How Much Does It Cost to Host a Static Site on the Cloud?
Static site hosting costs $5-$20/mo at low traffic and $50-$100/mo at 1M+ pageviews, with CDN bandwidth as the main driver. A site serving 1TB/month in bandwidth alone pays $80-$120/month just for delivery.
Static sites and JAMstack applications are the cheapest web architecture to host — but costs still vary between cloud providers, especially as traffic scales. CDN pricing, serverless function costs, and storage fees add up differently on AWS, Azure, and GCP. Use our calculator to find the cheapest option for your static site.
Why Static Sites Are Cheap to Host
Static sites serve pre-built HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files from a CDN — no server-side rendering needed. This means no always-on compute instances, minimal storage requirements (typically under 1 GB), and highly efficient caching. The primary costs are CDN bandwidth and optional serverless functions for dynamic features like forms or authentication.
Static Hosting Options Compared
Free tiers from Vercel, Netlify, and Cloudflare Pages work well for personal projects and small sites. For business and high-traffic sites, cloud provider CDNs (CloudFront, Azure CDN, Cloud CDN) offer more control, better SLAs, and predictable pricing. The cost difference is mainly in egress: AWS CloudFront charges $0.085/GB, Azure CDN around $0.081/GB, and GCP Cloud CDN starts at $0.08/GB for the first 10 TB.
When Static Sites Get Expensive
Static sites become costly at extreme traffic volumes due to CDN egress fees. A site serving 1 TB/month in bandwidth pays $80–$120/month just for delivery. Adding serverless functions for API routes, form handling, or server-side rendering increases costs further. At 10M+ page views/month, careful CDN configuration and caching strategies become critical for cost control.
Key Cost Factors
- CDN: Content delivery and bandwidth (main cost driver)
- Object storage: Hosting HTML, CSS, JS, and media files
- Serverless functions: API routes and dynamic features
- DNS: Domain resolution and health checks
- SSL/TLS: Certificate provisioning and management
- Build pipeline: CI/CD for static site generation
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does static site hosting cost on AWS vs Azure vs GCP?
Costs are close across providers since object storage and CDN pricing are similar: AWS CloudFront charges $0.085/GB, Azure CDN around $0.081/GB, and GCP Cloud CDN starts at $0.08/GB for the first 10TB. At low traffic, expect $5-$20/month on any provider. At 1M+ pageviews with meaningful bandwidth, costs rise to $50-$100/month, and a site serving 1TB/month in bandwidth pays $80-$120/month on delivery alone.
What is the cheapest way to host a static site?
For personal projects and small sites, free tiers from Vercel, Netlify, or Cloudflare Pages are typically cheapest. For business and high-traffic sites needing more control and predictable SLAs, cloud provider CDNs are competitive with each other, and GCP's Cloud CDN has a slight edge on list price for the first 10TB. At extreme scale, careful cache configuration matters more than the provider you pick.
What drives the cost of hosting a static site?
CDN bandwidth is the dominant cost driver since static sites have no always-on compute. Object storage for HTML, CSS, JS, and media files is minimal since most static sites are under 1GB. Serverless functions for dynamic features like forms or authentication add a small but real cost, and DNS and SSL/TLS are typically negligible line items in comparison.
How accurate are these static site cost estimates?
Estimates use published on-demand list prices for AWS, Azure, and GCP CDN and storage services in US regions, last verified 2026-07-15. Real costs depend heavily on your actual traffic and cache hit ratio, which this calculator can't observe directly. Treat the numbers as a provider comparison baseline — full methodology at /methodology.