---
title: "CloudFront Flat-Rate vs Per-TB CDN Pricing: Cost by Workload"
description: Compare CloudFront flat-rate vs pay-as-you-go CDN pricing by workload, costs, and CloudFront vs BlazingCDN.
---

[Content Delivery Network Blog](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/en-us)

# [CloudFront Flat-Rate vs Per-TB CDN Pricing: Cost by Workload](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/en-us/cloudfront-flat-rate-vs-per-tb-cdn-pricing-cost-by-workload)

 Written by [BlazingCDN](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/en-us/author/blazingcdn) | Oct 4, 2026, 7:33:42 AM

Amazon CloudFront's $15 Pro flat-rate plan is the cheapest way to serve up to 50 TB a month, but only if your average response is about 5 MB or larger, because its 10 million request allowance runs out before the transfer allowance does. For web traffic, or for anything past 50 TB, the CloudFront flat rate vs pay as you go decision becomes a choice between a Premium plan that starts at $1,000, metered pricing at $6,965 for 100 TB, and per-TB CDNs that charge $415 for the same 100 TB plus S3 egress on cache misses.

Evaluated October 2026, list prices as checked August 2026. Verdict by workload: file downloads under 50 TB belong on CloudFront Pro; AWS-hosted web apps under about 25 TB belong on CloudFront Business; high-volume files, game builds and video above 50 TB are cheaper on a per-TB CDN even after paying S3 for misses.

According to published price lists checked August 2026, delivering 100 TB a month costs $6,965 on Amazon CloudFront pay-as-you-go pricing (data transfer alone), from $1,000 on the CloudFront flat-rate Premium plan, and $415 on BlazingCDN's per-TB tiers. Below 50 TB a month, CloudFront's Pro ($15) and Business ($200) flat-rate plans usually cost less than any metered CDN.

## **How CloudFront flat rate vs pay as you go pricing changes with volume**

The two CloudFront billing models scale in opposite directions. Pay as you go charges per GB with volume discounts, so cost grows almost linearly with traffic. Flat-rate plans charge a fixed monthly fee against fixed allowances, so cost is nearly constant until you outgrow a plan, then jumps. Five criteria decide which model wins for a given workload:

- **Cost per TB at your volume**, including the first-TB free allowance on metered pricing.
- **Request count**, which is billed per 10,000 on pay as you go and capped by allowance on flat plans.
- **Regional mix**: metered CloudFront rates differ by region, while flat plans and some per-TB CDNs use one rate.
- **Origin location**: CloudFront fetches from S3 at no transfer charge, a third-party CDN does not.
- **Bundled features** such as WAF and DDoS mitigation, which you would otherwise buy separately.

### CloudFront pay as you go pricing at a glance

For North America and Europe, metered CloudFront data transfer lists at $0.085 per GB for the first 10 TB, $0.080 for the next 40 TB, $0.060 for the next 100 TB, $0.040 for the next 350 TB and $0.030 beyond, with 1 TB a month included. HTTPS requests add $0.01 per 10,000. Rates into South America, India and parts of Asia list higher, which is the regional multiplier most budgets underestimate.

### What the CloudFront flat-rate plans include

Per vendor documentation as of 2026, the flat-rate tiers are Free, Pro at $15, Business at $200 and Premium at $1,000 a month, with request allowances of 1 million, 10 million, 125 million and 500 million. The paid tiers carry a 50 TB transfer allowance and bundle WAF rules, DDoS mitigation and DNS. There are no per-GB charges inside the allowance, so budget as if the next plan up is your real price once you approach a limit.

## **Why request allowances, not terabytes, decide the CloudFront flat-rate cost**

Every paid flat plan offers the same 50 TB of transfer, so the plan you actually need is set by requests. Dividing 50 TB by each request allowance gives the minimum average object size at which a plan's transfer allowance is usable before requests run out. This blog calls it the break-even object size:

- **Pro ($15):** 50 TB divided by 10 million requests is 5 MB per response.
- **Business ($200):** 50 TB divided by 125 million requests is 400 KB per response.
- **Premium ($1,000):** 50 TB divided by 500 million requests is 100 KB per response.

Pro is effectively a file-download plan. A software mirror serving 20 MB installers fits 50 TB inside 2.5 million requests and pays $15. A web property averaging 250 KB per response burns 4 million requests per TB, so 5 TB already needs Business and 50 TB needs Premium. The same traffic volume can cost $15 or $1,000 depending only on object size.

