Cheapest bandwidth is not cheapest CDN

Cheapest bandwidth is not cheapest CDN
A Warsaw video host chose a provider purely on the lowest per-GB rate, certain bandwidth was the only cost that mattered. The first invoice was triple the estimate.
The myth: optimize for the per-GB price. The reality: the cheap provider charged separately for HTTPS requests, and their tiny video chunks meant 40 million requests a day. Request fees dwarfed the bandwidth line.
What we changed: we moved to a provider with bundled requests, increased segment size from 2s to 6s to cut request count, and pushed cache-hit to 96% so origin egress nearly vanished.
Result: requests dropped 66%, the monthly bill fell from $4,100 to $1,500, and Warsaw rebuffering dropped too.
Read the whole price sheet. Request fees and origin egress sink the cheap-GB deal.
The number that mattered: $1,500/month, down from $4,100.