Cloudinary plans and prices
These are the self-service plans for Cloudinary's Image and Video APIs. Annual billing is about 10% cheaper. Enterprise is custom and not public.
| Plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing, per month | Credits per month | Users | What it adds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 25 | 3 | No card, no time limit. One product environment. |
| Plus | $99 | $89 | 225 | 3 | Paid add-ons, backup to your own S3 bucket, expedited support. |
| Advanced | $249 | $224 | 600 | 5 | A custom domain (CNAME), an optional HTTPS certificate, token or cookie-based auth. |
| Advanced Extra | $549 | $494 | 1,350 | 5 | More credits and five product environments. |
| Pro PAYG | $1,099 | $989 | 2,750 | 5 | Usage above the 2,750 credits is billed at $0.45 a credit. |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom | SSO, custom SLA, multi-CDN, a customer success manager. |
Source: Cloudinary's pricing page, plans comparison and pricing summary, 28 October 2026.
On monthly billing a credit costs $0.40 to $0.44 across the paid plans. On annual billing it costs $0.36 to $0.40.
The steps between plans are steep. Plus to Advanced adds $150 a month for 375 more credits. If you want image URLs on your own domain, Advanced is the cheapest plan that has a custom domain, at $249 a month.
What a credit buys
One credit is any one of these:
- 1,000 transformations. A transformation is a new derived image: a resize, crop, format change or effect.
- 1 GB of managed storage.
- 1 GB of image bandwidth. Measured on the file size actually delivered.
Credits are shared. You spend them on any mix, up to the plan's monthly total. This page is about images. Video follows other rules. Processing is counted per second. A credit buys 2 GB of video bandwidth on paid plans and 1 GB on Free.
A transformation counts once, when Cloudinary first creates the derived image. A chain of ten steps in one URL is still one. The second request for the same URL does not count again.
Cloudinary's own example
Cloudinary's billing guide describes an online store with 100,000 products in a steady month. It uses 450,000 new transformations (450 credits), 500 GB of stored images (500 credits) and 1 TB of image delivery (1,000 credits). That is 1,950 credits. It does not fit Advanced Extra (1,350 credits). It fits Pro PAYG (2,750 credits, $1,099 a month).
Look at the split. Transformations are 23% of those credits. Delivery is 51% and storage is 26%. At about $0.40 a credit, 1 GB of bandwidth costs about as much as 1,000 transformations. Bytes cost more than processing.
Estimate your credits and monthly cost
Enter your numbers. The estimate uses Cloudinary's published rules for images. It runs in your browser, and nothing you type is sent anywhere.
0 credits a month
- 0 credits
- 0 credits
- 0 credits
Free
For comparison: Flatpix.
Flatpix plans are flat monthly prices and do not include storage. Your originals stay in your own bucket, which you pay for separately.
How it is worked out. Transformations = new images × (1 upload + sizes per image) ÷ 1,000. Storage = originals plus one cached copy of every size, because Cloudinary counts both. Bandwidth = images served × delivered size. Here 1 GB is 1,000 MB.
This is an estimate. Your real mix of sizes will differ, and Cloudinary's calculator on its pricing page is the reference. If you are moving in, the first 30 days count every upload and the first request for every size. Enter your whole library as new images to see that month.
Where credits go that people do not expect
Storage includes the copies
Storage counts your originals, a cached copy of every derived image, and backed-up revisions. Six sizes per image means six extra stored files. Stale sizes pile up. Deleting unused assets lowers storage at once.
Uploads and overwrites are transformations
Each upload counts as one transformation. Upload again under the same public ID and it counts again.
Automatic optimization counts
If you turn on the "optimize by default" settings, Cloudinary counts those format and quality changes even when the URL looks like a plain original. The fl_original flag delivers the original without that count.
The window rolls
On Free, Plus, Advanced and Advanced Extra, transformations and bandwidth are counted over the last 30 days, not by calendar month. A spike stays in your total for 30 days. Storage is your current total. Pro PAYG counts by billing month.
Video is counted per second
Cloudinary counts 8 transformations per second for streaming up to 1080p with automatic profile selection. A 10-minute video is 600 seconds, so 4,800 transformations, or 4.8 credits, once. Some effects have their own counts too.
Limits come with the plan
The largest image you can upload is 10 MB on Free, 20 MB on Plus and 40 MB from Advanced. The Admin API allows 500 requests an hour on Free, 2,000 on Plus and Advanced, and 5,000 on Advanced Extra and Pro PAYG.
What happens when you go over
It depends on the plan.
- Free, Plus, Advanced, Advanced Extra. Cloudinary does not list an overage charge. It says it will not disable your account at once. It emails warnings as you near the limit, then asks you to upgrade again and again. If nothing changes, the account is eventually disabled automatically. Disabled can mean uploading, storing, managing and delivering all stop until you pick a plan that fits.
- Pro PAYG. You pay $1,099 a month for 2,750 credits. Credits above that cost $0.45 each. Inside the plan a credit costs about $0.36 to $0.40.
Cloudinary's documentation describes upgrading, not buying a few extra credits. An upgrade in mid-cycle is charged pro rata for the rest of the period.
Is the free plan enough?
For a side project, often. Free gives 25 credits a month, three users and one product environment, with no card and no time limit. Cloudinary's own example of 2 GB stored, 4 GB delivered and 4,000 transformations is 10 credits.
