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If your workload runs on Google Cloud and serves data through Cloudflare, Akamai, or Fastly, check your calendar. On May 1, 2026, Google Cloud is doubling its CDN Interconnect and peering egress rates across North America, Europe, and Asia. If you haven't modeled what that does to your bill, now is the time.
This post covers exactly what is changing, who gets hit, and the math on what a zero-egress storage alternative looks like against the new rates.
What Google Cloud Is Changing, and What It Isn't?
Google Cloud is raising rates on three specific products: CDN Interconnect, Direct Peering, and Carrier Peering, effective May 1, 2026. Google's stated reason: "significant investments in global infrastructure."
These are the discounted egress lanes, the pricing that sophisticated teams specifically set up to avoid standard internet egress rates when serving traffic through major CDN providers. Standard internet egress rates (what you pay when data goes directly to end users) are not changing on May 1.
The new rates by region:
(Verify current rates at cloud.google.com/vpc/network-pricing)
The North America increase is the sharpest, a clean double. Europe and Asia see meaningful increases that still fall short of standard internet egress rates, but the gap between "discounted peering" and "standard egress" is now much narrower than it was.
Who Actually Gets Hit in terms of Cloud storage?
CDN Interconnect is the product that affects most teams reading this. When you serve objects from Google Cloud Storage through Cloudflare, Akamai, or Fastly, GCP automatically applies CDN Interconnect rates to that traffic because it recognizes CDN provider IP ranges. You don't have to configure anything, it just applies. Which also means the May 1 rate increase applies automatically, with no action required on your part and no opt-out.
If your architecture looks like this, GCS as origin, CDN at the edge, your egress costs on that traffic just doubled in North America. The CDN itself doesn't change. Your bill from Google does.
Direct Peering affects large networks with 10+ Gbps sustained traffic and direct BGP sessions to Google, primarily carriers, ISPs, and large enterprises managing their own network infrastructure.
Carrier Peering affects carriers and ISPs who peer with Google. Cost increases here typically flow downstream to their customers over time.
For most AI teams and data-intensive startups, CDN Interconnect is the one that matters.
The Math of GCP Storage Cost : Before and After May 1
Take a Series A AI startup, call them Waveline, running a data-serving API and model-output CDN on GCP in North America:
- 50TB stored on GCS Standard
- 30TB monthly egress through Cloudflare (CDN Interconnect traffic, model outputs, datasets, API responses served at the edge)
- 5TB direct internet egress (API calls not going through CDN)
Monthly storage cost before May 1:
Monthly storage cost after May 1, 2026:
Automatic bill increase: $1,200/month. $14,400/year. For the same workload, same usage, same CDN.
What a Zero-Egress Alternative to GCP Looks Like?
Akave Cloud charges $14.99/TB/month for object storage, and zero for egress, regardless of destination, volume, or CDN provider. No CDN Interconnect rate, no standard internet egress rate, no tiered pricing that changes as usage scales.
Same Waveline workload on Akave:
Compared to Waveline's post-May-1 GCS bill of $4,000/month, that's a difference of $3,250/month, or $39,006/year on the storage and egress lines alone.
A few things worth being explicit about: Akave is S3-compatible, so existing pipelines connecting to GCS via standard S3 API calls can redirect to Akave with an endpoint and credential change. For standard object storage workloads, storing model artifacts, datasets, and API response payloads, this is typically an hours-to-days migration. Teams using GCS-native features (Pub/Sub notifications on bucket events, KMS-managed encryption, GCS-specific lifecycle rules) need to account for those components separately.
Akave is not a CDN replacement. It replaces GCS as the origin, eliminating the egress charge between your storage layer and wherever data goes next, whether that's a CDN edge network, a compute cluster, or a direct API consumer.
The Bigger Pattern with hyperclouds
This is not the first time GCP has raised egress rates, and the CDN Interconnect discount has always existed partly as a competitive tool, a way to keep data-heavy workloads on GCP infrastructure by making egress slightly less painful than it otherwise would be. Doubling those rates signals that Google no longer needs to compete as aggressively on that particular pricing lever.
