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The reason it's free and with unlimited bandwidth is that it's not. Unless you stay very small, you'll eventually get on the radar of the sales team and you'll

The reason it's free and with unlimited bandwidth is that it's not. Unless you stay very small, you'll eventually get on the radar of the sales team and you'll realize the service is neither unlimited nor free. In fact, you'll likely have to look at a 5 or 6-figure contract to remain on the service.

ignoramous 2y ago
(n = 1 & all) A project I co-develop pushed 30TB to 60TB per month on Cloudflare Workers in the past (for months on end) for $0. No one called us to sign 6 figure contracts.
- i_have_an_idea 2y ago
  wait
  - creeble 2y ago
    Do you have a counter example, or is this just your assumption?
    - pc86 2y ago
      There are several counter examples in the comments on this page.
      - nickthegreek 2y ago
        none of which seem to have given their bandwidth figures.
        michaelt 2y ago
        Their usage was finite. So if cloudflare’s offer is really unlimited and free, they haven’t exceeded it.
        BenjiWiebe 2y ago
        "everyone knows" that unlimited basically anything has limits. I'd be shocked if CF actually allowed you to use a couple hundred PB/month for free. And that's still finite!!
        michaelt 2y ago
        > "everyone knows" that unlimited basically anything has limits. Right. But the answer to the question posed in the title - "Why is Cloudflare Pages' bandwidth unlimited?" - is that the bandwidth is not, in fact, unlimited. At the start of this thread, i_have_an_idea said "The reason it's free and with unlimited bandwidth is that it's not" I think they, you, and I all agree on that. What I don't understand is the other people in this thread, who seem to take cloudflare's marketing puffery at face value.
        ignoramous 2y ago
        > What I don't understand is the other people in this thread OP said, "Unless you stay very small ... you'll realize the service is neither unlimited nor free" ... is what I commented on.
        michaelt 2y ago
        Yeah, to be fair the 60TB/month of outbound traffic you mention would cost ~$4800/month if you were doing it via AWS cloudfront. Cloudflare's free tier is pretty generous if they're providing that for $0.
    - goodpoint 2y ago
      Yes: cloudflare is not a charity.
    - i_have_an_idea 2y ago
      Actually, I have a really good counter example but I'm unwilling to share it publicly, as I don't want to dox myself. But the gist of it is that CF sales are really good at identifying users that are both locked into their offerings and big enough to be able to sign an expensive contract. CF do have an excellent offering and workers, in particular, are amazing for many things. Once the above conditions hit though, you will invariably get a call from the sales team. There is no free lunch.
      - internetter 2y ago
        "CF sales are really good at identifying users that are both locked into their offerings" as I said in another comment, if you allow yourself to become deeply intertwined with a 3rd party service provider that's on you
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  Workers are a very different product so I'm not too surprised by that. The main workers payment model is entirely concerned with CPU use and you must be minimizing that.
is_true 2y ago
At which point do you think you get in the radar?
- ensignavenger 2y ago
  At the point where the sales team has already hit all the targets that are bigger than you.
spand 2y ago
I can second this. Their sales people have such poor behaviour that I am considering moving away simply on principle. There is nothing predictable about being on an enterprise contract and they will hit you with bullshit overage charges like using too many dns requests (wtf??) all of a sudden to force you onto a much larger contract. On the 28th of December no less ! We have used them for a very long time but I am having very big doubts about how much we can use them in the future even though their products are great.
- neonsunset 2y ago
  https://bunny.net/pricing/ https://bunny.net/pricing/ <3 (disclaimer: I'm an employee but no commission is earned for this, we just work hard, opinions on HN otherwise don't reflect that of my employer)
  - wirelesspotat 2y ago
    Big +1 for Bunny.net - I moved my current company to Bunny and it's been excellent. Super fast (for our PoPs at least), reasonable pricing, love the image optimizer & edge rules (especially for solving header issues when embedding documents), has a Terraform provider, and I was able to set most of it up in a day. Was a night and day difference from GCP's Cloud CDN
  - mococa 2y ago
    +1 to Bunny
  - christophilus 2y ago
    We use Bunny, and it’s been solid and super inexpensive. None of my production issues have ever been due to Bunny.
  - alana314 2y ago
    The CSS on the site isn't loading properly for me FYI on chrome, it looks insane

ignoramous 2y ago

(n = 1 & all) A project I co-develop pushed 30TB to 60TB per month on Cloudflare Workers in the past (for months on end) for $0. No one called us to sign 6 figure contracts.

