# Cloudflare R2

> Zero egress fees. The answer for public files served at volume. Keep data lakes in S3.

- Verdict: Use when it fits (Proposed: research-backed, not yet confirmed by Nic)
- Vendor: Cloudflare
- Layer: [Storage and delivery](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/layers/storage.md). Job: Public, high-egress storage
- Last reviewed: 18 October 2026, by Nicolas Dao (Cloudless Labs, Sydney)
- Web page: https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/cloudflare-r2/. The whole stack in one file: https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/brief.md

The egress maths is brutal for S3. CloudFront's new flat-rate plans close a lot of the gap, but R2 is still about five times cheaper for public files.

## Use it when

- Media, downloads and assets served publicly at volume.

## Don't use it when

- Data processed inside AWS: reading from private subnets through NAT costs far more than S3.
- You need versioning, replication, Object Lock, archive classes or bucket policies.
- Australian data residency (no Australian jurisdiction).

## Pricing

$0.015/GB-month, writes $4.50 per million, reads $0.36 per million, internet egress $0. Serving 20 TB a month from 2 TB stored: R2 ≈ $44 vs S3 + CloudFront ≈ $2,158 (or ≈ $228 on CloudFront's Business flat-rate plan).

## Provisioning

Official Pulumi package · Official Terraform provider

## Instead, consider

- [Amazon S3](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/aws-s3/index.md): Data lakes and anything processed in AWS.

## Where it fits

- [A website, SPA or PWA](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/use-cases/website.md): pick 2. Heavy media and downloads with zero egress fees.

## Sources

- [R2 pricing](https://developers.cloudflare.com/r2/pricing/)

## Related

- [Storage and delivery](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/layers/storage.md): every tool in this layer, with its verdict
- [The whole stack in one file](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/brief.md): every use case and tool, for questions that span many
- [Map of every Markdown file on cloudlesslabs.com, with what each one answers](https://ask.cloudlesslabs.com)