The practical consequence: every time a major cloud provider tightens their discount lanes, the economic case for provider-neutral storage, storage that doesn't bill per-GB on egress regardless of who raises what rate next month, gets stronger. The May 1 increase doesn't change the structural argument. It just makes the numbers sharper.
When Does This Matter, and When It Doesn't
This rate change is most impactful for teams with high CDN-origin egress volume on GCP in North America. If your workload is primarily compute-bound with low data transfer volume, or if you're already on standard internet egress (not CDN Interconnect), May 1 doesn't move your bill.
If you're serving model outputs, large datasets, or API response payloads through Cloudflare, Akamai, or Fastly from a GCS origin, especially at 10TB+ monthly egress, this is worth running the numbers on now, before May 1, rather than after you've seen the first higher invoice.
FAQ
What exactly is changing on May 1, 2026?
Google Cloud is raising egress rates for CDN Interconnect, Direct Peering, and Carrier Peering. CDN Interconnect rates in North America double from $0.04/GB to $0.08/GB. Europe goes from $0.05/GB to $0.08/GB (+60%) and Asia from $0.06/GB to $0.085/GB (+42%). Standard internet egress rates are not changing on May 1. Verify current rates at cloud.google.com/vpc/network-pricing.
Will my bill automatically go up on May 1?
Yes, if your workload uses CDN Interconnect, Direct Peering, or Carrier Peering. CDN Interconnect applies automatically when GCP identifies traffic going to allowlisted CDN providers (Cloudflare, Akamai, Fastly), you don't configure it manually. That means the rate increase also applies automatically, with no action required and no opt-out available within GCP.
What is CDN Interconnect and why does it matter?
CDN Interconnect is a discounted egress pricing tier that Google applies when data from GCS is served through major CDN providers. Instead of paying standard internet egress rates (~$0.12/GB), teams using Cloudflare, Akamai, or Fastly as their CDN have historically paid the lower CDN Interconnect rate. After May 1, that discounted rate in North America doubles from $0.04/GB to $0.08/GB, narrowing the gap between the discount lane and standard egress significantly.
How does Akave Cloud handle egress fees?
Akave charges $14.99/TB/month for object storage with zero egress fees. No CDN Interconnect tier, no standard internet egress rate, no per-GB charge regardless of how much data moves or where it goes. Because Akave is S3-compatible, connecting a CDN like Cloudflare to Akave as the origin, instead of GCS, eliminates the egress component of the GCS bill entirely.
Should I migrate before May 1?
If you have significant CDN-origin egress volume on GCP in North America, running the numbers before May 1 is worthwhile. A pre-May-1 migration to zero-egress storage means you avoid the rate increase entirely rather than paying the higher rate and migrating later. For standard S3 workloads, migration time is typically hours to days. The bigger question is whether your architecture uses GCS-native features that require additional migration planning beyond the storage layer itself.
Isn't this only affecting peering, not regular egress?
Correct, standard internet egress rates are unchanged on May 1. But for teams specifically using CDN Interconnect (the majority of GCP customers serving content through major CDN providers), "only peering" is exactly the egress lane that was making GCS economically viable for high-volume serving workloads. Doubling the discounted rate is the increase that matters most for data-heavy architectures.
Run Your Own Numbers
Model the impact of the May 1 rate change on your workload at akave.com/pricing.
Start a free trial at akave.com/free-trial or review the migration guide from GCS at akave.com/blog/how-to-migrate-from-aws-gcp-azure-to-akave-cloud-using-rclone.
Further Reading
- Cloud Egress Fees Explained: Azure vs Google Cloud vs Akave, full side-by-side egress fee comparison, now updated with May 2026 GCP rates
- The Egress Fee Trap: How Hidden Costs Sabotage AI Economics, the structural case against per-GB egress pricing
- Cloudflare R2 vs AWS S3 vs Akave Cloud, how zero-egress providers compare on storage, performance, and guarantees