LearnGlossary

What is egress cost in the cloud?

Updated 26 October 2026 · Published by Zoorik

Egress cost is the fee a cloud charges for data leaving a Region, to the internet or another Region. Data egress is data going out, such as your users’ downloads. Data coming in from the internet (ingress) is free on Azure and AWS.

Egress cost in AWS and Azure

AWS calls egress fees data transfer, and Azure calls them bandwidth.

  • On AWS, the rate depends on the service and the source Region.
  • The egress cost in Azure is charged per GB in tiers, by where the data leaves and how it’s routed.
  • Both give you 100 GB a month out to the internet free (October 2026). Prices change.
  • Between Regions, both charge for data on the way out, not on arrival.
Data in is free, data out is charged Illustration with no prices. A tall box labelled Region A sits on the left. On the right, a box labelled Internet sits on top and a box labelled Region B below it. An arrow from Internet into Region A reads data in (ingress): free. An arrow from Region A out to Internet reads data out (egress): charged, after the first 100 GB a month. An arrow from Region A to Region B reads charged on the way out where it leaves Region A, and free on arrival where it reaches Region B. An amber mark on Region A's edge sits where each of the two outgoing arrows leaves, which is where it is charged. Data in is free, data out is charged Region AInternetRegion Bdata in (ingress): freedata out (egress): chargedafter the first 100 GB a monthcharged on the way outfree on arrival
Illustration with no prices: the amber marks show where data is charged, as it leaves Region A, and the 100 GB a month free allowance is the October 2026 figure on both AWS and Azure.

Cross-AZ data transfer cost: an example

AWS also charges for data between Availability Zones (AZs), the separate locations in one Region. It charges the sender and the receiver, but some services carry it free.

Say your Amazon EKS cluster has nodes in three AZs. By default, Kubernetes spreads Service traffic across pods in every zone. So calls between your pods can cross zones, and AWS charges for them.

Why it matters for your cloud cost

  • You pay per GB moved, so the cost grows with traffic, not machine size.
  • A Service’s trafficDistribution field, generally available since Kubernetes 1.33, can prefer same-zone pods.
  • On EKS, the AWS Load Balancer Controller’s ip mode sends traffic straight to pods, skipping a cross-zone hop.
  • How to reduce cloud costs covers the rest of your cloud cost.
  • The free assessment works out what your clusters and disks could save.

Read next: How to reduce cloud costs

Sources: AWS, “Understanding data transfer charges” (opens in a new tab) (AWS Cost and Usage Reports User Guide); AWS, “Amazon EC2 On-Demand Pricing” (opens in a new tab); Microsoft Azure, “Bandwidth pricing” (opens in a new tab); AWS, “Cost Optimization - Networking” (opens in a new tab) (Amazon EKS Best Practices Guide).

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