Cloudinary offers you tremendous capabilities in managing your online media, starting with our free-to-use plan. Our paid plans include greatly increased usage quotas, and detailed below is an explanation of what the different quotas mean.
Overview
- Monthly Transformations - Number of all newly processed assets including original uploads and derivatives (images and video-frames) within the last 30 days (more information).
- Total Images & Videos (not relevant for credit-based plans) - Represents the total number of resources maintained by Cloudinary at a given moment. This includes both original resources and their derivatives (e.g. thumbnails).
- Managed Storage - The accumulated size of all of your assets, which are stored on your Cloudinary account, including backups if enabled (more information).
- Monthly Net Viewing Bandwidth - Total bandwidth of content delivered from your account within the last 30 days.
Additional Q&A
Q: How are uploads counted toward my quota?
A: Every uploaded file increases your Total Images & Videos, Storage, and Monthly Transformations. Bandwidth is not counted for uploads. Also, Transformations will not be counted for `Raw` resource-type uploads.
Q: How does enabling backup affect my Storage?
A: When a backup is enabled on your settings page, every resource (Originals only) is backed-up and counts toward your Storage Utilization. If you choose to backup to your own S3 bucket, your Storage quota will not increase.
Q: For images, will complex transformations be counted as multiple Transformations?
A: A transformation, no matter how complex it is (even when using multiple chained transformations), is counted as a single transformed resource.
Q: How do videos, animated files, and files containing multiple pages count towards my Transformations quota?
A: Such files, when transformed, are counted according to the following key -
- Animated GIF - 1 transformation plus an additional transformation for every 10 frames.
- Animated GIF to video - Every 5 frames = 1 transformation.
- PDF - 1 transformation plus an additional transformation for every 10 pages.
- SD Video - 1 second = 2 transformations
- HD Video - 1 second = 4 transformations (Frame contains over 921,600 of total pixels, e.g., 1920 x 1080)
- Audio - 1 second = 0.1 transformations
Note that when uploading one of these resources, 1 Transformation is automatically counted regardless of any other transformations.
Q: How do "Fetch"-ed resources count toward my quotas?
A: When an image is first fetched, it will be stored on your Cloudinary account for performance reasons and counted in Storage, Total Images. If the fetched image was also transformed within the URL, a Transformations credit will be consumed as well. Fetched images are not backed-up so your Storage will not be additionally affected by Cloudinary's backup capabilities.
Q: What is "Net Viewing Bandwidth" and how is bandwidth calculated?
A: For every viewed/downloaded resource, you will only be charged a flat fee according to the size (in bytes) of the resource. This means that we don't count Midgress bandwidth, you don't pay extra per request, you don't pay differently according to the geography of your visitors, there are no additional charges for HTTPS requests or for traffic to origin, and there is no additional cost for invalidations.
Q: When do my Transformation & Bandwidth quotas reset to zero?
A: The Transformation and Bandwidth quotas are counted within a rolling last-30-days time window. Meaning, the quota never actually resets, but changes every day according to the updated time-frame.
Q: Are PlaceHolders count towards my Total Images?
A: PlaceHolder resources contain the derived versions of the default image which were previously generated. These images count against the Derived-Images which is aggregated to the Total Images quota. Also for every unique transformation, a Transformation is consumed when processed for the first time.
Q: How does using f_auto affect my quotas?
A: When using the f_auto parameter, different images are delivered to different browsers. That is why a single transformation can result in up to 4 different derivatives (WEBP, animated WEBP, WDP, default format).
automatic dpr and width may also result in different images counting towards your Transformations quota.
Q: How does using add-on transformations work?
A: Each add-on has its own quota as well. So when using a transformation that includes add-on capabilities, the usage counts towards the transformation quota as mentioned above but is also counted towards the add-on's specific quota.
Q: What other processes could be counted towards the "transformations" quota?
A: Other than uploads and derived resources generations, using the explicit API to perform processes like extracting image metadata, colors, pHash, and others are also counted towards the "transformations" quota.
Comments
25 comments
A couple of additional questions regarding...
"Monthly Transformations - Number of all newly processed assets including original uploads and derivatives."
My account is showing 2176 image resources and 949 derived images. The number of transformations is 6281 though. No image has been deleted from this account ever. How do these numbers relate to each other? What do the transformations count other than the derived images? If the same transformation is requested twice for the same original image, does this count as 2 transformations?
A unique transformation will be counted only once, regardless the number of visits it gets. However, there are several factors that can affect your Transformations count.
For example re-uploading (overwriting) the same resource again and again may result with an unexpected Transformation usage.
More information here: http://support.cloudinary.com/hc/en-us/articles/206465709-My-account-s-usage-reports-show-a-relatively-high-Transformations-rate
Hello Nadav.... I have a question.....
I didn´t make transformation on Cloudinary, but I did on the url´s....
for example, I just upload an image (High Res) but then, I just access to the image with .../q_60,w_700,f,auto/.....
So,How many transformation coludinary counts with this method?
A "Transformation" credit is counted for every newly processed image.
The mentioned transformation ( .../q_60,w_700,f,auto/..... ) will cost up to 4 times for every original image it's applied to, since 4 different formats can result out of it (WEBP, AWEBP, JPEG-XR & fallback).
How to increase total Images & Videos quotas ?
You could increase the "total images & video" quota, together with the bandwidth and storage quotas, by following us on twitter, liking us on Facebook, and spreading the word about Cloudinary!
You can read more about that here:
https://cloudinary.com/console/share
Hi!