## **CloudFront pricing comparison from 5 to 600 TB**

The table assumes North America and Europe traffic. The file workload averages 20 MB per response; the web workload averages 250 KB. The last column adds an estimated S3 egress charge for a third-party CDN pulling from S3 at a 96 percent cache hit ratio, explained in the next sections. Metered CloudFront excludes request fees, which add about $4 per TB on the web workload.

| Monthly volume | CloudFront pay as you go (transfer only) | CloudFront flat-rate, file workload | CloudFront flat-rate, web workload | BlazingCDN per-TB | BlazingCDN plus S3 miss egress (estimate) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 5 TB | $340 | $15 (Pro) | $200 (Business) | $25 | about $34 |
| 20 TB | $1,565 | $15 (Pro) | $200 (Business) | $92.50 | about $156 |
| 50 TB | $3,965 | $15 (Pro) | $1,000 (Premium) | $215 | about $386 |
| 100 TB | $6,965 | from $1,000 (Premium) | from $1,000 (Premium) | $415 | about $766 |
| 200 TB | $11,965 | $3,500 (Premium) | $3,500 (Premium) | $765 | about $1,476 |
| 500 TB | $23,965 | not published | not published | $1,815 | about $3,556 |
| 600 TB | $26,965 | not published | not published | $2,115 | about $4,196 |

CloudFront flat-rate plans win up to 50 TB, and a per-TB CDN wins from 100 TB upward even after paying S3 for every cache miss.

BlazingCDN publishes this blog, so verify these totals against your own traffic; the 14-day testing period on production traffic exists for exactly that.

## **The jump past 50 TB on CloudFront flat-rate plans**

Crossing 50 TB moves a file workload from $15 to a Premium plan that starts at $1,000 at 100 TB, a 66x step for twice the traffic. At 200 TB the published Premium figure is $3,500, still far below the $11,965 metered price but more than four times a per-TB CDN's $765. Above 200 TB no flat-rate price was published as of August 2026, so you are back to metered pricing or a private quote.

Metered CloudFront has no jump but a steep slope: its marginal rate only falls to $0.040 per GB after 150 TB, which is $40 per TB against per-TB CDN rates of $3.00 to $3.50 in the same range. Other per-TB CDNs sit between the two models at 100 TB: bunny.net lists $500 on its Volume network and CDN77 $990 for a plan covering up to 250 TB, per published price lists checked August 2026.

## **The S3 egress catch for any non-CloudFront CDN**

CloudFront pulls from S3 without a transfer charge; every other CDN pays S3 internet egress on cache misses, at roughly $0.09 per GB for the first 10 TB a month and about $0.085 per GB above that (AWS list prices, 2026). At a 96 percent hit ratio, 100 TB of delivery means about 4 TB of origin fetches and roughly $350 of S3 egress.

The worked math for 100 TB: 4 TB of misses, minus the 100 GB AWS internet allowance, is 3.9 TB at $90 per TB, so about $351. Add the $415 CDN bill and the real total is about $766, still below the $1,000 Premium floor. Each percentage point of hit ratio at 200 TB moves about 2 TB of misses, worth roughly $170 to $180 a month, so measure your real hit ratio before trusting any total in this article.

The catch also moves the crossover against Business. Without S3 egress, a per-TB CDN at $5 to $4 per TB beats Business's $200 only below about 46 TB. With an S3 origin at a 96 percent hit ratio, the combined cost reaches $200 at about 25.5 TB (115 + 4 × 0.5 + 0.04 × 25.5 × 90, minus the AWS allowance). Between roughly 25 and 50 TB, an AWS-hosted web app is cheaper on CloudFront Business.

Two levers shrink the catch. Origin shield and request coalescing collapse duplicate misses from many edges into one fetch. Moving the library off S3 removes the egress line entirely: BlazingCDN Cloud Storage lists at $0.015 per GB a month, so a 10 TB library adds $150 instead of a variable S3 bill.

## **CloudFront vs BlazingCDN: limits and fit by workload**

**Amazon CloudFront pay as you go** is the most flexible model: HTTP/3, edge functions, deep AWS integration and no plan ceilings. Its limitation is price at scale; at $6,965 for 100 TB it costs 7x Premium and about 17x a per-TB CDN, before request fees and regional premiums.

**Amazon CloudFront flat-rate** is the best deal on the market for small and mid-size AWS-hosted properties, with WAF and DDoS mitigation bundled into $15 to $200 a month. Its limitation is the 50 TB ceiling and request caps: past either one, the price steps up sharply and above 200 TB there is no published plan.

