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R2 vs Amazon S3 for image hosting

Comparison · s3

Reviewed 2026-10-25 · against the official Cloudflare pricing pages listed under Sources

Try this scenarioLoads these inputs into the calculator so you can change them.

S3 rates depend on region and were not copied. The R2 image preset is calculated, and its egress line is $0.

Competitor dollar amounts are unverified. This page calculates Cloudflare only and links the other price list. Do not quote a vendor price from memory.

Five hundred GB of images are served from an R2 custom domain, with no Worker in front. Readers download about 50 million objects in the month.

Ask S3 for storage, GET/PUT request prices, and data transfer out for the same 500 GB and 50 million reads.

Then add R2's rounding: a partial million of billable operations becomes a whole million. S3's rounding was not verified for this page.

R2 does not charge egress

Bandwidth out to the internet is free on Standard and Infrequent Access. The bill is storage, Class A, Class B, and Infrequent Access retrieval. The free tier is monthly and applies to Standard only, on both the Free and Paid Workers plans.

This model

$21.75 · Free

Free quotas for Workers, KV, D1, Queues, and Durable Objects reset at 00:00 UTC. A month that averages under the cap can still fail on one busy day. R2 is different: its free tier is monthly, and usage above it is billed on both plans.

R2 storage
$7.35

500 used, 10 included. 490 billable, rounded up to 490. Exact charge $7.35, shown as $7.35. R2 rounds billable storage up to the next GB-month. 1.1 GB-month of billable storage is billed as 2. R2 does not charge egress bandwidth.

R2 Class B operations
$14.40

50,000,000 used, 10,000,000 included. 40,000,000 billable, rounded up to 40,000,000. Exact charge $14.40, shown as $14.40. R2 rounds billable operations up to the next million. One operation past a million boundary is billed as another full million. Class B is the read class: GetObject and HeadObject are the common ones.

Assumptions

  • A 30-day month and steady traffic across it.
  • Rates as published on 2026-10-25; taxes excluded.
  • The Free plan does not bill Workers, KV, D1, Durable Objects or Queues. When a daily cap is reached, requests fail until 00:00 UTC instead of costing more.
  • R2 Class B operations adds $14.40 (66% of the bill): you used more than the 10,000,000 included.
  • R2 storage adds $7.35 (34% of the bill): you used more than the 10 included.
  • R2 is billed on both plans above its monthly free tier, which is why the Free plan is not $0 here.
  • R2 egress (bandwidth out) is free, so downloads only cost Class B reads.

Try this scenario

Sources