AWS CloudFront Pricing 2026: Cost per GB, per TB and Examples

A 50 TB month on CloudFront rarely costs 50,000 GB times $0.085. When we model a typical mixed-geography workload against Q3 2026 list rates, the blended figure comes out near $0.10/GB. That is about 17% above the headline US rate, because APAC and India traffic start at a higher price and request fees sit on top of transfer. CloudFront pricing is a function of four inputs: pricing region, per-region volume tier, request count, and the add-ons your architecture pulls in.

This guide gives you the 2026 regional rate table in both per-GB and per-TB terms, the request, origin, and invalidation fees, three worked examples with full math, and a decision matrix for when the flat-rate plans, a Savings Bundle, or a different CDN make more sense.

How Does CloudFront Pricing Work in 2026?

Pay-as-you-go CloudFront pricing is still metered on data transfer out to viewers, HTTP and HTTPS requests, and optional features. Volume tiers accumulate across every distribution on the account, and they are tracked separately for each pricing region. US and Europe share the same rate schedule, but each region climbs its own ladder. A workload split 25 TB US and 10 TB EU therefore pays the first-tier $0.085/GB twice.

The big 2026 change for returning readers is packaging, not list rates. AWS launched flat-rate plans in late 2025. At launch these were Free, Pro ($15/month), Business ($200/month), and Premium ($1,000/month), and they bundle CloudFront delivery with WAF, DDoS protection, Route 53, and some S3 credits. Pay-as-you-go rates have not moved meaningfully. The always-free allowance of 1 TB transfer and 10 million requests per month still applies to pay-as-you-go accounts.

CloudFront price per GB and per TB by region (as of Q3 2026)

These are list rates for data transfer out to the internet, as of Q3 2026. Check the AWS pricing page before you sign anything, because AWS adjusts regional columns without much notice.

Look at the shape of the curve. US/EU falls 76% from the first tier to the 5 PB tier. India falls only 34%. If you are APAC-heavy, volume barely rescues you on list pricing, so a private rate agreement or traffic steering matters far more there.

Request, origin, invalidation and add-on fees

How BlazingCDN compares: At 100 TB a month, Amazon CloudFront pay-as-you-go comes to about $6,965 on its published price list (checked August 2026), while BlazingCDN costs $415 (as of October 2026) at one rate for the US, Europe and Asia. The full comparison is on the BlazingCDN vs Amazon CloudFront page.

CloudFront Cost Examples: Three Worked Workloads

All three examples use Q3 2026 list rates and exclude the free tier unless we say otherwise.

Example 1: 5 TB/month, US-only web app

Transfer is 5,000 GB at $0.085, which is $425. Requests are 20 million HTTPS at $0.01 per 10,000, which is $20. The total is $445. After the 1 TB and 10 million request free allowance, it drops to about $350, a blended rate of $0.07/GB. At this size, CloudFront is hard to beat if your origin already lives in AWS.

Example 2: 50 TB/month, mixed geography

The traffic splits as 25 TB US, 10 TB EU, 10 TB APAC, and 5 TB India, with 300 million HTTPS requests in the same proportions.

• US: $850 + $1,200 = $2,050
• EU: $850 (its own first tier)
• APAC: 10,000 GB at $0.120 = $1,200
• India: 5,000 GB at $0.109 = $545
• Requests: about $330

The total is roughly $4,975, a blended $0.0995/GB. APAC and India are 30% of the bytes but 36% of the transfer bill.

Example 3: 200 TB/month, software downloads, US/EU

The split is 150 TB US and 50 TB EU, with 100 million requests because the objects are large. US costs $850 + $3,200 + $6,000 = $10,050. EU costs $850 + $3,200 = $4,050. Requests add about $106. The total is around $14,200, or $0.071/GB. Large-object workloads like this are where per-GB pricing hurts most.

Where CloudFront Bills Go Wrong: Failure Modes We See in Production

The expensive surprises almost never come from the rate card. They come from architecture decisions that multiply a metered dimension without anyone noticing.

• Request-dominated APIs. Take 2 billion requests a month at an 8 KB average response, all US. That is 16 TB of transfer ($1,330) against $2,000 in HTTPS request fees. Here the request line is the bill, and a cheaper per-GB CDN barely helps.
• Cache-key fragmentation. Forwarding all query strings or cookies in a cache policy can push hit ratio from the 90s into the 60s. Transfer cost stays flat, but origin load, Origin Shield requests, and Lambda@Edge origin-request invocations all rise.
• Per-deploy invalidation. A CI job that invalidates 5,000 explicit paths on every release, 20 times a month, adds 99,000 billable paths. That is $495 a month for something versioned asset URLs make free.
• Price Class drift. Moving from Price Class 100 to All for latency reasons can shift 15–25% of bytes onto $0.11–$0.12 rates overnight. Tag the change and watch the per-region usage types in Cost Explorer for the following week.
• Flat-rate plan ceilings. The 2026 flat-rate tiers are bounded by request allowances. They fit sites and APIs with predictable volumes, but not bursty download or video workloads.

CloudFront vs Alternatives: Decision Matrix by Workload

For the 100 TB+ row, compare Example 3 directly. On BlazingCDN, 200 TB comes to $765 a month (as of October 2026) against roughly $14,200 on CloudFront list pricing. BlazingCDN offers flexible configuration and fast scaling under demand spikes. Pricing starts at $5 per TB and falls to $2.50 per TB at volume, which is why enterprises move large-object traffic there.

Bunny.net and CDN77 are strong in the same league, and Gcore brings broad regional reach. Benchmark all of them against your own object-size distribution. For the rate math across volumes, see BlazingCDN's volume-based pricing. A common 2026 pattern is to keep CloudFront for HTML and APIs and route bulk bytes through a second CDN.

FAQ

How much does CloudFront cost per TB in 2026?

As of Q3 2026, the first 10 TB in US and Europe costs $85/TB, dropping to $60/TB between 50 and 150 TB and $20/TB above 5 PB. APAC starts at $114–$120/TB and India at $109/TB. Request fees are billed on top.

Are CloudFront pricing tiers per distribution or per account?

Tiers aggregate across all distributions on the account, but each pricing region has its own tier ladder. Consolidating distributions does not change your tier. Consolidating accounts under AWS Organizations consolidated billing can, because usage is pooled.

Is data transfer from S3 to CloudFront free?

Yes. Transfer from AWS origins such as S3, ALB, and EC2 to CloudFront is not charged. With non-AWS origins, you pay your provider's egress instead. Uploads from viewers through CloudFront to the origin are billed at about $0.02/GB in US/EU.

How much does CloudFront invalidation cost?

The first 1,000 paths per month are free, and each additional path costs $0.005. A wildcard path counts as one path regardless of how many objects it matches. Versioned filenames avoid the cost entirely.

Does Price Class 100 lower CloudFront cost?

It caps delivery to US, Canada, and Europe edges, so every byte bills at the cheapest regional rate. Viewers in Asia or South America are then served from farther edges with higher latency. Measure p95 TTFB by country before and after the switch.

Run This Cost Audit Before Your Next Renewal

This week, export 90 days of Cost Explorer data grouped by usage type. Separate DataTransfer-Out-Bytes by region from Requests-Tier1 and Requests-Tier2-HTTPS, then divide total CloudFront spend by total GB to get your real blended rate. If that number is above $0.07 and your request share is under 10% of the bill, price the bulk-byte path elsewhere.

If request fees are more than 40% of the bill, start with your cache policy before you touch vendors. Then tell us what your blended rate turned out to be. We are collecting 2026 figures and suspect most teams are paying more than they think.