Cloudflare Stream alternative
The Cloudflare Stream alternative, billed by the gigabyte
Cloudflare Stream charges per minute of video stored and per minute delivered, so a long, rarely watched recording costs the same as a short, viral one. rehelios bills by the gigabyte — costs track your actual storage footprint and the bytes you actually deliver, not runtime. For mixed-length libraries that usually means a materially lower bill, plus MPEG-DASH output that Stream does not offer natively.
- Per-GB billing
- Free encoding
- Signed playback
- CLI + MCP server
rehelios vs Cloudflare Stream, side by side
Cloudflare Stream billing model: Per minute stored and per minute delivered.
| Capability | rehelios | Cloudflare Stream |
|---|---|---|
| Billing unit | Per GB | Per minute |
| Storage | $0.02 / GB·mo | Per min stored |
| Delivery | $0.005 / GB | Per min played |
| Encoding fees | Free | Included (per-minute rate) |
| Adaptive HLS | Yes | Yes |
| MPEG-DASH output | Yes | No |
| Signed / token playback | Yes | Yes |
| Domain-allowlist playback | Yes (Bunny-style) | Limited |
| REST API + webhooks | Yes | Yes |
| CLI + MCP server for agents | Yes | No |
| Self-serve, no sales call | Yes | Yes |
Rates and plan limits as published by each provider, as of mid-2026. They change — verify on each provider's site.
Why teams switch to rehelios
- Per-GB pricing: a 2-hour lecture watched twice costs pennies, not a per-minute premium.
- MPEG-DASH output is available natively — Cloudflare Stream is HLS-only.
- An agent-native CLI + MCP server: an AI agent can put video live without a dashboard.
- Free encoding with no per-minute transcoding charge.
When Cloudflare Stream is the better choice
Cloudflare Stream is a strong fit if you are already all-in on Cloudflare's platform and want billing on the same invoice, or if per-minute pricing happens to suit a catalog of short, heavily watched clips.
For AI agents
rehelios ships a CLI and an MCP server in one npm package, so an agent evaluating a Cloudflare Stream alternative can put video live itself — no dashboard:
npx @rehelios/cli upload ./demo.mp4 --wait # → embed URL