The same 10 terabytes of outbound data costs $913 on AWS, $882 on Azure, $1,137 on Google Cloud, and $0 on a zero-egress provider. Same data. Same month. A gap that exists entirely because of where you happen to store it.
The same 10 terabytes of outbound data costs $913 on AWS, $882 on Azure, $1,137 on Google Cloud, and $0 on a zero-egress provider. Same data. Same month. A gap that exists entirely because of where you happen to store it.
Egress fees are the charge cloud providers bill when data leaves their network, whether it's headed to the internet, to another region, or to a competitor. Every major cloud lets you upload data for free and charges you to get it back out. That asymmetry is not a technical necessity, it's a business decision, and in 2026 it is finally facing real regulatory pressure. This guide covers exactly what egress fees are, what the big three actually charge, why the fees exist, what's about to change, and how to cut your bill starting today.
The mechanism is consistent across every major provider. Ingress, data moving into the cloud, is free everywhere. Egress, data moving out, is billed per gigabyte, and the rate depends on where the data is going: traffic between availability zones in the same region costs the least, traffic between regions costs more, and traffic leaving the cloud entirely to the public internet or another provider costs the most.
Rates are tiered, not flat. On AWS, for example, the first 100 GB each month is typically free, the next 10 TB is billed at the standard internet rate, and the rate steps down further at higher volumes. That tiering means large enterprises often pay a lower effective rate per gigabyte than smaller teams, which is part of why volume negotiation works for enterprise contracts but rarely for smaller accounts.
Based on published 2026 pricing, standard internet egress rates for the entry pricing tier look like this:
| Provider | Standard Internet Egress Rate | Free Tier |
|---|---|---|
| AWS S3 | $0.09/GB (first 10 TB) | 100 GB/month |
| Azure Blob Storage | $0.087/GB (first 10 TB) | 100 GB/month |
| Google Cloud Storage | $0.12/GB Premium Tier (first 1 TB) | 100 GB/month |
| Cloudflare R2 | $0.00/GB | Unlimited |
| Backblaze B2 | $0.00/GB | Unlimited via partner CDNs |
| Wasabi | $0.00/GB | Unlimited (flat-rate model) |
AWS charges $0.09/GB for the first 10 TB of standard internet egress each month. Azure charges $0.087/GB for the equivalent tier. Google Cloud charges $0.12/GB on its Premium network tier for the first terabyte, though its Standard tier undercuts both AWS and Azure for latency-tolerant workloads. Zero-egress providers, including Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, and Wasabi, charge nothing for standard egress, either as a blanket policy or through partner network arrangements like the Cloudflare Bandwidth Alliance.
The headline per-gigabyte rate is only part of the real cost. Several charges stack on top of standard egress and rarely show up until the invoice arrives.
On AWS, every byte routed through a NAT Gateway is billed an additional processing fee on top of standard egress, regardless of destination. Azure and Google Cloud apply similar charges through their own NAT services. A team pushing meaningful volume through a NAT Gateway can see this add a third or more to their effective egress rate.
Moving data between availability zones in the same region typically costs a small per-gigabyte fee on every major provider. Moving between regions costs more. Backup jobs and disaster recovery replication that run nightly can rack up meaningful inter-region charges without ever touching the public internet.
Object storage APIs bill separately for read and list operations, which compounds with egress on workloads that make frequent small requests rather than fewer large transfers.
The asymmetry between storage and egress pricing is the clearest signal of intent. Azure charges roughly $0.018/GB per month to store data and $0.087/GB to move it out, a gap of roughly 4.8 times. Google Cloud's gap is similar. Storage pricing is what attracts a customer. Egress pricing is what keeps them.
Cloud providers frame egress fees as network cost recovery, and there is a real cost to operating global network infrastructure. But the pricing does not track cost in any straightforward way. Cloudflare has documented that hyperscaler egress fees can represent a markup of thousands of percent over wholesale internet transit costs, a gap that is difficult to explain as pure infrastructure expense rather than a deliberate deterrent against leaving the platform.
The practical effect is lock-in. A company that lands a petabyte of data on a hyperscaler faces a real, quantifiable cost every time it considers a different provider, a hybrid architecture, or a full exit. That cost does not need to be prohibitive in isolation. It only needs to be large enough to tip a borderline decision toward staying put, and at enterprise data volumes, it usually is. This connects directly to the broader pattern covered in what your cloud provider isn't telling you about hidden billing costs.
Egress fees are no longer just an industry complaint, they are now the subject of binding regulation. The EU Data Act, which entered into force in January 2024 and has applied since September 2025, requires cloud providers to make customer data portable and removes the contractual and technical barriers that keep customers locked in.
The most consequential provision for cloud buyers: from January 12, 2027, providers serving EU customers will be prohibited from charging any switching fees at all, including data egress charges incurred during a provider switch. Until that date, switching charges are permitted only if they do not exceed the direct cost of facilitating the transition, must be transparent, and must be agreed in advance. AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud have already partially moved in this direction, having waived egress fees for full account exits since 2024, though ongoing multi-cloud egress, where data continues to flow between providers rather than a one-time exit, remains outside the scope of the ban.
For any organization operating in or serving the EU, this is a hard compliance deadline, not a future consideration. Contracts signed or auto-renewed without accounting for the ban risk locking in outdated fee structures right through the deadline. For organizations outside the EU, the ban still matters strategically: it sets a global precedent that regulators consider today's egress pricing model indefensible, and it gives every buyer, regardless of jurisdiction, a stronger negotiating position when a provider knows the practice is being outlawed elsewhere.
A team transferring 10 TB of data out to the internet in a single month sees very different bills depending on where that data lives:
| Provider | Monthly Egress Volume | Monthly Bill |
|---|---|---|
| AWS | 10 TB | ~$913 |
| Azure | 10 TB | ~$882 |
| Google Cloud (Premium Tier) | 10 TB | ~$1,137 |
| Cloudflare R2 / Backblaze B2 / Wasabi | 10 TB | $0 |
At this volume the spread between the cheapest and most expensive hyperscaler option is already over $250 a month. Scale that to 100 TB or run it every month for a year, and the difference between a zero-egress architecture and a standard hyperscaler setup becomes a meaningful budget line, not a rounding error.
Serving cached content through a content delivery network dramatically reduces the volume of traffic billed at origin egress rates. Cloudflare's Bandwidth Alliance specifically waives egress fees for traffic moving between partner storage providers and Cloudflare's network, which can eliminate egress costs entirely for compatible architectures.
For data you know will be read from multiple locations, shared externally, or moved between compute providers regularly, positioning it on Backblaze B2, Wasabi, or Cloudflare R2 from the start avoids the egress cost altogether rather than trying to minimize it after the fact.
Batch and compress data before transferring it between regions rather than moving it continuously. Nightly backup jobs and replication tasks are common, quiet sources of inter-region charges that accumulate without anyone noticing until the monthly bill arrives.
Review whether traffic that doesn't need to route through a NAT Gateway is doing so anyway, and whether workloads making frequent small API requests could be redesigned around fewer, larger transfers.
Use the run-up to January 2027 as leverage in your own contract renegotiations. A provider facing a regulatory deadline to eliminate these charges in one market has less room to defend them everywhere else.
Ingress is the invitation. Egress is the toll booth. For the first time, regulators are telling providers to take the booth down.
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