Bunny Stream doesn't have a free tier in the traditional sense — it has a 14-day free trial (no credit card required) and then a pay-as-you-go model, 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 less polished than Mux for projects that need per-viewer analytics or tightly integrated signed playback.
Here are the published list rates at the time of writing (check bunny.net/pricing before you budget — they change):
| Item | Price |
|---|---|
| Storage | from $0.01 / GB / month (per replication region) |
| Bandwidth (EU/North America, standard network) | $0.01 / GB |
| Bandwidth (Asia/Oceania) | $0.03 / GB |
| Bandwidth (South America) | $0.045 / GB |
| Bandwidth (Middle East/Africa) | $0.06 / GB |
| Encoding | Free |
| Trial | 14 days, no card required |
| Monthly minimum | $1 |
Bandwidth is where the bill comes from. A single 10-minute 1080p video sits at roughly 800 MB once stored — under $0.01/month. Serve it to 1,000 viewers watching half of it (5 minutes at 360p–720p ≈ 150 MB each) and that's ~150 GB delivered, roughly $1.50 in EU/US bandwidth.
What triggers an upgrade from the trial
Bunny Stream has no free ongoing tier. After the 14-day trial, you're billed monthly based on usage (with a $1 monthly minimum). There's no threshold that unlocks features — encoding, API access, and HLS delivery are available from day one. The upgrade trigger is simply the trial ending.
What changes as you scale:
- Volume network pricing — Bunny's cheaper Volume tier (fewer PoPs, from $0.005/GB) becomes worth it at high bandwidth.
- 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 allowance | 14-day trial | 100,000 delivery minutes/month free | 25 monthly credits (Free plan) |
| Pricing unit | Per GB | Per minute (stored / delivered) | Credits (1 GB storage or 1 GB bandwidth each) |
| Storage cost | from $0.01/GB/month | from $0.003/min/month (1080p) | Credits |
| Delivery cost | $0.01–$0.06/GB | from $0.001/min watched | Credits |
| Encoding cost | Free | Free (basic quality, on-demand) | Credits (transformations) |
| Signed URLs / DRM | Token auth + MediaCage DRM | Signed URLs included; DRM add-on | Signed URLs (check plan for DRM) |
| Per-viewer data | No | Yes (Mux Data) | No |
| Sanity plugin | Community | Official | Official |
Mux wins on analytics and developer ergonomics. 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 — but Mux prices per minute rather than per GB, and its 100,000 free delivery minutes a month absorb a lot of small-to-medium traffic, so run your own numbers through both calculators.
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 deep analytics. If you're embedding public marketing videos and don't need per-viewer playback data, 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 gated content wired tightly into your app. Bunny does offer embed-token and CDN-token authentication plus MediaCage DRM, but if you're using your own player you're managing pull-zone token signing yourself — Mux's signed playback IDs are simpler to integrate.
- 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 |
These are rough estimates driven almost entirely by bandwidth and audience geography. At the course platform level, Mux's per-viewer data and simpler signed playback can 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 per-viewer data or an official Sanity plugin. The 14-day trial is enough to test — 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.
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