The cheapest video hosting API in 2026, honestly compared
There is no single cheapest video API, because every option except one bills for delivery, so the right answer depends on how much your content gets watched. Here is the honest landscape in 2026.
Bunny Stream: cheapest pay-as-you-go
Credit where it is due. Bunny is the lowest pay-as-you-go price among the metered players, roughly $0.005 per GB stored and $0.01 per GB delivered. For modest, predictable viewership it is hard to beat on raw price. The catch is the same as everyone else: delivery still scales with views. See the Bunny Stream alternative for where the crossover happens.
Cloudflare Stream: simplest
A flat $5 per 1,000 minutes stored and $1 per 1,000 minutes delivered, with no hidden egress underneath. Refreshingly simple, but the delivered-minutes meter still grows with your audience. More on the Cloudflare Stream alternative.
Mux: best data, premium price
Premium developer experience and the best analytics, with delivery metered per minute by resolution. Generous free delivery tier, then it scales. Details on the Mux alternative.
Self-hosting: looks cheap, is not
S3 plus CloudFront looks cheap until egress at about $0.085 per GB shows up, and you still have to build transcoding, a player, and signed playback yourself. For most teams the engineering time alone outweighs the savings.
Reelm: cheapest when views are high
Reelm charges for storage and streams for free. At very low volume a metered option like Bunny can be cheaper, and we will say so. But the more your views grow relative to your storage, the more a flat $0 delivery wins, and unlike everyone else, your bill never moves when a video goes viral. Run your real numbers through the cost calculator to see which side of the line you are on.