i_have_an_idea 2y ago
wait
- creeble 2y ago
  Do you have a counter example, or is this just your assumption?
  - pc86 2y ago
    There are several counter examples in the comments on this page.
    - nickthegreek 2y ago
      none of which seem to have given their bandwidth figures.
      - michaelt 2y ago
        Their usage was finite. So if cloudflare’s offer is really unlimited and free, they haven’t exceeded it.
        BenjiWiebe 2y ago
        "everyone knows" that unlimited basically anything has limits. I'd be shocked if CF actually allowed you to use a couple hundred PB/month for free. And that's still finite!!
        michaelt 2y ago
        > "everyone knows" that unlimited basically anything has limits. Right. But the answer to the question posed in the title - "Why is Cloudflare Pages' bandwidth unlimited?" - is that the bandwidth is not, in fact, unlimited. At the start of this thread, i_have_an_idea said "The reason it's free and with unlimited bandwidth is that it's not" I think they, you, and I all agree on that. What I don't understand is the other people in this thread, who seem to take cloudflare's marketing puffery at face value.
        ignoramous 2y ago
        > What I don't understand is the other people in this thread OP said, "Unless you stay very small ... you'll realize the service is neither unlimited nor free" ... is what I commented on.
        michaelt 2y ago
        Yeah, to be fair the 60TB/month of outbound traffic you mention would cost ~$4800/month if you were doing it via AWS cloudfront. Cloudflare's free tier is pretty generous if they're providing that for $0.
  - goodpoint 2y ago
    Yes: cloudflare is not a charity.
  - i_have_an_idea 2y ago
    Actually, I have a really good counter example but I'm unwilling to share it publicly, as I don't want to dox myself. But the gist of it is that CF sales are really good at identifying users that are both locked into their offerings and big enough to be able to sign an expensive contract. CF do have an excellent offering and workers, in particular, are amazing for many things. Once the above conditions hit though, you will invariably get a call from the sales team. There is no free lunch.
    - internetter 2y ago
      "CF sales are really good at identifying users that are both locked into their offerings" as I said in another comment, if you allow yourself to become deeply intertwined with a 3rd party service provider that's on you
Dylan16807 2y ago
Workers are a very different product so I'm not too surprised by that. The main workers payment model is entirely concerned with CPU use and you must be minimizing that.

is_true 2y ago

At which point do you think you get in the radar?

ensignavenger 2y ago
At the point where the sales team has already hit all the targets that are bigger than you.

spand 2y ago

I can second this. Their sales people have such poor behaviour that I am considering moving away simply on principle. There is nothing predictable about being on an enterprise contract and they will hit you with bullshit overage charges like using too many dns requests (wtf??) all of a sudden to force you onto a much larger contract. On the 28th of December no less ! We have used them for a very long time but I am having very big doubts about how much we can use them in the future even though their products are great.

neonsunset 2y ago
https://bunny.net/pricing/ https://bunny.net/pricing/ <3 (disclaimer: I'm an employee but no commission is earned for this, we just work hard, opinions on HN otherwise don't reflect that of my employer)
- wirelesspotat 2y ago
  Big +1 for Bunny.net - I moved my current company to Bunny and it's been excellent. Super fast (for our PoPs at least), reasonable pricing, love the image optimizer & edge rules (especially for solving header issues when embedding documents), has a Terraform provider, and I was able to set most of it up in a day. Was a night and day difference from GCP's Cloud CDN
- mococa 2y ago
  +1 to Bunny
- christophilus 2y ago
  We use Bunny, and it’s been solid and super inexpensive. None of my production issues have ever been due to Bunny.
- alana314 2y ago
  The CSS on the site isn't loading properly for me FYI on chrome, it looks insane