Bunny Stream Pricing 2026: Free Trial Limits, Storage Costs & When to Upgrade
By Nayan Kyada · · 5 min read
Part of The Sanity + Next.js Guide
Bunny Stream doesn't have a free tier in the traditional sense — it has a pay-as-you-go model with a $1 trial credit, which catches a lot of developers off guard when they're budgeting for a Sanity + Next.js video stack. If you're evaluating Bunny Stream against Mux or Cloudinary Video for a content site, this is the cost breakdown you actually need.
How Bunny Stream pricing works
Bunny Stream charges on two axes: storage and bandwidth (egress). There's no monthly seat fee and no document limit — just consumption. That makes it attractive for high-traffic sites with predictable video inventories, and awkward for projects that need per-user signed streams or adaptive bitrate with DRM.
Here are the published rates as of September 2026:
| Item | Price |
|---|---|
| Storage | $0.005 / GB / month |
| Bandwidth (EU/US) | $0.01 / GB |
| Bandwidth (Asia/Oceania) | $0.03 / GB |
| Bandwidth (South America) | $0.045 / GB |
| Encoding (720p) | $0.006 / minute of source |
| Encoding (1080p) | $0.012 / minute of source |
| Encoding (4K) | $0.036 / minute of source |
| Trial credit | $1.00 (no card required to start) |
The trial credit runs out fast. A single 10-minute 1080p video encodes to roughly $0.12 and sits at around 800 MB after encoding — another $0.004/month in storage. Serve that file to 1,000 viewers watching half of it (5 minutes × average 360p–720p = ~150 MB delivered) and you're at roughly $1.50 in bandwidth. The $1 trial is gone in one real test.
What triggers an upgrade from the trial
Bunny Stream has no free ongoing tier. After the $1 credit, you're billed monthly based on usage. There's no threshold that unlocks features — encoding quality, API access, and HLS delivery are available from day one. The upgrade trigger is simply burning through the credit.
What changes as you scale:
- Volume discounts kick in automatically at 100 TB/month bandwidth (negotiated rates).
- Bunny CDN pull zones can be configured separately, which adds complexity but cuts costs for very high-traffic regions.
- Dedicated storage replicas are a paid add-on if you need geographic redundancy beyond their default setup.
For a typical Sanity + Next.js marketing site with 20–50 embedded videos, monthly spend lands in the $15–$40 range — mostly bandwidth-driven by your traffic geography.
Bunny Stream vs Mux vs Cloudinary: honest cost comparison
This is the comparison that actually matters for a Next.js video stack. All three integrate with Sanity and deliver HLS, but pricing models differ enough to change the decision depending on your use case.
| Bunny Stream | Mux | Cloudinary Video | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | $1 trial only | 10,000 encoding minutes/month free | 25 GB storage + 25 GB bandwidth free |
| Storage cost | $0.005/GB/month | $0.006/GB/month | Included in quota |
| Bandwidth cost | $0.01–$0.045/GB | $0.0025–$0.01/GB | $0.02/GB after quota |
| Encoding cost | $0.006–$0.036/min | $0.015/min (720p input) | Per transformation |
| Signed URLs / DRM | No native DRM | Yes (Token Auth) | Yes |
| Per-viewer data | No | Yes (Mux Data) | No |
| Sanity plugin | Community | Official | Official |
Mux wins on analytics and DRM. Cloudinary wins if you're already using it for images and want a single vendor. Bunny Stream wins on raw bandwidth cost for EU/US traffic — $0.01/GB versus Mux's $0.0025 sounds close until you realise Mux's free 10,000 minutes absorbs most small-to-medium catalogs.
When Bunny Stream makes sense
Bunny Stream earns its place in a few specific situations:
High-volume EU/US traffic, static catalog. If you have 500+ videos that don't change often and your audience is in Europe or North America, Bunny's storage + bandwidth math beats Mux for pure cost. No per-minute encoding overhead on existing assets.
No need for analytics or DRM. If you're embedding public marketing videos and don't need per-viewer playback data or signed stream protection, you're paying for capabilities you don't need with Mux.
Already using BunnyCDN. If your CDN is Bunny, consolidating video there cuts the operational surface and gives you a unified billing dashboard.
When to skip it
Don't use Bunny Stream if:
- You need signed HLS for gated content. Bunny doesn't support token-based playback protection without routing through their CDN pullzone with signed URL hacks — it's messy.
- You're building a Sanity + Mux setup and want the official plugin and typed webhook payloads. The Mux Sanity plugin is maintained and gives you asset state management out of the box.
- Your audience is primarily in South America or Southeast Asia. At $0.045/GB, Bunny's regional bandwidth is expensive — Cloudinary or a self-hosted solution on a regional CDN is cheaper.
Realistic monthly cost at different scales
| Site profile | Videos | Monthly views | Est. Bunny cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small marketing site | 10 | 2,000 | ~$4–$8 |
| Mid-size blog | 50 | 20,000 | ~$25–$50 |
| Course platform (public) | 200 | 100,000 | ~$150–$300 |
| Media/news site | 1,000 | 500,000 | ~$600–$1,200 |
At the course platform level, Mux's per-viewer data and DRM justify the premium. Below that, Bunny is genuinely competitive if you can live without analytics.
The short version
Bunny Stream is the right call when you want cheap, fast public video delivery in EU/US and you don't need DRM, per-viewer data, or an official Sanity plugin. The $1 trial is mostly symbolic — budget from day one as a pay-as-you-go service. For anything requiring signed playback or detailed analytics, Mux is worth the premium. For teams already on Cloudinary for image delivery, adding video to the same account simplifies billing and keeps transformation logic in one place.