Platform & DevOps·What the platform costs
the compute was predictable and the surprise on the invoice was gigabytes leaving the provider, at a rate nobody had modelled.
Egress charge
Also calleddata transfer out, bandwidth charge, egress fee
The cost of moving data out of a cloud provider to the internet or to another provider. It is asymmetric — inbound is typically free — which is what makes it both a cost surprise and a genuine lock-in mechanism, since leaving means paying to take your data with you. It also drives architecture: a caching layer or a delivery network in front of heavy outbound traffic is frequently a cost decision rather than a latency one.