Video Hosting Egress Pricing Compared: Wasabi vs. Backblaze B2 vs. R2 vs. S3 (2026)

📋 TL;DR • Low storage reference: Backblaze B2 starts at $6.95/TB/month and includes egress up to 3× average monthly storage (Backblaze, 2026). • Direct egress without a transfer fee: Cloudflare R2 charges no egress fee for data transferred directly from R2, but storage and request charges still apply (Cloudflare, 2026). • Simple storage pricing with a condition: Wasabi starts at $7.99/TB/month, but its free-egress policy is designed for monthly downloads no greater than active storage (Wasabi, 2026). • Many configuration options, more line items: Amazon S3 has a 100GB monthly internet-transfer allowance aggregated across all AWS services and regions, so other AWS usage eats into it, then adds regional data-transfer, request, and storage charges (AWS, 2026). • Practical conclusion: Object storage can lower the storage line item, but it does not provide encoding, a video CDN, a player, access controls, or a website workflow by itself.

For a public video library, Cloudflare R2 removes the egress line item, Wasabi and Backblaze B2 make egress free only within stated conditions, and Amazon S3 bills internet transfer after its allowance. That makes R2 attractive for traffic-heavy delivery, B2 useful when your delivery volume fits its storage-based allowance, Wasabi suitable for storage-led libraries, and S3 a flexible foundation when you already operate in AWS.

The important catch is that none of these products is a complete video-hosting platform. You still need to encode source files, create adaptive-bitrate renditions, deliver them through an edge network, handle playback, protect URLs, and connect the result to your site. A low-cost bucket can become an expensive project if those pieces are left out of the estimate.

ℹ️ What is egress? Egress is data transferred out of a cloud service to a user, another provider, or the public internet. For video, every delivered segment or file contributes to egress; uploads into storage are ingress and are priced separately (Amazon S3 pricing, 2026).

Quick comparison: video hosting egress pricing

The table below uses each provider’s public object-storage pricing and egress rules available in September 2026. Storage figures are list prices, not a promise of a final bill: region, API requests, storage class, CDN path, and account terms can change the result.

That comparison changes depending on whether viewers download the original file or receive segmented adaptive-bitrate video through a CDN. Model the traffic path, not just the bucket. A one-to-one storage-to-egress ratio is a policy boundary for Wasabi, a free allowance calculation for B2, and no special egress condition for R2.

How each provider handles video egress

Each provider bills the same two bars differently: what you store and what you send out.

Wasabi: low storage cost, but the ratio matters

Wasabi Pay as You Go lists Hot Cloud Storage at $7.99/TB/month and describes ingress, egress, and API requests as free subject to its policies (Wasabi, 2026). Its free-egress guidance is tied to active storage: a workload that downloads no more than the amount stored in a month is considered a good fit, while a workload that repeatedly exceeds that amount is not. Two terms bite a small library: a 1TB minimum monthly charge, so storing less still costs $7.99, and a 90-day minimum storage duration (Wasabi pricing FAQ, 2026).

That distinction is important for video. A library with 5TB stored and 2TB delivered in a month stays inside the stated ratio. A 500GB library serving 4TB of playback traffic does not, even though the storage bill looks small. Wasabi does not publish a simple universal overage rate on the pricing FAQ for that situation; its policy says it may limit or suspend service when the pattern regularly falls outside the guideline (Wasabi pricing FAQ, 2026).

Use Wasabi when storage is the dominant workload. Treat the egress policy as an operating constraint, document your expected monthly delivery volume, and monitor downloads before using it as the origin for a high-reach public library.

Backblaze B2: a larger allowance with a defined overage

Backblaze B2 lists Pay as You Go storage at $6.95/TB per month, billed from byte-hours over the billing cycle. Every B2 Cloud Storage customer receives free egress up to 3× average monthly storage, calculated from byte-hours; egress above that allowance is priced at $0.01/GB (Backblaze B2 pricing, 2026). B2 Overdrive is a separate plan: from $15/TB/month, unlimited free egress, multi-petabyte commitment.

If you average 1TB in B2, the standard allowance covers up to 3TB of egress in that billing month. The allowance does not roll over, so a quiet month does not create a bank of free transfer for a launch campaign later (Backblaze, 2023; that post still shows the superseded $6/TB rate). B2 also documents unlimited free egress through several partner CDNs and compute services, but that benefit depends on using an eligible partner path rather than sending bytes directly to any destination.

Use B2 when your traffic fits a measurable allowance. It is easier to budget than a policy with no published overage rate, but you still need alerts and a clear answer to whether the CDN is an approved transfer partner.

