Egress fees are charges cloud providers apply when data leaves their network. Uploading data into a cloud platform is free because providers want your data in. Moving it out is where billing starts, typically per GB transferred to the internet, to another provider, or across regions.
For most workloads, egress fees are a rounding error. For GPU workloads they can quietly add 20 to 30 percent to a monthly bill.
What Are Egress Fees?
Egress is any data flowing out of a cloud provider's network boundary. Common triggers include downloading files to a local machine, migrating data to another provider, transferring between cloud regions, and serving API responses to end users. The key distinction: ingress (data going in) is free on every major cloud platform. Egress (data going out) is where billing begins.
Think of it as a departure tax. The provider charges nothing to store your data or bring more in to build lock-in. When you want to take your data elsewhere, the meter starts running.
Why Cloud Providers Charge for Egress
Ingress is free to attract data in, and egress is charged to make leaving costly. As a company's data footprint grows, so does the cost of extracting it. By the time egress bills are material, the architectural investment in a provider's ecosystem typically makes switching prohibitive, even if a cheaper alternative exists.
This is not a minor concern. Unlike hourly compute, egress costs depend on access patterns that emerge over time, making cloud bills genuinely hard to predict.
Cloud Egress Fees Across Providers
Most major cloud providers follow the same pattern: inbound data is free, outbound data is charged. Pricing structures vary by destination, region, and volume tier.
| Provider | Egress fee | Naming* | Tiers |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWS (EC2) | ~$0.09/GB | Data transfer | First 100 GB/month free. Discounts apply above 10 TB/month. |
| Google Cloud | ~$0.12/GB | Egress pricing | First 200 GB/month free. Varies by region. |
| Microsoft Azure | ~$0.09/GB | Internet Egress | First 100 GB/month free. Discounts above 10 TB/month. |
| Vast.ai | $0–$0.4/GB | Bandwidth | Varies by host. Some hosts also charge ingress fees. |
| Nebius | $0.015/GB | Storage egress traffic | Standard networking is free. Object Storage download costs $0.015/GB. |
| Thunder Compute | $0 | No egress fees | Free across all instances and data volumes. |
| *Each provider uses different internal terminology. Knowing the label matters when reading your bill. On-demand rates, last updated July 2, 2026. | |||
AWS Egress Fees
| AWS outbound data tier | Typical internet egress rate | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| First 100 GB/month | Free | Shared across qualifying AWS services. |
| After free allowance | About $0.09/GB | Standard internet data transfer out. Varies by region and volume. |
| Cross-region transfer | Additional per-GB fee | Applies separately from internet egress in most architectures. |
AWS egress fees are tiered based on monthly outbound volume. A 100 GB model checkpoint costs $8–$12 in egress alone at the standard rate, before accounting for NAT Gateway processing fees ($0.045/GB) or cross-region fees.
Azure Egress Fees
| Azure transfer type | Typical rate | Cost driver |
|---|---|---|
| First 100 GB/month | Free | Monthly free outbound allowance. |
| Internet egress | About $0.09/GB | Depends on zone, destination, and monthly transfer volume. |
| Cross-region transfer | Additional per-GB fee | Important for multi-region training, backups, and replication. |
Azure egress fees depend on destination. Rates differ between internet transfers, cross-region transfers within Azure, and Availability Zone transfers, making costs harder to estimate in multi-region deployments than a single per-GB number suggests.
Google Cloud Network Egress Fees
| Google Cloud transfer type | Typical cost level | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Same-region transfer | Free or low cost | Usually the cheapest path when services stay colocated. |
| Cross-region transfer | Charged per GB | Costs rise when data moves between regions. |
| Internet egress | ~$0.12/GB | Highest cost tier. Often the largest networking cost for downloaded models and datasets. |
Google Cloud network egress fees vary significantly by destination. Same-region transfers are often free or near-free, but internet egress sits at the highest cost tier. Training runs that read large datasets from Google Cloud Storage repeatedly can generate material charges that a GPU spot rate comparison never captures.
Vast.ai Egress Fees
Vast.ai operates on a decentralized marketplace model rather than a fixed corporate rate. Individual hosts set their own bandwidth prices, typically ranging from free to $0.4 per GB.
Unlike traditional clouds, most Vast.ai hosts also charge ingress fees, often offseting cheap GPU rental with high data transfer costs.
| Vast.ai bandwidth item | Typical range | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Download / egress | $0–$0.4/GB | Large model exports can erase savings from a cheap hourly GPU rate. |
| Upload / ingress | Host-dependent | Some marketplace hosts charge for inbound data. |
| Host variation | High | Bandwidth rates depend on the specific supplier, not only the GPU type. |
The real-world impact on a Vast.ai A100 80GB instance illustrates how data transfer costs interact with compute time. For short workloads moving a lot of data, the effective hourly rate climbs well above the headline GPU price:
| Uploaded data | Running time | Downloaded data | Effective cost per hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50GB | 1hr | 10GB | $3.35 |
| 50GB | 5hr | 10GB | $1.12 |
| 50GB | 10hr | 10GB | $0.84 |
Nebius Egress Fees
Nebius decouples standard network routing from backend data storage retrieval:
- Free network bandwidth: Standard internet ingress and egress traffic from GPU VMs is completely free.