How the bandwidth used to view/download an image of, for example 1MB size, is calculated?
We need to obtain an average in order to estimate the necessary plan.
Thanks!
Hi,
We count every viewed/downloaded resource according to the resource size.
You will only be charged a flat fee according to the size (in bytes) of the resource.
So if your image size is about 1MB this will be the bandwidth we count for each request.
Do note to add transformations to your resources, in order to reduce the image size.
If you need help with that, please contact us at support@cloudinary.com.
Best,
Yakir
I'm not sure I follow the `f_auto` answer.
If I have `https://cloudinary.com/image/upload/f_auto/image.png`
does the `f_auto` parameter = 1 transformation the first time the image is requested that month?
@David Baldie
f_autotells Cloudinary to generate a different image format depending on the end-user's browser. There could be total of 4 transformations (using your example above) - PNG, JPEG-XR, and two variants of WebP. The transformations are counted on request and not all at once. For instance, if throughout the lifetime of the resource on your account, only Chrome and Firefox users accessed the PNG image url (`http://res.cloudinary.com/cloud_name/image/upload/f_auto/image.png`). Then only two transformations would be counted.My account has entered into a new billing cycle and paid for this cycle. Yet my account showing bandwidth used 70% from last cycle and counting forward everyday. What will happen when this bandwidth quota reach to 100%? Shouldn't I get a full 100% quota in the new billing cycle? Or is this like the unused bandwidth is carried forward to the new cycle? I am confused.
The bandwidth quota never fully resets. It always monitors the bandwidth usage within the last 30 days timeframe and alerts if it exceeds the plan's limit
@Raya Straus, you monitor the bandwidth usage within the last 30 days and we know nothing what is happening behind the door! Is this fair? If we subscribers cannot see the remaining balance of my bandwidth how can we manage our websites? You only alert when all bandwidth is exhausted and then we are in risk of shutting down of our website. Why you prefer to keep us (the customers) blind in this regard?
According to my admin panel, our website has consumed 72% of allotted bandwidth (actually 2% from new billing cycle and the rest 70% from previous month's cycle). Why have I to carry the 70% from last month? Say, within next couple of days my bandwidth quota reaches 100%, then what will happen? Have I to purchase a new plan though I have used only 30% bandwidth in current billing cycle?
Hi guys, I'm testing on my machine and uploading about 20 1MB images. Was shocked to see that I've already used 2.92 GB in bandwidth -- how is this possible? Please explain! We're trying to get my company to sign up but if they see that we've already used up the free quota, they may feel that it doesn't make sense.
@savraj
We are speaking on an internal ticket, so we will continue the correspondence there.
Related to @savraj, how to explain that? I am on same situation. Some dozens of imagens, and tons of bandwidth. I am using free version for testing.
Hi Pedro,
To give a general answer, the most likely reason for unexpectedly large bandwidth usage is if there are many requests for each asset, and if the image URLs on your site are for the original images, rather than for versions of the images which have been optimized in size, quality, and format to match wherein your application you're using them.
If you can please contact us with the details of your account and how you're using the images, we can check the logs and reports for your account and help you to understand the requests and how to optimize them
Thanks,
Stephen
Hi Guys,
We started to use cloudinary plus plan and each month we are exceeding the allocated credits mostly contributed by the Transformations. We deal with Video uploads and asked our developer to optimize but no vain. Tried to calculate and ended up like for 80 videos uploaded the count of Transformations are around 24,000 (roughly about 300 Transformation per video) looks this is too much.
Can you guys please suggest a better way to minimize the transformations else we cannot survive this huge bills.
Hi Patricia,
Please send us a support ticket and we'll help you to check your account:
http://support.cloudinary.com/tickets/new
Hi,
If I embed a Cloudinary-hosted video in my web app will the bandwidth flat fee be applied in full for every initial request even if only part of the video is streamed?
Hi Grant,
We count the actual bandwidth used to delivery the asset to users, so if a user's browser requests just the first part of the file so that a preview can be shown, that's all we count towards your usage. (And that's very common; I think all modern web browsers grab a few KB first, and don't request the rest of the file until the video starts playing)
If the entire video is indeed delivered, we count the full size of whichever derived version of the video was delivered (which if you're using our transformation options to adjust the format, quality size, should be much smaller than the original file)
Hello,
number of api call is unlimited, correct?
In other words, if the api call does not do any transformation, the price will simply depends on the storage used. Is this correct?
Thank you.
Hey @d08922008,
With regard to API call limitations, all upload API calls are not rate-limited, while Admin API calls do have a rate limit per hour.
To answer your main question, if you do not apply any transformations, you will still be charged a single transformation per upload request for handling the upload processing call. Other API calls that do not include any transformation generation nor new uploads will inflict no transformation charges.
Any uploaded asset will indeed reflect in your storage utilization. In addition, the bandwidth counter will sum all bytes downloaded via requests made to any of your assets stored on your cloud.
Hell Raz,
thank you for the reply. Just to be more specific.
Let's say we have a website. When the user enter our website, our home page will access the image store on cloudiary server through url and show them without any transformation. For example: our html page include this tag
<img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dudbt4cof/image/upload/v1634630896/sample.jpg" />
Is this a kind of API call?
I guess it didn't cost money, correct?
Thank you. Looking forward to use Cloudiary.
Hey again @d08922008 :)
No worries, these kinds of requests will not incur additional transformation charges since the original asset is already uploaded and stored on your cloud and you indeed do not request a new transformation to be generated.
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