Cloudflare R2: no direct egress charge, with operation billing

Cloudflare R2 charges $0.015 per GB-month for Standard storage, $4.50 per million Class A operations, and $0.36 per million Class B operations. Egress to the internet is free for every storage class; Cloudflare’s footnote says the no-egress rule applies when data leaves R2 directly through the Workers API, S3 API, or an r2.dev domain (Cloudflare R2 pricing, 2026).

R2 therefore removes the main egress calculation, but not every usage calculation. A video site can generate large numbers of GET requests, and Cloudflare notes that connecting other metered services to an R2 bucket can introduce separate charges. Infrequent Access also adds a $0.01/GB retrieval fee and a 30-day minimum storage duration, so Standard is the cleaner comparison for frequently watched video.

Use R2 when delivery volume is hard to predict or far larger than storage. Keep the delivery path inside the pricing assumptions, then estimate Class B reads and any Workers, CDN, or access-control services that sit between the bucket and the viewer.

Amazon S3: flexible infrastructure with metered transfer

Amazon S3 Standard combines storage, request, data-transfer, and optional management charges. AWS gives the first 100GB of data transfer out to the internet each month at no charge, but that allowance is aggregated across all AWS services and regions (except China and GovCloud), so other AWS usage leaves S3 less than 100GB; after that, public transfer is priced by region and usage tier (Amazon S3, 2026).

For a reference point, AWS’s S3 pricing examples use $0.09/GB for data transfer out to the internet from an Ireland bucket, while the applicable rate can differ by region and aggregate usage. S3 also charges for requests, some retrievals, cross-region replication, and transfer acceleration. That flexibility is valuable when the rest of your application already runs on AWS, but it makes a one-number “S3 egress price” misleading.

Use S3 when its surrounding AWS ecosystem reduces your operational work. If you need a global video delivery service, add CloudFront or another CDN to the model; an S3 bucket alone is object storage, not a playback experience. S3 does not charge for data transferred out to CloudFront, so a CloudFront-fronted bucket pays CloudFront’s rates, not the S3 internet rate.

What the bucket price leaves out

The storage and egress table answers only one part of the buyer’s question. A website owner is not paying to move arbitrary files; they are paying to make a video start quickly, play across devices, and stay under their control.

The bucket is one stop on the path from upload to playback; every other stage has its own bill.

Encoding and adaptive bitrate packaging

A source upload may need multiple renditions for different screens and connection speeds. You need a transcoding job, a queue or event trigger, a place to store the outputs, and a manifest format such as HLS or DASH. A 4K source can produce several delivery files, so count the encoded outputs in storage rather than modeling only the original upload.

For an end-to-end reference architecture, AWS’s Video on Demand on AWS Foundation describes the services required around S3 for ingest, processing, and delivery (last updated November 2024). That architecture is useful precisely because it shows how quickly “cheap storage” becomes a collection of services.

CDN delivery and cache behavior

A CDN can reduce repeated origin reads by serving popular segments from edge locations. It can also add its own transfer, request, cache-invalidation, and origin-fetch charges. The result depends on cache hit rate: two sites with the same stored library can have different origin egress because one serves a small set of popular videos while the other sends long-tail content once per viewer.

If you are comparing dedicated delivery services rather than assembling one, our guide to video CDN providers covers the difference between a CDN and a complete video-hosting workflow. The distinction matters here: an object-storage provider can be the origin without being the player or the CDN.

Player, access control, and site integration

Signed URLs, token expiry, referrer checks, captions, playback analytics, and a responsive player all require configuration or another product. Private video also needs a permission model that matches your membership, course, or customer account system. A public bucket URL is not the same thing as controlled video hosting.

For the access-control side, see our guide to private video hosting. For WordPress sites, the WordPress video-hosting comparison is a better starting point than choosing a bucket by storage price alone.

🚀 Want the delivery stack included? If your goal is to publish videos on a business website rather than operate object storage, a managed host can remove the encoding, CDN, player, and bandwidth-metering work from this estimate. Compare SmartVideo plans for predictable video hosting →

Two traffic scenarios to make the difference visible

Here is a simplified comparison using 1TB of average Standard storage and two delivery patterns. The figures exclude requests, encoding, CDN fees, taxes, and the cost of building the player, and treat 1TB as 1024GB. S3 transfer is shown at the $0.09/GB reference rate used in AWS examples; check the rate for your bucket’s region before making a decision.

A launch month, not an average month, is the traffic pattern that decides which egress model fits.

