About this Cloud Cost Est.
Cloud storage is cheap to start but can get expensive quickly due to hidden fees like data egress. This calculator uses checked-in provider pricing presets or your own rates to model a planning bill.
Who this calculator is for
- Developers and DevOps teams estimating storage and bandwidth spend before launch.
- Founders and operators budgeting object storage for backups, static assets, or user uploads.
- Anyone comparing whether cloud egress or retained data is driving the bill.
When to use it
- Use it to estimate the monthly cost of hosting files in S3, Azure Blob, or similar services.
- Use it when comparing a low-storage, high-download workload against a high-storage archive workload.
- Use it before pricing a product that includes media hosting or downloads.
How to use this calculator
- Enter the Storage Amount you plan to keep in the cloud (data at rest).
- Enter the Monthly Egress (amount of data downloaded or transferred out to the internet).
- Choose a provider pricing preset or select custom and adjust the Price per GB fields.
- View the Total Monthly Cost breakdown.
Key assumptions
- Storage is entered in terabytes and converted to gigabytes using 1024 GB per TB in this estimate.
- Preset pricing is treated as a flat per-GB planning rate even though providers use tiered pricing by region, SKU, operation, and volume.
- Preset data is checked into the repo and should be refreshed when provider pricing changes.
- Negative storage, transfer, or rate values are invalid.
Dataset sources
- Effective date
- 2026-05-05
- Last reviewed
- 2026-05-05
Use these as planning presets only. Verify current SKU, region, and account pricing before committing spend.
Public provider list-price references; contract pricing, taxes, credits, free tiers, and regional exceptions are excluded.
Accuracy and testing
Review formula sources, default test cases, assumptions, unit handling, rounding rules, and changelog for this calculator.
How this calculator works
Inputs explained
Storage Amount
The volume of data stored on the servers. Pricing is usually tiered (cheaper for larger volumes), but this calculator uses a flat rate for simplicity.
Monthly Egress
Data transfer out of the cloud region to the internet. Ingress (uploading) is usually free.
Provider pricing preset
A source-dated list-price snapshot for common object storage scenarios. Choose custom for your contract or account rate.
Understanding your results
Example scenarios
Small Backup
1 TB Storage ($23.55). 10 GB Egress ($0.90). Total: ~$24.45/mo.
Video Hosting
100 GB Storage ($2.30). 2 TB Egress ($180). Total: ~$182.30/mo. (Bandwidth dominates).
Key Features
- Storage vs Transfer Split
- Customizable Rates
- TB/GB Support
Tips & Best Practices
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) like CloudFront to lower egress costs.
- Consider 'Cool' or 'Archive' storage tiers (like Glacier) for data you rarely access to save money.
- Egress pricing is often tiered (the first 100GB might be free, then $0.09/GB).
Glossary of Terms
- Egress
- Data leaving the cloud network (outbound traffic). Usually billable.
- Ingress
- Data entering the cloud network (inbound traffic). Usually free.
- Object Storage
- A storage architecture that manages data as objects (files with metadata), distinct from block or file storage.