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if you're willing to bet that the (inevitable?) shakedown for money once you find the limits of "unlimited egress with no fees" won't be too bad. R2 egress is

if you're willing to bet that the (inevitable?) shakedown for money once you find the limits of "unlimited egress with no fees" won't be too bad. R2 egress is free. There's no shakedown. If you look at https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-r2-object-storage https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-r2-object-storage (the original announcement) we said many times that egress is free. That's sort of R2's whole thing! See also: https://www.cloudflare.com/developer-platform/r2/ https://www.cloudflare.com/developer-platform/r2/ No egress charges Our affordable, consistent pricing helps free up resources across your organization — and you never have to pay egress fees for data accessed from R2.

xmorse 2y ago
It's free until it isn't anymore
- ffsm8 2y ago
  Egress was pretty much always unmetered until AWS came along. And it still is with most providers other then the usual suspects (AWS,azure, Google cloud)
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    Right, Cloudflare is operating in good faith, and while the deal could change (because business is business and sometimes the offering has to change), one should ensure they have other options available for egress from origin. That's not a Cloudflare issue, that's a vendor risk management issue. You should always have alternatives planned if a vendor's specific offering at a price point is a material component of your business costs.
  - theamk 2y ago
    unmetered != unlimited There might not be precise measurement system which bills you by the byte, but many provides monitor (or periodically sample) bandwidth utilization, so and using too much data will catch someone's attention. Example from Hetzer, which claims to provide "unlimited" traffic. https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/180504/hetzner-traffic-use-notice-unlimited-unlimited https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/180504/hetzner-traffic-use... > We will routinely check your traffic use. If we continue to see such a high amount, we may choose to cancel your contract.
    - Aeolun 2y ago
      That’s wonky. If their normal servers include 20TB, why would they consider 250TB on their ‘unlimited’ servers too much. Makes you wonder who they think opts for unlimited servers. If 20TB was enough they clearly wouldn’t.
csande17 2y ago
If Cloudflare really is serious about this for R2, that's going to be difficult for them to communicate in a trustworthy way. Their other products (in particular their flagship DDOS mitigation service) definitely seem to operate on a "free, but if your site is large enough you'll get an email from salespeople threatening to disconnect you unless you pay $$$" basis, using the boilerplate "don't overburden our servers" clause in their ToS.
- normie3000 2y ago
  > don't overburden our servers Does this effectively mean DDoS protection that's free until you actually use it?
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    Speaking as a bystander, a more-charitable option might be: "DDoS protection is free for targets which fit a generic risk-profile and are targeted randomly or only for small-scale spite." P.S.: In contrast, imagine a website dedicated to journalistic content about how {dictator} is a crook and a parasite that has made {country} weak and a joke to the rest of the world. If there's a regular nation-state level DDoS from nodes in {country}, Cloudflare might say: "Hey, uh, your situation is not normal anymore, and it's not exactly your fault be we are a business that needs to recoup costs..."
    - Aeolun 2y ago
      > Hey, uh, your situation is not normal anymore, and it's not exactly your fault be we are a business that needs to recoup costs... In exactly none of the posts about these debacles did CloudFlare say anything of the sort. It’s always comic book villain levels of communication.
  - geodel 2y ago
    Thats basically for everything. Do you think home insurance will pay if you burn down house every year. Or car insurance if you trash it few times a year. I see DDOS protection as kind of insurance for event happening once in a while, if it happens all the time one definitely needs something more than a free service.
Scaevolus 2y ago
I know, but I suspect that would be strongly tested somewhere between PB/mo and EB/mo when building a large streaming platform.
milankragujevic 2y ago
While I honestly and wholeheartedly respect what you are doing with Cloudflare, and also yourself as a person and an engineer, and having been using Cloudflare and advocating for Cloudflare myself since 2011., I must correct you that given the recent scandals with "mandatory optional upgrades" and "waiving the abuse away - if you pay" (see the relatively recent post on robindev substack), nothing Cloudflare promises can be considered free and without shakedown. The reputation of the company has finally been tarnished. I'm truly sorry to have seen it happen.
- ikiris 2y ago
  Almost all of those "scandals" have been a scummy site in some way that was unsurprising to people who have worked abuse in the space.
  - menacingly 2y ago
    I'm not sure selectively enforced shakedowns instill a lot of confidence either
menacingly 2y ago
could something like steam or a linux distro use it to distribute software? seems crazy not to. I think what people are saying is we know there is probably a silent line somewhere, and we have no way of knowing when we cross it. It feels like it has an implied "most of the people reading this can treat it as unlimited in practice"
throw10920 2y ago
Is there a reason you decided to make it "free" in your marketing instead of "free up to some (absurdly) high volume, and then cheap"? The former seems suspicion-inducing (consumers are familiar with many things that are "free*", such as "unlimited" mobile wireless plans), and would make for worse PR if/when you have a corporate customer that pushes the limits of what's profitable for you and you have to throttle/charge/cut them. The latter provides a clearly-visible data limit for "free" that's still high enough that everyone except the tiniest fraction of your customers will never even get close. If anything, I'd expect that "100 PB free a month" would be awe-inspiring and good PR.

