CDN-Based Streaming
CDN-based streaming pairs origin storage/encoding with edge caching; six vendors anchor 2026 pricing comparisons. Cloudflare Stream bills per video-minute, not GB: $5 per 1,000 minutes stored, $1 per 1,000 minutes delivered, zero separate egress charge. Bunny Stream undercuts on raw bandwidth — $0.01/GB storage, delivery from $0.005-0.01/GB, $1/mo minimum, transcoding included free. Mux charges $0.0024/min storage plus $0.0008/min delivery after 100K free minutes/month; encoding is free at Basic quality but $0.025/min (Plus) to $0.0384/min (Premium) at 720p, scaling up to 4x for 4K. AWS CloudFront starts at $0.085/GB (US/EU, first 10TB) after a perpetual 1TB free tier, sliding to $0.02/GB past 5PB. Fastly and Akamai skip public list pricing entirely: Fastly's tiers run $0.08-0.28/GB by region; Akamai negotiates $0.012-0.06/GB contracts with 12-month minimums. Pricing: Per-unit rates as of mid-2026 vary by billing axis: Cloudflare Stream $5/1K min stored + $1/1K min delivered; Bunny Stream $0.01/GB storage + $0.005-0.01/GB delivery ($1/mo min); Mux $0.0024/min storage + $0.0008/min delivery (100K min/mo free) + $0-0.0384/min encoding; AWS CloudFront from $0.085/GB (first 10TB, US/EU); Fastly $0.08-0.28/GB by region; Akamai custom-contract only, $0.012-0.06/GB.
Pick Cloudflare Stream when predictable minute-based billing beats penny-shaving — no egress surprises, no separate bandwidth line item. Skip it for archival-heavy VOD libraries: Bunny Stream's $0.01/GB storage plus sub-cent delivery wins on raw volume. Mux earns its premium when you need per-title QoE analytics baked in, not bolted on — but Premium encoding at $0.0384/min punishes long-form catalogs fast. Akamai and Fastly still own live sports and breaking news at petabyte scale, but neither publishes real numbers; you're negotiating blind, and Akamai locks in a 12-month contract floor. Nobody's fee structure is simple — resolution multipliers and replication regions routinely flip the "cheapest" vendor once traffic patterns shift. Known weakness: Every vendor's advertised per-GB or per-minute rate assumes a traffic pattern that rarely survives contact with real usage — resolution mixes, geo-replication, and regional delivery splits routinely push actual bills well above the sticker price, which is why Akamai and Fastly stopped publishing list rates at all.