Video CDN Bandwidth Calculator

The money question with CDN video hosting is simple and rarely answered up front: what will storage plus bandwidth actually cost me? This video bandwidth calculator answers it before signup. You enter three things — the average size of a delivered video file, how many times it is watched or downloaded each month, and how much video you keep in storage — and it returns estimated monthly CDN bandwidth, storage at rest, and a prepaid-credit total.

The estimate is deterministic (the same inputs always produce the same number), needs no login, and uses the same per-GB storage and delivery rates the rest of the site quotes.

The math is deliberately transparent. Bandwidth is just file size times views: a 200 MB clip watched 5,000 times a month moves about 1,000 GB (1 TB) from the edge, billed per gigabyte delivered. Storage is billed per gigabyte per month for the library you keep at rest. There is no per-minute-encoded or per-minute-watched meter — the exact charge that makes video expensive on all-in-one platforms — so a clip that suddenly gets popular costs you bandwidth, not a metered streaming surcharge.

That difference is the whole point of running a video CDN pricing calculation: predictable delivery cost, not a bill that scales with a per-minute meter.

Be clear about the scope, because honest comparison is the point. files.link delivers pre-encoded files (MP4, WebM) from a global CDN with HTTP range requests for seek-able playback — it is direct file delivery and storage, not a managed video platform. It does not transcode your uploads, generate adaptive-bitrate HLS/DASH renditions, ship a bundled player, or do DRM, analytics, or live streaming.

All-in-one platforms like Mux, Cloudflare Stream, and Bunny Stream are the right choice when you need managed encoding, a player, and per-title packaging bundled together. files.link is the right choice when you already have encoded files and want cheap, predictable storage and bandwidth for direct video CDN delivery and HTML5 video streaming — you bring the renditions, we serve the bytes fast from the edge.

Use the estimate to size a budget, then start: upload your files through the REST API (POST /v1/files/{folderId} → PUT the bytes to the presigned URL → POST /v1/files/confirm-upload), mark the folder public, and drop the CDN URL into a <video> tag. Billing is prepaid credits against real gigabytes stored and delivered, with no separate egress line and no monthly minimum.