Cloudflare R2 Alternative

Cloudflare R2's headline is real: S3-compatible object storage with no egress fees. But R2 is a storage primitive, not a finished delivery product. Out of the box an R2 bucket is private; to serve files publicly you either connect a custom domain through Cloudflare's dashboard or, more often, put a Worker in front to handle auth, signed access, content negotiation, or anything beyond a raw GET.

R2's own caching guidance is to layer Cloudflare's CDN and cache rules on top — which is straightforward if you already live in the Cloudflare ecosystem, and a meaningful amount of glue if you don't. There is also no built-in file-management UI: you operate it through the S3 API, Wrangler, or the bucket browser, not a dashboard your team can organize. files.link is the opposite trade.

CDN delivery is part of the product, not a Worker you write — a public file is returned with a permanent edge-served URL the moment you confirm the upload. There is a real dashboard with projects and folders so non-engineers can find and organize assets, and shareable folder links for handing work to outside collaborators. The API is three plain HTTP calls (POST /v1/files/{folderId} for a presigned URL, PUT the bytes, POST /v1/files/confirm-upload) with your raw API key in the Authorization header — no Wrangler, no Worker, no S3 SDK.

Migrating from R2 is the same mechanical loop as any S3-style store: list with the S3 API, download, re-upload through the three calls, and repoint your records at the new permanent URLs. Where R2 keeps the edge is if you are already all-in on Cloudflare — Workers, KV, D1, Pages — and want storage that snaps into that mesh with native bindings, or if you need strict S3-protocol compatibility. files.link is not S3-compatible and doesn't pretend to be; it wins when you want managed storage plus delivery plus a UI without assembling them yourself.

Both avoid egress fees, so the real comparison isn't bandwidth cost — it's how much wiring you want to do before a file is publicly fast. Prepaid credits keep the bill predictable instead of metering storage and Class A/B operations separately.