xmorse 2y ago

It's free until it isn't anymore

ffsm8 2y ago
Egress was pretty much always unmetered until AWS came along. And it still is with most providers other then the usual suspects (AWS,azure, Google cloud)
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  Right, Cloudflare is operating in good faith, and while the deal could change (because business is business and sometimes the offering has to change), one should ensure they have other options available for egress from origin. That's not a Cloudflare issue, that's a vendor risk management issue. You should always have alternatives planned if a vendor's specific offering at a price point is a material component of your business costs.
- theamk 2y ago
  unmetered != unlimited There might not be precise measurement system which bills you by the byte, but many provides monitor (or periodically sample) bandwidth utilization, so and using too much data will catch someone's attention. Example from Hetzer, which claims to provide "unlimited" traffic. https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/180504/hetzner-traffic-use-notice-unlimited-unlimited https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/180504/hetzner-traffic-use... > We will routinely check your traffic use. If we continue to see such a high amount, we may choose to cancel your contract.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    That’s wonky. If their normal servers include 20TB, why would they consider 250TB on their ‘unlimited’ servers too much. Makes you wonder who they think opts for unlimited servers. If 20TB was enough they clearly wouldn’t.

csande17 2y ago

If Cloudflare really is serious about this for R2, that's going to be difficult for them to communicate in a trustworthy way. Their other products (in particular their flagship DDOS mitigation service) definitely seem to operate on a "free, but if your site is large enough you'll get an email from salespeople threatening to disconnect you unless you pay $$$" basis, using the boilerplate "don't overburden our servers" clause in their ToS.

normie3000 2y ago
> don't overburden our servers Does this effectively mean DDoS protection that's free until you actually use it?
- Terr_ 2y ago
  Speaking as a bystander, a more-charitable option might be: "DDoS protection is free for targets which fit a generic risk-profile and are targeted randomly or only for small-scale spite." P.S.: In contrast, imagine a website dedicated to journalistic content about how {dictator} is a crook and a parasite that has made {country} weak and a joke to the rest of the world. If there's a regular nation-state level DDoS from nodes in {country}, Cloudflare might say: "Hey, uh, your situation is not normal anymore, and it's not exactly your fault be we are a business that needs to recoup costs..."
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    > Hey, uh, your situation is not normal anymore, and it's not exactly your fault be we are a business that needs to recoup costs... In exactly none of the posts about these debacles did CloudFlare say anything of the sort. It’s always comic book villain levels of communication.
- geodel 2y ago
  Thats basically for everything. Do you think home insurance will pay if you burn down house every year. Or car insurance if you trash it few times a year. I see DDOS protection as kind of insurance for event happening once in a while, if it happens all the time one definitely needs something more than a free service.

Scaevolus 2y ago

I know, but I suspect that would be strongly tested somewhere between PB/mo and EB/mo when building a large streaming platform.

milankragujevic 2y ago

While I honestly and wholeheartedly respect what you are doing with Cloudflare, and also yourself as a person and an engineer, and having been using Cloudflare and advocating for Cloudflare myself since 2011., I must correct you that given the recent scandals with "mandatory optional upgrades" and "waiving the abuse away - if you pay" (see the relatively recent post on robindev substack), nothing Cloudflare promises can be considered free and without shakedown. The reputation of the company has finally been tarnished. I'm truly sorry to have seen it happen.

ikiris 2y ago
Almost all of those "scandals" have been a scummy site in some way that was unsurprising to people who have worked abuse in the space.
- menacingly 2y ago
  I'm not sure selectively enforced shakedowns instill a lot of confidence either

menacingly 2y ago

could something like steam or a linux distro use it to distribute software? seems crazy not to. I think what people are saying is we know there is probably a silent line somewhere, and we have no way of knowing when we cross it. It feels like it has an implied "most of the people reading this can treat it as unlimited in practice"

throw10920 2y ago

Is there a reason you decided to make it "free" in your marketing instead of "free up to some (absurdly) high volume, and then cheap"? The former seems suspicion-inducing (consumers are familiar with many things that are "free*", such as "unlimited" mobile wireless plans), and would make for worse PR if/when you have a corporate customer that pushes the limits of what's profitable for you and you have to throttle/charge/cut them. The latter provides a clearly-visible data limit for "free" that's still high enough that everyone except the tiniest fraction of your customers will never even get close. If anything, I'd expect that "100 PB free a month" would be awe-inspiring and good PR.