-how-to-optimize-usage#breadcrumb", "@type" : "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement" : [ { "@type" : "ListItem", "item" : "https://blog.blazingcdn.com/en-us", "name" : "Blog", "position" : 1 }, { "@type" : "ListItem", "item" : "https://blog.blazingcdn.com/en-us/cdn-bandwidth-understanding-costs-and-how-to-optimize-usage", "name" : "CDN Bandwidth Explained: What It Costs and How to Reduce It", "position" : 2 } ] } ``` ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@id" : "https://blog.blazingcdn.com/en-us/cdn-bandwidth-understanding-costs-and-how-to-optimize-usage#faq", "@type" : "FAQPage", "mainEntity" : [ { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "CDN bandwidth costs from roughly $2.50 to more than $85 per TB depending on vendor, volume and region. On published price lists checked August 2026, Amazon CloudFront pay-as-you-go averages $69.65 per TB at 100 TB a month, while flat per-TB providers deliver the same 100 TB for $415 to $1,000. Asia, South America and Africa usually cost more." }, "name" : "How much does CDN bandwidth cost per TB?" }, { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "Under 95th percentile CDN bandwidth pricing, the provider samples throughput every five minutes, discards the highest 5% of samples (about 36 hours a month), and bills the next highest value per Mbps. It favors steady traffic. For bursty live events, volume billing usually wins unless the per-Mbps rate sits well below the break-even level." }, "name" : "How does CDN bandwidth pricing work with 95th percentile billing?" }, { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "A higher cache hit ratio mainly reduces origin egress, not CDN bandwidth delivered to users. Raising hit ratio from 90% to 98% cuts origin pulls by 80%, which lowers cloud egress and origin load. The CDN bandwidth line drops only through smaller responses, fewer repeat downloads from browser caching, or vendors that bill cache fill." }, "name" : "Does a higher cache hit ratio reduce CDN bandwidth costs?" }, { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "CDN bandwidth bills usually exceed analytics totals because of unit definitions, overhead and invisible traffic. Binary terabytes are 10% larger than decimal ones, headers and TLS overhead may be billed, and retries, range requests, bots and hotlinked assets consume bandwidth without registering as page views in client-side analytics tools." }, "name" : "Why is my CDN bandwidth bill higher than my analytics traffic?" }, { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "CDN bandwidth billing units vary by vendor, so check the contract definition. A GB can mean 10^9 bytes or 2^30 bytes, a 7.4% difference that grows to 10% at the TB level. Mixing definitions between analytics exports and invoices is the most common cause of monthly reconciliation gaps on large bandwidth bills." }, "name" : "Is CDN bandwidth billed in decimal or binary units?" } ] } ```