PricingNest

Bandwidth Pricing Guide (Egress Cost Recovery)

How to price bandwidth/egress features using blended costs, tiers, and gross margin targets.

Quick checklist

  • Use blended egress cost per GB across regions and CDNs.
  • Separate bandwidth from storage and request costs.
  • Model at least two scenarios (p50 vs p90 traffic).
  • Use a base fee if overhead is meaningful.
  • Publish usage examples to prevent bill shock.

Step-by-step

  1. Estimate your blended egress cost per GB (post-discount, weighted by region).
  2. Add fixed overhead you need to recover (support, monitoring, baseline infra).
  3. Pick a target gross margin range.
  4. Choose tiers and included usage based on typical and heavy customers.
  5. Validate outputs with CSV exports and shareable links.

Example scenarios

  • Low-traffic SaaS: small base fee + per-GB price keeps small customers profitable.
  • Media-heavy product: tiered per-GB pricing with declining rates for high volume.
  • Global traffic: adjust blended cost per GB to account for regional mix.

Common mistakes

  • Using a single region egress price when traffic is global.
  • Pricing bandwidth below cost to simplify the pricing page.
  • Ignoring request or origin-fetch costs when they are material.

Tools to use