Cloudflare R2
- Free allowance
- 10 GB-month storage, 1M Class A and 10M Class B operations per month, egress free
- Verdict
- caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
- Cost
- free tierpaid plans from USD 15/TB-month
- Identity
- cardcard required, phone unknown
- Binding limit
- noneno named constraint binds
- Evidence
- documented42 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-12-04checked 2026-11-03 (live); stale on 2026-12-04
| Free tier | 10 GB-month storage, 1M Class A and 10M Class B operations per month, egress free unit GB; metered on stored-bytes; Standard storage only; the free tier does not apply to Infrequent Access. Above it, Standard storage costs USD 0.015 / GB-month, Class A operations USD 4.50 / million requests and Class B operations USD 0.36 / million requests; usage rounds up to the next billing unit (1.1 GB-month bills as 2 GB-month). |
|---|---|
| Price | USD 15 per TB-month of Standard storage beyond the free 10 GB-month (USD 0.015 / GB-month); egress USD 0 |
| Limits |
the 10 GB-month of free Standard storage is a monthly allowance and not a cap: storage above it is billed at USD 0.015 / GB-month, Class A operations above 1 million at USD 4.50 / million and Class B operations above 10 million at USD 0.36 / million |
| Binding | none nothing binds egress, which is free when read directly from R2; the 10 GB-month of free Standard storage (volume-quota) is a billing threshold and not a cap, since storage above it is billed at USD 0.015 / GB-month |
| Identity | card A Cloudflare account (sign-up form: email and password; the address is verified by a mailed message) plus an R2 subscription added through a dashboard checkout, which needs a valid payment method on file even for the free monthly usage: a card (Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, UnionPay), PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Link, or a USDC stablecoin wallet whose permit covers R2 usage charges. A billing address is confirmed with the payment method, and gift or pre-payment cards may be refused for lacking one. No R2 API token can be created before the purchase. A phone number or a manual review at the checkout: unverified: behind a sign-up. |
| Egress | free for every storage class when read directly from R2 (Workers API, S3 API, r2.dev); metered services connected to a bucket may charge for their part, and Infrequent Access reads carry a USD 0.01 / GB data-retrieval fee free allowance: none for egress: egress to the internet is free on every plan |
| Per-object cap | 5 TiB per object (5 GiB less than 5 TiB, so 4.995 TiB); one upload request or part carries at most 4.995 GiB (5 MiB less than 5 GiB), up to 10,000 parts (5492189429760 bytes) |
| Retention | not applicable: bytes persist while the account is in good standing |
| Interface | s3-compatible, rest https://<account>.r2.cloudflarestorage.com |
| Tooling | aws-cli, rclone (s3 backend) |
| Composes with | the origin that makes a free front free: R2 holds the bytes with zero egress and a Cloudflare front serves them, so the read path costs nothing at any volume and the 10 GB is the whole bill. |
| Reliability | a failed payment-method preauthorization blocks access to the buckets (requests return errors), and the data may be deleted if the payment method is not updated within 30 days |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 42
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-22 | developers.cloudflare.com/r2/pricing/ | 10 GB-month storage, 1M Class A, 10M Class B, egress free; page last updated 2026-10-01 |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/billing/understand/billing-policy/ | a valid payment method must be on file before a subscription such as R2 is enabled |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/r2/get-started/ | R2 is enabled by a dashboard checkout that adds an R2 subscription to the account |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/r2/get-started/ | the R2 subscription carries the free monthly usage; the checkout is needed for the free tier too |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/billing/get-started/create-billing | purchasing a Cloudflare product, R2 included, needs a primary payment method |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/r2/api/tokens/ | no R2 API token, and so no S3 access key, exists before the R2 checkout |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/fundamentals/account/create-accoun | the account sign-up form asks for an email and a password |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/fundamentals/account/create-accoun | the sign-up email address is verified by a mailed message |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/billing/get-started/create-billing | the accepted card networks are Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover and UnionPay |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/billing/get-started/create-billing | Apple Pay, Google Pay and Link wallets are accepted besides a card or PayPal |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/billing/payment-methods/stablecoin | USDC stablecoin is accepted at the checkout as an alternative to a card |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/billing/payment-methods/stablecoin | a USDC stablecoin permit covers R2 usage-based charges |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/billing/get-started/create-billing | a billing address is confirmed when a payment method is added |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/billing/understand/billing-policy/ | gift and pre-payment cards may be refused because they carry no billing address |
