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What Are Egress Fees?

Egress fees are charges that cloud providers impose when data leaves their network. Traditional services like AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage, and Azure charge you every time someone views or downloads your files.

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Traditional Storage Costs

ProviderStorage CostEgress Cost
AWS S3$0.023/GB$0.09/GB (first 10TB)
Google Cloud$0.020/GB$0.12/GB (first 1TB)
Azure Blob$0.018/GB$0.087/GB (first 10TB)
ImperialSubscription based$0.00 ✨
With traditional providers, a single viral image (1GB of traffic) could cost $90-120 in egress fees alone!

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How Imperial Eliminates Egress Fees

Imperial uses Cloudflare R2 as our storage backend, which was specifically designed to eliminate egress fees and compete with traditional cloud storage providers.

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The Cloudflare R2 Advantage

1

Zero Egress Charges

Cloudflare R2 doesn’t charge for data transfer out. You only pay for storage and operations.
2

Global CDN Included

Your files are automatically distributed across Cloudflare’s global network at no extra cost.
3

S3-Compatible API

R2 is compatible with Amazon S3’s API, ensuring reliability and performance.

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Real-World Cost Comparison

Let’s say you host 100 images (500MB total) that get 1TB of traffic per month:
Monthly Cost:
  • Storage: 0.5GB × 0.023=0.023 = 0.01
  • Egress: 1TB × 90=∗∗90 = **90.00**
  • Total: $90.01/month 💸

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What This Means For You

Predictable Costs

Pay a fixed monthly fee based on storage, not unpredictable traffic costs.

Scale Freely

Your content can go viral without worrying about massive bandwidth bills.

Better Performance

Cloudflare’s global network ensures fast delivery worldwide.

Sleep Better

No surprise bills at the end of the month from unexpected traffic spikes.

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Technical Details

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How R2 Works

Cloudflare R2 leverages their existing CDN infrastructure to provide zero-egress storage:
  1. Storage Layer: Your files are stored in R2’s distributed object storage
  2. Cache Layer: Popular files are cached at Cloudflare edge locations worldwide
  3. Delivery: Requests are served from the nearest edge location
  4. No Egress Charges: Cloudflare doesn’t charge for bandwidth because it’s already part of their CDN network

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Network Architecture

User Request
    ↓
Cloudflare Edge (250+ locations)
    ↓
Cache Hit? → Instant delivery
    ↓
Cache Miss? → Fetch from R2 → Cache → Deliver
    ↓
All bandwidth: $0.00

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Cloudflare’s Business Model

You might wonder: “How does Cloudflare afford this?”
Cloudflare makes money from their core CDN and security services. R2 is positioned as a competitive offering to win customers from AWS/Google/Azure. By eliminating egress fees, they make it easy for businesses to switch and stay within their ecosystem.

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Operations Pricing

While egress is free, Imperial does count operations (uploads, downloads, API calls) as part of your subscription:
TierMonthly OperationsCost per 1M extra
Starter100,000$0.50
Pro1,000,000$0.40
Business5,000,000$0.30
Operations are significantly cheaper than traditional egress fees. Even if you exceed your limit, you’re still paying pennies instead of dollars per GB.

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Migration Benefits

If you’re currently using traditional storage:
1

Calculate Current Egress Costs

Check your AWS/GCP/Azure bills for data transfer charges
2

Compare with Imperial

Most users save 90-95% on total storage costs
3

Easy Migration

Use our API to programmatically upload your existing files
4

Update URLs

Simply update your CDN URLs to point to Imperial

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FAQ

No catch! Cloudflare R2 genuinely doesn’t charge for egress. Imperial passes this benefit directly to you.
Operations (Class A: uploads/deletes, Class B: views) count toward your monthly limit, but are priced fairly and predictably.
Yes! Whether you serve 1GB or 1PB of bandwidth per month, you pay the same subscription price.
Cloudflare’s infrastructure makes it cost-effective for them, and we pass the savings to you.

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Get Started

Ready to eliminate egress fees from your infrastructure?

Start Using Imperial

Create your account and start uploading in under 5 minutes