Each newly processed asset, original upload or transformation, counts toward your Transformations quota. For more information see:
http://support.cloudinary.com/hc/en-us/articles/203125631-How-does-Cloudinary-count-the-quotas-and-what-does-every-quota-mean-
Below are some operations/features which may result in an unintentional charge of your Transformations quota.
- Initial migration: This process, usually consists of a high volume of uploads.
- Repeat uploads: Bugged upload-scripts may sometime repeatedly upload the same image over and over again, resulting in an extra Transformations charge (the default behaviour of an upload action is to overwrite existing resources).
- Failing uploads: Sometimes, due to corrupted files, uploads may fail in a relatively advanced stage when Cloudinary tries to process the file. This can result in a charged Transformation.
- Default images: Incorrectly utilizing our default-image feature may result in the unnecessary creation of placeholder images which are also counted against your Transformations quota. For example, frequently issuing requests to images before it's actually uploaded.
- Multipage/GIF/Video files: Charges for processing these files are made according to their length, and not only once as for images.
-
Auto formatting: Utilizing the Auto Format feature (
f_autofor URLs) may result in the generation of up to 4 images per transformation (original format, webp, awebp and wdp) -
Responsive design: Taking advantage of our Responsive tool for supporting auto
widthand/ordpr, may result in a high number of derived images that are generated for every transformation in order to provide for different device displays. This can also be tuned as described here.
Note that Cloudinary's features are very useful and shouldn't be avoided, just make sure to understand how they are charged beforehand to avoid surprises (their benefits generally far outweigh their costs).
Finally, note that monthly quotas (i.e. Transformations and Bandwidth) are counted within a last-30-days rolling window, therefore they never actually reset but are updated every day.
Feel free to contact our support for any question that arises.
Comments
11 comments
Ref. repeat uploads: even if the source of the issue might be buggy code on the application side, still it would be nice to be able to get from Cloudinary some warning/notification email when a certain pre-configured threshold is crossed.
Hi Ido,
We are working to enable an automated error rate alert mechanism which should cover this use-case as well. ETA should be around the end of 2016.
great, thanx
Hi,
I am making two uploads through direct API call. One is with a transformation, the other is not.
From what I understand, the increase in transformation counter is 3 (1 for initial first upload, 1 for a "c_crop,g_xy_center,h_0.916411682892907,w_0.7346358792184725,x_0.48480461811722914,y_0.5852364394993046" transformation, and 1 for the second upload with no transformation.
But the increase in counter is 4...
Here are the POST arguments for the 1st upload:
{file=..., folder=MyFolder, api_key=...., signature=...., transformation=c_crop,g_xy_center,h_0.9179415855354659,w_0.4591474245115453,x_0.5212166962699822,y_0.581759388038943, overwrite=false,overwrite=false, public_id=...., timestamp=....}
It does indeed count as 2 transformations.
Here are the POST arguments for the 2nd upload:
{file=...., folder=MyFolder, api_key=...., signature=...., overwrite=false, public_id=...., timestamp=....}
And it STILL count as 2 transformations.
I am applying transformation on upload to avoid doing dynamic ones on calls. But I still do not understand why a simple upload count as 2. It contradicts your good report (I still learnt the first upload counted as 2. Good to know).
So why is simple upload count as 2, please ?
Hi,
Is it possible that you viewed the second image in the console which triggered the media_lib_thumb generation?
The `media_lib_thumb` thumbnails are created when uploading or viewing uploaded images through the media library web interface. When you upload via the upload API, images aren't automatically transformed using this transformation (only when you browse through them via your media library).
If it's not the case, please open a support ticket with your account details and we'll gladly further investigate the issue.
Thanks Maor Gariv,
Indeed it seems it is the 'media_lib_thumb' that is causing this change. Actually, I did not understand why the number was slowly incrementing within the first five minutes of upload, but this timely mannered changed also fit your hypothesis.
I have found no way to disable this feature on the 'Dashboard' screen. But I improved my knowledge and was able to use the Admin API/usage (great!).
This seems to be a massive problem. You allow 5 million images on a 250$ monthly plan, but only allow 400K uploads per month due to the transformations limit? 1 Upload = 1 Transformation? This does not make any sense whatsover!
And when viewing the uploads in our media console, this uses even more of the transformations quota because the generated thumbnails are counted against it??
Do you know how many images I can store with 250$ a month on google storage or AWS? Probably a trillion!
Hi Jason, thank you for the feedback.
Cloudinary is an end-to-end media solution. It includes tons of image and video manipulation and automatic optimizations, wrapped in a service with end-to-end scalability & reliability - DR, security & compliance, operations, support etc. So comparing it with a storage service is a bit comparing apples to oranges.
The end-to-end usage is measured by several separate parameters, and while monthly transformations measure the ongoing activity, the total images and videos metric is accumulative and looks at the total size of the account. When you're using the service for years you may reach the total images and videos quota at some point.
Specifically regarding thumbnails in the media library - while this is usually not a significant part of the usage, we do accept the feedback and the new UI version that's going to be rolled pretty soon will not count these thumbnails towards the account quota.
Hi Ben, can you share ETA on that implementation, its very much needed because our transformation count is always skyrocketting against our limit and my clients are losing hope in cloudinary already.
Hi, the first phase of the new Media Library should be released in the next couple of months. In this release, library views will no longer be counted towards the Transformations quota. That said, please note that transformations that are generated via the library are usually only a small subset of the overall transformations count. I would recommend checking if any of the scenarios in the article above matches your use-case to figure out why your Transformations count is high. If you want our help in analyzing, please feel free to open a support ticket and will be glad to take a closer look at it.
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