| 2026-10-30 | hackerone.com/reports/2170559 | the vendor's disclosed bug report states that R2 activation requires a valid payment method on file |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/r2/platform/limits/ | the largest object is 5 TiB less 5 GiB, 4.995 TiB |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/r2/platform/limits/ | one upload request or part carries at most 4.995 GiB |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/r2/pricing/ | the free tier includes 10 GB-month of storage each month |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/r2/platform/limits/ | the r2.dev public endpoint is rate limited and answers HTTP 429 above hundreds of requests per second |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/r2/pricing/ | the free tier covers Standard storage only |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/r2/pricing/ | Standard storage costs USD 0.015 per GB-month and Infrequent Access USD 0.01 per GB-month |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/r2/pricing/ | Class A operations cost USD 4.50 per million on Standard storage and USD 9.00 on Infrequent Access |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/r2/pricing/ | Class B operations cost USD 0.36 per million on Standard storage and USD 0.90 on Infrequent Access |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/r2/pricing/ | usage is rounded up to the next billing unit |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/r2/pricing/ | egress read directly from R2 is free; metered services connected to a bucket may charge |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/r2/pricing/ | egress is free for every storage class |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/r2/pricing/ | Infrequent Access reads carry a USD 0.01 per GB data-retrieval fee; Standard has none |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/billing/understand/billing-policy/ | data of a usage-based service such as R2 may be deleted when the payment method is not updated within 30 days |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/billing/understand/billing-policy/ | a failed payment-method preauthorization blocks access to R2 buckets and requests return errors |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/billing/understand/billing-policy/ | the payment method of a usage-based service such as R2 can be preauthorized at any time in a billing period |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/r2/platform/limits/ | R2 object operations run through an S3-compatible API |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/r2/get-started/ | R2 is reached through S3-compatible SDKs |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/r2/platform/limits/ | R2 also has Cloudflare REST API operations, rate limited to 1,200 requests per five minutes |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/r2/pricing/ | the free storage and operations are a monthly allowance |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/billing/payment-methods/stablecoin | the checkout's payment-method picker offers Crypto (a USDC wallet) beside card, Apple Pay and Google Pay |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/billing/payment-methods/stablecoin | the stablecoin accepted at the checkout is USDC on the Base and Polygon networks |
| 2026-10-30 | developers.cloudflare.com/billing/get-started/create-billing | a card added as the payment method may need 3D Secure authentication when its issuer requires it |
| 2026-11-03 | www.answeroverflow.com/m/1454396689225093214 | a community reply of 2026-04-01 in the vendor's developer Discord (a mirror of it) says R2 cannot be paid with crypto; it predates the USDC stablecoin page of 2026-06-12 and is a third-party statement |
| 2026-11-03 | www.answeroverflow.com/m/1495093200359129139 | a community reply of 2026-04-18 quotes the R2 add-storage checkout's authorization checkbox: it authorizes charging for usage above the free limits, and is not a hold (third-party report) |
| 2026-11-03 | www.cloudflarestatus.com/incidents/q5yz5kb1gwm6 | the vendor's own incident notice shows the first-time R2 enable step asks for a payment method; it names no phone number or review step |
| 2026-11-03 | developers.cloudflare.com/r2/pricing/ | the free tier still gives 10 GB-month of storage each month (page last updated 2026-10-30) |
| 2026-11-03 | developers.cloudflare.com/billing/get-started/create-billing | buying a Cloudflare product, the R2 subscription included, needs a primary payment method, so the record's card kind stands |
More fields 3
| stale after days | 180 |
|---|---|
| bytes transit | yes |
| transit note | the object leaves Cloudflare's network on every read, and egress is free on every plan |