The first scenario makes all four options look plausible. The second exposes the difference between a ratio policy, a defined allowance, a no-egress model, and a metered transfer service. It also shows why Wasabi should not be evaluated as “unlimited free egress” for a public video site without checking the policy.

Which provider fits your video library?

Choose Wasabi for storage-led libraries

Wasabi fits a library that stores substantial source or finished media and sends a controlled amount of data out each month. Build a dashboard around active storage and monthly downloads, then make the ratio part of your service design. If the library will become a high-traffic public destination, ask Wasabi for a written answer about the planned workload before migration.

Choose Backblaze B2 for a measurable traffic allowance

B2 fits teams that want low storage pricing, S3-compatible APIs, and a defined 3× egress allowance. It is also worth evaluating when your chosen CDN or compute provider is one of Backblaze’s listed partners. Keep a separate estimate for direct-to-viewer traffic and partner-routed traffic because their egress treatment differs.

Choose R2 when traffic can dwarf storage

R2 fits a service where viewers may repeatedly watch a small library or where monthly delivery is difficult to forecast. The trade-off moves from bandwidth accounting to request accounting and Cloudflare architecture. Standard storage is the straightforward starting point for active video; test Infrequent Access only when the retrieval fee and 30-day minimum fit the access pattern.

Choose S3 when AWS integration is the deciding factor

S3 fits a team already using AWS identity, eventing, processing, logging, and delivery services. The platform gives you many storage classes and integrations, but you must model the complete bill. If you only need a player-ready business-video workflow, compare the assembled AWS cost and maintenance burden with a managed video host.

How to estimate your real video hosting cost

Price every row between upload and playback before comparing storage rates.

1. Measure delivered bytes, not video duration

Start with actual delivery data from your player or CDN: total bytes, unique viewers, repeat plays, cache hits, and the percentage of traffic served at each rendition. A one-hour video can produce very different transfer totals depending on bitrate, completion rate, autoplay behavior, and the number of renditions generated.

Separate origin egress from viewer delivery. If a CDN serves 95% of requests from cache, the object-storage bill may track only the remaining origin fetches; if every viewer reaches the origin, the storage provider sees a much larger transfer volume. Use the same period for storage averages and egress so Wasabi and B2 allowances are calculated against comparable numbers.

2. Price the full delivery path

List each component between upload and playback: transcoding, storage, CDN transfer, CDN requests, player, token service, analytics, captions, and monitoring. Add a separate row for backup copies and staging assets. This prevents a low origin-storage price from hiding the cost of a second bucket, a transcoding queue, or a delivery service.

3. Test the high-traffic month

Use a launch, course release, or campaign month rather than an average month as your stress case. A 1TB library that gets 4TB of delivery in one month behaves differently from a 4TB library that gets 1TB of delivery, even if both scenarios move the same amount of data across a longer period.

Set provider alerts before the first public release. Backblaze documents daily data caps and alerts for storage, downloads, and transaction usage; AWS Budgets and Cloudflare billing controls serve a similar planning purpose in their ecosystems (Backblaze data caps, 2026). A cost alert cannot undo an egress charge, but it can stop a broken player or open bucket from becoming a month-end surprise.

4. Compare operating work with the monthly bill

Finally, put a value on the work required to maintain encoding jobs, manifests, signed URLs, player updates, analytics, and support. In our cost models, this is the line that is easiest to omit because it does not appear on a cloud pricing page. When we model these stacks for a business site, the bucket is often the easy part; the publishing and delivery handoff is what determines the operating burden. If a managed host replaces those tasks while giving you the branding and access controls your site needs, its subscription may be cheaper than the bucket bill suggests.

For a broader comparison of managed platforms, see video hosting platforms for business and video hosting for online courses. Those comparisons answer a different question from this article: not “what does object storage cost?” but “what do I need to operate video on a website?”

If the question is specifically delivery performance, our explainer on what a video CDN does covers the edge layer that sits between storage and playback. If the question is how “free” hosting limits affect a business site, see free video hosting options for the product-side trade-offs.

Conclusion: egress is only one video-hosting decision

Wasabi, Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, and Amazon S3 can all store video, but their egress models reward different traffic patterns. Wasabi suits storage-led use cases within its policy, B2 gives you a 3× allowance and a stated overage rate, R2 removes direct egress charges while retaining operation billing, and S3 trades a larger infrastructure ecosystem for metered transfer.

If you want a website-ready player, CDN delivery, adaptive playback, and predictable bandwidth without assembling those services yourself, compare the total workflow rather than the bucket price. See SmartVideo pricing and start a free trial to evaluate a managed video-hosting path against your object-storage estimate.

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