- Standard Object Storage ($0.015/GB): Reading data from Standard Object Storage costs a flat per-gigabyte fee.
- Enhanced Object Storage (free): Upgrading to Enhanced storage eliminates retrieval fees entirely at a higher baseline storage cost.
Egress Fees for GPU Workloads: A Real-World Example
GPU workloads generate egress across three common scenarios: downloading trained model checkpoints, exporting processed datasets, and serving inference output.
Here is what 2 TB of outbound data costs across major providers.
| Provider | Total data egress | Cost per GB | Estimated cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWS | 2000 GB | $0.09 | $171.00 |
| Google Cloud | 2000 GB | $0.12 | $228.00 |
| Microsoft Azure | 2000 GB | $0.087 | $174.00 |
| Purely data transfer cost. Does not include GPU compute, storage, or other charges. Assumes free tiers are already exhausted. | |||
At larger scale, or with teams running multiple training jobs per month, egress costs compound into thousands of dollars. If you need to migrate away from a provider, you also pay to extract your own data before you can leave.
For a broader look at hidden costs that inflate GPU cloud bills beyond the headline rate, see GPU cloud for startups: best providers and free credits.
How to Reduce Cloud Egress Fees
If you're on a hyperscaler, several strategies reduce data transfer costs:
- Keep workloads in a single region. Cross-region transfers are billed separately from internet egress. Colocating compute and storage eliminates one layer of fees.
- Compress data before transfer. Gzip and Brotli cut LLM text output by 60–80%, reducing effective egress volume on inference-heavy pipelines.
- Use a CDN for inference serving. Caching repeated responses at the edge means the response travels from your cloud once, not on every user request.
- Batch non-streaming requests. Consolidating small outputs into larger batches before transmitting reduces per-request overhead on high-traffic endpoints.
- Use internal networking where possible. Many providers offer free or low-cost transfer between services within the same region over private networks. NAT Gateway fees still apply on some architectures.
- Monitor egress line items explicitly. Egress is often buried in broader network charges. In AWS Cost Explorer, filter by "DataTransfer-Out-Bytes"; in GCP, filter billing exports by SKU containing "Network Egress."
Last Thoughts on Egress Fees
Egress fees are one of the most overlooked costs in cloud GPU computing. They do not appear in hourly rate comparisons, they compound with scale, and they are designed to make switching providers expensive. Understanding how they work — and which providers do not charge them — is one of the more practical infrastructure decisions you can make.
Learn how modern cloud providers structure their entire infrastructure model in what is GPU-as-a-Service.
FAQ
What are egress fees?
Egress fees are charges cloud providers apply when data leaves their network. Uploading data (ingress) is often free; downloading or moving it out triggers a per-GB charge. For GPU workloads, these fees can add 20-30% to a monthly bill.
Why are egress fees important for GPU workloads?
GPU workloads move large volumes of data: model weights can be hundreds of GB, checkpoints are exported repeatedly, and inference APIs send output on every request. Small per-GB fees compound quickly at this scale.
What are the specific AWS egress fees for 2026?
AWS provides 100 GB/month free for internet egress, then charges approximately $0.09/GB. Cross-region transfers and NAT Gateway fees apply separately on top of that.
What are the Azure egress fees for 2026?
Azure provides 100 GB/month free, then charges approximately $0.087-$0.09/GB for internet egress. Cross-region transfers are billed separately, and rates vary by zone and destination.
How do Vast.ai egress fees work?
Vast.ai hosts set their own bandwidth prices, ranging from free to $0.06/GB. Most hosts also charge ingress fees, so a cheap GPU rental can easily be offset by high data transfer costs.
What is the pricing structure for Nebius egress fees?
Standard internet traffic to and from Nebius GPU VMs is free. Downloading from Nebius Standard Object Storage costs $0.015/GB. Enhanced Object Storage eliminates retrieval fees at a higher baseline storage cost.
Why do cloud providers charge egress fees but not ingress fees?
Ingress is free to attract data in and build lock-in. Egress is charged to make leaving costly. As a company's data footprint grows, so does the cost of extracting it, which discourages switching providers.
How can I reduce egress fees on hyperscalers?
Keep workloads in a single region, compress data before transfer, use a CDN for repeated inference responses, batch non-streaming requests, and monitor egress line items in your billing dashboard. The most direct fix is choosing a zero-egress provider.