Your audience grew 3×. So did your video bill. It shouldn't have.
When a managed platform marks up every gigabyte, success is taxed at a constant rate. The audience tripled; the value you got from your vendor didn't.
The cost structure
Why the bill tracks your growth instead of your vendor's costs
Three properties of the markup model explain most of the pain.
Markup compounds
Per-gigabyte storage and delivery markup means your bill grows linearly with success, even though the vendor's own cost per gigabyte does not.
A flat fee plus your own rates
NULX bills the selected plan and actual video processing. Cloudflare bills R2 storage and operations directly, while direct internet egress from R2 is $0.
Growth without renegotiation
More plays alone do not trigger an automatic NULX plan change. Only processing you run, such as encoding and captions, adds metered charges.
Leaving is the real test
Lock-in is a custody problem, not a contract problem
Sources and standard HLS, DASH, and WebVTT outputs in customer R2 reduce the need to download or re-encode media. Domains, membership and billing data, and service metadata still need migration work.
File ownership does not erase exit cost; it gives the migration a better starting point.
Run your numbers
Model your growth against the flat fee
The cost calculator compares your viewing volume against the flat fee and cloud-direct rates.
Open the cost calculator