This calculator helps you estimate monthly and annual network-infrastructure spend for an internet-facing website or application based on your outbound bandwidth, peak request rate, geographic footprint, and the protection/performance services you enable (CDN, DDoS protection, load balancing, WAF, and monitoring). The result is a budgeting model: it’s designed to help you compare scenarios (e.g., “single-region vs multi-region”, “with CDN vs without”) and understand which levers usually drive the bill.
Most providers charge primarily for data egress (traffic leaving their network to the public internet). Bandwidth-heavy products (video, downloads, large images) can see network costs become a dominant line item.
Peak request rate is a proxy for how much edge/ingress capacity you need. It tends to influence load balancer sizing, WAF inspection volume, and operational overhead. Even if your total bandwidth is modest, a very high RPS API can require more robust front-door infrastructure.
Serving multiple regions usually increases cost because you pay for additional endpoints, redundancy, health checks, and sometimes inter-region replication/transfer. It also reduces latency and can improve availability.
These services trade money for performance, availability, and risk reduction. Many teams choose a minimal set early on, then expand coverage as the business grows or becomes a more attractive target.
A simplified way to think about monthly network cost is:
At a high level, egress cost can be modeled as:
Egress Cost = Outbound_GB × price_per_GB
Typical retail egress rates vary by provider, region, and commit level. The planner uses representative ranges (often cited around $0.085–$0.15/GB for many public cloud internet egress tiers) as an estimation baseline.
A CDN can reduce origin egress by caching content at the edge. A simplified approach is:
Origin Egress After CDN = Outbound_GB × (1 − cache_hit_rate)
Then you may pay separate CDN egress rates (often lower than origin) plus request/logging fees depending on the provider.
Peak RPS tends to map to:
This calculator treats peak traffic as a sizing proxy rather than a precise request-metering model.
If your estimate feels “too high” or “too low,” the first things to validate are (a) the portion of traffic that is truly outbound to the internet, (b) realistic cache hit rate for your content mix, and (c) whether you will be paying for logs (WAF/CDN access logs can add up).
Scenario: E-commerce application serving 5 regions, ~50 TB/month outbound (50,000 GB), ~5,000 peak RPS, with CDN, advanced DDoS protection, load balancing, WAF, and monitoring.
50,000 GB × $0.10/GB = $5,000/month50,000 × (1 − 0.70) = 15,000 GB15,000 × $0.10 = $1,500/month50,000 × $0.05 = $2,500/month (provider-dependent)~$3,000, WAF ~$200, multi-region LB ~$300, monitoring ~$300Interpretation: Even if the CDN reduces origin egress, you still pay for delivery through the CDN; the real win is often (a) improved performance and (b) lower origin load, plus sometimes lower blended egress depending on provider/plan.
| Application type | Main cost driver | Usually worth prioritizing | Common surprises |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blog / static site | CDN minimums, basic egress | CDN + basic WAF | Logging/analytics retention costs |
| SaaS app | WAF, LB, monitoring | WAF rules + observability | High peak RPS inflating edge costs |
| E-commerce | Security + availability | DDoS + WAF + multi-region readiness | Bot traffic and checkout abuse raising WAF/DDoS usage |
| Video / media | Bandwidth (delivery) | CDN strategy and caching/origin shield | Origin fetch + miss traffic during launches |
| API / data service | Peak RPS and protection | Rate limiting + WAF + monitoring | Many small responses → high request-based charges |
Calculate monthly costs for CDN, DDoS protection, load balancing, and bandwidth management