**BlazingCDN** is a pay-as-you-go CDN built for high-volume static delivery: software installers, game builds, video on demand, HLS and DASH segments, and large archives up to 50 GB per object. It charges one rate for the US, Europe and Asia with no request fees, served from NVMe SSD servers over Anycast, and measured June 2026 on a 100 MB HTTPS download at 24 ms and 1.11 Gb/s in North America and 27 ms and 1.12 Gb/s in Europe. Its limitations: no HTTP/3, WebSockets or edge compute, no WAF or DDoS suite of its own, no free tier, and below about 46 TB CloudFront's flat plans cost less. The detailed [**CloudFront vs BlazingCDN comparison**](https://blazingcdn.com/vs/aws-cloudfront/) covers features beyond price.

As of October 2026, BlazingCDN pricing runs on progressive tiers from $5 per TB down to $2.50 per TB at volume, so 100 TB a month costs $415 and 600 TB costs $2,115, with no request fees, regional multipliers or long-term contract. Current rates are on the [**BlazingCDN per-TB pricing page**](https://blazingcdn.com/pricing/).

| Workload | Monthly volume | Best fit | Why |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Downloads averaging 5 MB or more | up to 50 TB | CloudFront Pro | $15 covers both allowances |
| AWS-hosted web app, S3 origin | 25 to 50 TB, under 125M requests | CloudFront Business | $200 with WAF and no S3 miss egress |
| Needs HTTP/3, WebSockets or edge logic | any | CloudFront (flat or metered) | BlazingCDN does not support these |
| Software, game builds, VOD files | 100 to 600 TB | BlazingCDN | $415 to $2,115 plus misses, versus $1,000 to $26,965 |
| Web app plus heavy downloads | over 50 TB combined | Both, split by hostname | Site stays on a flat plan, files move to per-TB |

The split pattern often beats either model alone: keep the web tier inside a CloudFront flat-rate allowance and move the bytes that blow through 50 TB to a per-TB CDN.

## **FAQ: CloudFront flat-rate vs pay-as-you-go cost**

### Is CloudFront's $15 flat-rate plan cheaper than pay as you go?

Yes, whenever your traffic fits its allowances. The Pro plan covers 50 TB and 10 million requests for $15, while metered CloudFront charges $3,965 for 50 TB in North America and Europe. The request cap is the real limit: your average response must be about 5 MB or larger to use the full 50 TB on Pro.

### What happens to CloudFront flat-rate cost past 50 TB a month?

It steps up sharply. Every paid CloudFront flat plan includes 50 TB of transfer, so 100 TB starts at $1,000 on Premium and 200 TB lists at $3,500, per published price lists checked August 2026. No flat-rate price was published above 200 TB, which leaves metered pricing at $23,965 for 500 TB or a negotiated quote.

### Does a third-party CDN in front of S3 pay S3 egress fees?

Yes, on every cache miss. CloudFront fetches from S3 without a transfer charge, but any other CDN pays S3 internet egress of roughly $0.09 per GB in 2026. At a 96 percent hit ratio on 100 TB that is about 4 TB of misses and roughly $350 a month, so origin shield and hit ratio matter.

### How much does 100 TB a month cost on CloudFront vs BlazingCDN?

About $1,000 versus $415 as of October 2026. CloudFront's flat-rate Premium plan starts at $1,000 for 100 TB and metered CloudFront costs $6,965, while BlazingCDN's per-TB tiers total $415. Pulling from an S3 origin adds roughly $350 of estimated S3 egress to the BlazingCDN side, bringing it to about $766.

## **Run the break-even math on your own CloudFront bill**

Pull last month's CloudFront usage report and write down three numbers: bytes delivered, request count and cache hit ratio. Divide bytes by requests to get your average object size, then compare it with the 5 MB, 400 KB and 100 KB break-even points to see which flat plan you actually need. Multiply bytes delivered by your miss rate to estimate what a non-CloudFront CDN would pay S3, and add that to any per-TB quote before comparing. If the hostname carrying your installers, builds or video is the one pushing you past 50 TB, price only that slice separately. The [**BlazingCDN cost calculator**](https://blazingcdn.com/cdn-cost-calculator/) prices that same traffic on progressive tiers from $5 per TB, so you can set it beside your CloudFront numbers.

[View full post](https://blog.blazingcdn.com/en-us/cloudfront-flat-rate-vs-per-tb-cdn-pricing-cost-by-workload)

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