AWS CloudFront cost explained: egress tiers, requests, and free origins
CloudFront has no fixed fee — you pay for data transfer out to viewers (tiered by region and volume) and per-request charges. Transfer from AWS origins to CloudFront is free, which is why a CDN often lowers your total bill. Here is the breakdown.
Quick answer
CloudFront has no fixed monthly fee. You pay for data transfer out to viewers, tiered by region and volume (roughly $0.085 per GB for the first 10 TB in the US and Europe), plus about $0.01 per 10,000 HTTPS requests. Transfer from AWS origins to CloudFront is free, so serving through the CDN is often cheaper than serving directly from S3 or an ALB.
CloudFront pricing has no subscription and no minimum. The bill is two things: bytes delivered to viewers and requests served. The detail that changes architecture decisions is that pulling from your AWS origin into CloudFront is free, so the CDN frequently reduces total cost rather than adding to it.
Data transfer out is the main line
You pay for bytes delivered from CloudFront edge locations to viewers, priced in tiers that fall as volume rises and vary by geography. In the US and Europe the first tier is roughly $0.085 per gigabyte; higher-cost regions like South America and India are more. The free tier includes 1 TB of data transfer out per month, which covers many small sites entirely.
Requests
| Dimension | Rate (approximate, US/EU) |
|---|---|
| Data transfer out, first 10 TB | ~$0.085 / GB |
| HTTPS requests | ~$0.01 / 10,000 |
| Origin to CloudFront transfer | Free (AWS origins) |
| Free tier | 1 TB out + 10M requests / month |
Why a CDN can lower your bill
Serving a file directly from S3 to the internet costs S3 egress. Serving it through CloudFront costs CloudFront egress instead, and the S3-to- CloudFront hop is free, so you are not paying twice. Because CloudFront egress is tiered and often cheaper at volume than direct S3 or ALB egress, and because caching means your origin serves far fewer bytes, the CDN usually reduces total transfer cost. This is the same logic as using caching to reduce cloud cost.
Where CloudFront cost creeps
A low cache-hit ratio sends more requests to your origin, adding origin compute and request cost even though CloudFront transfer looks fine. Long tail-latency assets, uncacheable responses, and short TTLs all hurt hit ratio. Optional features, CloudFront Functions, Lambda@Edge, real-time logs, and Origin Shield, each add their own charge, so enable them deliberately. For the broader networking picture, see AWS data transfer costs.
FAQ
Does CloudFront have a fixed monthly fee?
No. CloudFront has no subscription or minimum. You pay only for data transfer out to viewers and per-request charges, with a free tier of 1 TB of transfer and 10 million requests per month.
How much does CloudFront data transfer cost?
It is tiered by region and volume, falling as you serve more. In the US and Europe the first tier is roughly $0.085 per gigabyte; regions like South America and India cost more. The first 1 TB per month is free.
Is transfer from S3 to CloudFront free?
Yes. Data transfer from AWS origins, including S3 and ALB, into CloudFront is free. You pay CloudFront egress to viewers instead of origin egress, which is why serving through the CDN often lowers total transfer cost.
Why is CloudFront often cheaper than serving from S3 directly?
Because the S3-to-CloudFront hop is free, CloudFront egress is tiered and cheaper at volume, and caching means the origin serves far fewer bytes. You avoid paying S3 egress on cached content and get lower per-gigabyte rates.
What makes a CloudFront bill creep up?
A low cache-hit ratio (short TTLs, uncacheable responses) sends more traffic to the origin, and optional features like Lambda@Edge, CloudFront Functions, real-time logs, and Origin Shield each add charges. Improve hit ratio and enable extras deliberately.
Does C3X estimate CloudFront cost?
C3X prices aws_cloudfront_distribution from your Terraform. Because transfer and requests depend on traffic and cache-hit ratio, you provide those as usage assumptions for a complete estimate; the fixed configuration is priced from the resource.
What to do next
Model your CDN cost before you ship. C3X prices CloudFront and the rest of your stack from Terraform against a live catalog. Try the quickstart.
Share this post
Try C3X on your own Terraform
Free and open source. No API key required. One command to install, one command to estimate.