Cloudinary

Storage 4.3/10

Image and video storage, transformation, and CDN delivery platform with a forever-free plan of 25 monthly credits and no credit card required.

Cloudinary scores 4.3/10 for free value in Storage. The main constraint: Free forever plan: 25 monthly credits (1 credit = ~1GB storage, ~1GB bandwidth, or ~1,000 transformations), 3 users, 1 account. No credit card required.

Category Storage Kind Media storage, transformation & CDN Caveats The 25-credit pool is shared across storage, bandwidth, and transformations, so heavy usage in one dimension drains the others. Custom domains and advanced auth require paid plans. Renewal monthly Card required No Eligibility anyone

Free value score

4.3 / 10

Show the math

Overall 4.3/10

value = 4.3/100

weighted_components_v1

Storage value 1/10

value = 0.01 $/mo

fixed_log_v1

Egress/API fit 7/10

value = 7/100

policy_score_v1

Access friction 8.3/10

value = 8.3/100

policy_score_v1

Key metrics

25 GB Storage shared credit pool

25 GB/mo Free egress shared credit pool

n/a Write ops credit-based, not object ops

n/a Read ops credit-based, not object ops

What you get

25 monthly credits free forever, no credit card

Credits flexibly cover storage, bandwidth, or transformations

Built-in CDN delivery, image/video transcoding, and upload widget

Access to free add-ons and MCP servers

Limitations

25 monthly credits

Free plan provides 25 credits per month that reset each cycle; 1 credit covers roughly 1 GB storage, 1 GB bandwidth, or 1,000 transformations.
1 account, 3 users

The free tier is limited to a single Cloudinary account with a maximum of 3 user seats.
No custom domain (CNAME)

Custom domain (CNAME) support is gated behind the Advanced ($224/mo) plan and above; free users must use Cloudinary's res.cloudinary.com subdomain.
No own-S3 backup

Backing up media assets to your own S3 bucket requires the Plus plan or higher.
No advanced auth options

Authentication options (token-based signed URLs, allowlists/blocklists beyond basic) are restricted to paid plans.
Limited add-on access

Only free add-ons are accessible; paid add-ons (background removal, auto-tagging search, etc.) require a paid plan.
No paid-tier support SLA

Free users are limited to community forums, tickets, and email support with no expedited or dedicated support.

Sources

"3 Users / 1 Account 25 monthly credits ... $0 Free forever No cc required"
https://cloudinary.com/pricing
"One credit can be used for: 1000 transformations ... 1 GB of managed storage ... 1 GB of delivered bandwidth"
https://cloudinary.com/documentation/developer_onboarding_faq_credits
"Transformations and bandwidth are measured over a rolling 30-day window, not a monthly calendar reset. ... It never resets to zero at the start of a calendar month"
https://cloudinary.com/documentation/developer_onboarding_faq_credits
"Cloudinary's free tier allows 500 requests per hour – enough for a small project to work without issue but not enough to warrant potential misuse."
https://cloudinary.com/glossary/rate-limit
"As of today, 3 million developers build with Cloudinary. accomplished in only 15 months, a new user signed up every 35 seconds!"
https://cloudinary.com/blog/3-million-developers-thank-you-for-building-with-us

media-storage image-cdn video transformations credits

Open service Source ← All Storage