Cloudflare R2 Storage allows developers to store large amounts of unstructured data

Cloudflare announced Cloudflare R2 Storage, a solution for developers to store everything they need with automatic migration of data from S3-compatible services to make switching easy. Cloudflare R2 Storage, designed for the edge, will offer the ability to store large amounts of data, expanding what’s possible with Cloudflare while slashing the egress bandwidth fees associated with cloud provider storage to zero.

In order to build websites and applications, developers need a place to store photos, videos, and graphics that is quickly and easily accessible. When cloud storage first evolved it was a huge step forward in terms of providing that fast, flexible, and scalable storage for developers.

However, increasingly egregious bandwidth pricing has made cloud storage an expensive headache for some developers, resulting in vendor lock-in. Cloudflare’s mission is to help build a better Internet, which means the company is focused on making the Internet faster, safer, and also more affordable for everyone.

“Since AWS launched S3, cloud storage has attracted, and then locked in, developers with exorbitant egress fees,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. “We want developers to keep developing, not worrying about their storage bill. Our aim is to make R2 Storage the least expensive, most reliable option for storing data, with no egress charges. I’m constantly amazed by what developers are building on our platform, and look forward to continued innovation as we expand the tools they have access to.”

Cloudflare took the first step to address egregious egress charges in 2018 by creating the Bandwidth Alliance, a group of forward-thinking cloud and networking companies that are committed to discounting or waiving data transfer fees for shared customers. Cloudflare R2 Storage will push this commitment even further, adding automatic migration of data from S3-compatible services and providing developers a highly performant, object store — minus the egress fees.

Cloudflare’s R2 Storage will allow developers to:

• Slash their cloud provider egress and storage bills: Cloudflare’s goal is to make R2 Storage the least expensive option for performant object storage, no matter the scale. That’s why Cloudflare plans to eliminate egress fees, deliver object storage that is at least 10% cheaper than S3, and make infrequent access completely free for customers.
• Take advantage of the performance of object storage built with Cloudflare’s edge network: By leveraging Cloudflare Workers and Durable Objects, R2 will provide low latency, high throughput storage for the most demanding applications.
• Migrate data automatically from other providers to Cloudflare: Cloudflare R2 Storage will include automatic migration from other S3-compatible cloud storage services that migrate data from providers as it’s requested, making saving on egress bandwidth bills as easy as setting a target bucket.
• Store application data wherever you need to across the globe: R2 will replicate data across multiple regions and support jurisdictional restrictions, giving businesses the ability to control where their data is stored to meet their local and global needs.
• Unlock the power and scale of Cloudflare Workers within their applications: R2 Storage will be fully integrated with the Cloudflare Workers runtime, making building data pipelines and manipulating objects incredibly easy.