Honest comparison + a third option worth considering
Cloudflare Stream integrates with the broader Cloudflare platform and supports live streaming. Bunny Stream is cheaper for most workloads and offers a stronger global CDN with more points of presence. Both are infrastructure tools with minimal analytics and no marketing features.
Cloudflare Stream is a serverless video product within the Cloudflare developer platform. It handles encoding, storage, and delivery in a single pipeline with per-minute pricing. It supports live streaming and signed URLs for access control. Stream is a small add-on within the larger Cloudflare platform.
Bunny Stream is part of Bunny.net, an EU-headquartered CDN and infrastructure company. It offers video encoding, storage, and delivery with pay-as-you-go per-GB pricing. It has 119+ points of presence, a customizable player, and supports TUS resumable uploads. It does not offer live streaming.
| Feature | Cloudflare Stream | Bunny Stream |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | $5/1,000 min stored. $1/1,000 min delivered. | $0.01/GB/mo storage. $0.01/GB delivery. $1 minimum. |
| Live streaming | Supported, but users report buffering and latency issues | Not available |
| CDN infrastructure | Cloudflare global network | 119+ PoPs, 250 Tbps+ backbone, sub-29ms average global latency |
| Analytics | Minimal. Client-side only. GraphQL limited to 1-month windows. | Basic: view count, geography, bandwidth. No per-viewer data. |
| Access control | Signed URLs (requires your own auth system) | Token auth, hotlinking protection, domain restrictions |
| DRM | Not natively available | Optional MediaCage DRM add-on at $99/mo |
| Player | Basic HTML5 player, limited customization | Customizable lightweight player |
| Ecosystem lock-in | Benefits from broader Cloudflare platform (Workers, R2, etc.) | Standalone. No S3 API support creates some migration friction. |
Choose Cloudflare Stream if you are already invested in the Cloudflare ecosystem and want video to integrate with Workers, R2, and your existing security rules. Stream also makes sense if you need live streaming. The per-minute pricing is straightforward though not the cheapest. Be aware of the limited analytics and sparse documentation.
Choose Bunny Stream if cost is the priority and you do not need live streaming. Bunny offers the most transparent, cheapest video infrastructure pricing in the market. Its CDN performance is excellent with more edge locations than most competitors. The tradeoffs are no live streaming, basic analytics, and a small team. For straightforward VOD delivery at the lowest possible cost, Bunny is hard to beat.
If neither feels right, consider Host Video. Both Cloudflare Stream and Bunny Stream are bare-bones infrastructure that require you to build everything on top: the dashboard, the player experience, the organization system. Host Video provides all of that out of the box with predictable pricing: Starter at $20/mo, Business at $100/mo, Custom from $5,000/yr. Intelligent search means your team can find any moment in any video without manual tagging. The modern interface is designed for people, not just developers.
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