Delivery uses it up first. 25 GB of delivery is all 25 credits. At 120 KB an image, that is about 208,000 images served a month. At 500 KB it is 50,000. Count storage and transformations on top.
Ways to lower the bill
- Serve fewer bytes. One transformation costs a thousandth of a credit. One GB of bandwidth costs a whole credit. A format change that saves 100 KB on an image viewed 10,000 times saves 1 GB, a full credit, for a thousandth of one.
- Use a fixed set of sizes. Every new width is a new transformation and a new stored copy.
- Delete what you do not use. Storage is a live total, so it drops as soon as you delete.
- Read the delivery reports. Cloudinary's Delivery Reports point at unoptimized assets and repeated transformations.
- Pay yearly. It saves about 10%.
- Ask for a discount. Cloudinary says startups and non-profits can apply.
How other image services charge
The units differ, so prices do not line up one to one. This table shows what each service charges for, from its own pricing page on 28 October 2026. Video, media libraries, AI tagging and support differ too, and are not compared here.
| Service | You pay for | Published prices | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| ImageKit | Bandwidth and storage | Free: 20 GB bandwidth. Lite, $9 a month: 40 GB, then $0.50 per GB. Pro, $89 a month: 225 GB, then $0.45 per GB. | Its own URL syntax, like ?tr=w-1200. A custom domain is on Pro. |
| Cloudflare Images | Unique transformations, images stored, images delivered | Free: 5,000 unique transformations a month. Paid: the first 5,000 included, then $0.50 per 1,000. Hosted images: $5 per 100,000 stored and $1 per 100,000 delivered. | Its own URL syntax, /cdn-cgi/image/. Past the free 5,000, new transformations return an error. |
| imgix | Credits | Bundles from $25 a month for 100 credits, $75 for 375. A 30-day trial with 100 credits. | Its starter bundle lists up to 50 GB of media and 100 GB of delivery. |
| Flatpix | A flat monthly plan | $39, $99 or $249 a month. | Reads Cloudinary-style URLs. |
Sources: each service's pricing page, linked below.
ImageKit and Cloudflare Images use their own URL syntax, so moving to them means changing your image URLs. That cost does not show up in a price list.
Where Flatpix fits
Flatpix is for teams whose Cloudinary bill is hard to predict. It reads the same URL style, so switching is a domain change, not a rewrite. w_400,c_fill,f_auto,q_auto stays as it is.
You pay one flat monthly price for a plan. There are no credits and no overage bills.
- Starter, $39 a month. 25,000 original images and 500 GB delivered.
- Growth, $99 a month. 250,000 original images and 2 TB delivered.
- Scale, $249 a month. Unlimited original images and 10 TB delivered.
Your originals stay in a bucket you own (S3, R2 or Google Cloud Storage), so that storage is a separate bill. Flatpix has no video. If you depend on Cloudinary's video tools, its media library or its add-ons, Flatpix is not a replacement.
Flatpix: one flat price
Keep your Cloudinary URLs and change one domain. Pay $39, $99 or $249 a month, with no credits and no overage bills. Your first month is free.
Questions
How much does Cloudinary cost?
Free is $0. Plus is $99 a month, Advanced $249, Advanced Extra $549 and Pro PAYG $1,099. Annual billing lowers these to $89, $224, $494 and $989 a month. Enterprise is custom. Prices checked on 28 October 2026.
Is Cloudinary free to use?
Yes, up to 25 credits a month. The free plan needs no card and has no time limit. It has three users and one product environment.
What is a Cloudinary credit?
One credit is 1,000 transformations, or 1 GB of managed storage, or 1 GB of image bandwidth. You can mix them up to your plan's monthly total.
What happens if I use more credits than my plan includes?
On Pro PAYG, credits above 2,750 cost $0.45 each. On the other paid plans Cloudinary warns you and asks you to upgrade, and it can eventually disable the account if you do not.
Does Cloudinary charge for bandwidth?
Yes, through credits. One GB of delivered image bandwidth is one credit. Cloudinary says it counts only net viewing bandwidth, with no extra charge for non-US or HTTPS traffic.
Is there a cheaper alternative to Cloudinary?
It depends on what you use. ImageKit, Cloudflare Images and imgix charge by other units, listed above with their published prices. Flatpix charges a flat monthly price: $39, $99 or $249 a month.
Sources
All pages were read on 28 October 2026. Prices and limits change, so confirm them at the source.
- Cloudinary: Pricing. Plans, prices, credits per plan, users, the credit definition.
- Cloudinary: Compare plans and FAQ. Advanced Extra and Pro, file-size limits, what a monthly transformation is, startup and non-profit discounts.
- Cloudinary: Pricing, a markdown summary. The $0.45 Pro PAYG credit price, the feature table, annual savings of about 10%, the free plan's lack of a time limit. Cloudinary says the live pricing page wins if the two differ.
- Cloudinary docs: Billing and plans. Storage includes cached copies, the rolling 30-day window, what happens over the limit, upgrades, the store example.
- Cloudinary docs: How do Cloudinary credits work?. Credits and the 30-day window.
- Cloudinary docs: Transformation counts. Uploads count, default optimizations,
fl_original, per-second video rates. - ImageKit: Plans and image transformations. Prices, included bandwidth and the URL syntax.
- Cloudflare Images: Pricing and transform via URL. Prices, the free limit and the URL syntax.
- imgix: Pricing. Credit bundles and the trial.