# Cloudflare R2 85 Hacker News commenters recommended Cloudflare R2 and 14 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** S3-compatible object storage with no egress fees, low prices and a generous free tier. Critics point to higher, less predictable latency than S3. ## Why people recommend it - No egress fees (11 comments): "R2 also has very generous egress: completely free outbound data transfer with no bandwidth charges" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47699593)) "There's no egress data transfer fees, but you still pay for the GET request operations." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45778926)) "Cloudflare's r2 which is basically S3 with no egress fees (as in no charge for reads)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47277040)) - Low storage and operation costs (7 comments): "I am serving models off Cloudflare R2. It is 1 petabyte per month in egress use and I basically pay peanuts" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47090283)) "Slightly higher latency. I've seen about 20-30% increase from S3 to R2. But the bill is magnitudes lower." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45798480)) "I've saved plenty of money by migrating from AWS S3 to Cloudflare's R2" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47794330)) - Generous free tier (5 comments): "I was impressed to see how far I could get with the free tiers of these services." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48833944)) "the free tier is already more than enough for a personal ebook library" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49429741)) "The zero egress cost is big and IMO their free tier is very generous." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47703638)) - S3-compatible, easy to switch (3 comments): "There are actually a lot of cheaper S3-compatible services out there, (like Backblaze B2, or Cloudflare R2)." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47773299)) "R2 is somewhat S3 compatible so it's less risky to use because I can swap providers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49183894)) "I've saved plenty of money by migrating from AWS S3 to Cloudflare's R2" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47794330)) ## What people warn about - Higher, variable latency than S3 (4 comments): "Slightly higher latency. I've seen about 20-30% increase from S3 to R2. But the bill is magnitudes lower." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45798480)) "R2 in particular has been the slowest / highest latency s3 alternative I ever had experience with" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46445156)) "R2 is very high latency with huge variance, definitely lower quality than S3." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45798127)) - Unresponsive support during problems (3 comments): "support was unhelpful in being able to explain anything AND took weeks to reply, and I had to move off R2 posthaste as it brought down production" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49880324)) "I briefly tried R2 and there were so many issues and absolutely no way to contact anyone at Cloudflare about it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49224582)) "it was impossible to contact anyone about the serious issues I had with the product" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46876871)) - Charges per read and write operation (2 comments): "There's no egress data transfer fees, but you still pay for the GET request operations." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45778926)) "Well actually you do get charged based on operations like reading and writing." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47428896)) - Free pricing may not last (3 comments): "I would not trust any business on the assumption Cloudflare keeps their stuff available for free." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50133698)) "free egress only until Cloudflare’s enterprise sales team sets its sights on your wallet" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49462419)) "there are egress charges to download R2 object storage" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47609836)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Amazon S3](https://hackerapproved.com/p/amazon-s3.md): 170 recommend - [Backblaze B2](https://hackerapproved.com/p/backblaze-b2.md): 50 recommend - [AWS S3](https://hackerapproved.com/p/aws-s3.md): 17 recommend - [Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive](https://hackerapproved.com/p/amazon-s3-glacier-deep-archive.md): 16 recommend - [Wasabi object storage](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wasabi.md): 10 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://www.cloudflare.com/products/r2/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Cloudflare R2", https://hackerapproved.com/p/cloudflare-r2/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).