Cloudinary
7.2/10Cloudinary is a cloud media platform that stores, transforms, optimizes and delivers images and video through a CDN for developers and marketing teams.
Data last updated November 2026 · Our methodology
Overview
Cloudinary is a cloud service for image and video handling. It covers uploads, storage, on-the-fly transformation, format and quality optimization, and delivery through a CDN. A digital asset management product sits alongside it for content teams. Developers use the Upload, Admin and Provisioning APIs, plus official SDKs for Node.js, Python, PHP, Java, Ruby, .NET, Go, React, Next.js, Vue, Angular, iOS, Android and Flutter. Images and video are changed by setting parameters in the delivery URL. The company was founded in 2012. It reports more than 14,000 brand customers, including adidas, Mattel and Neiman Marcus. Pricing is built on monthly credits. One credit equals 1,000 transformations, 1 GB of managed storage, 1 GB of image bandwidth, or 2 GB of video bandwidth on paid plans. The Free plan includes 25 credits. Plus costs 99 USD a month, or 89 USD a month billed annually, for 225 credits. Advanced costs 249 USD a month, or 224 USD a month billed annually, for 600 credits and adds a custom CNAME domain. Enterprise is custom-priced and adds multi-CDN switching, SSO, enterprise SLAs and a customer success manager. Unused credits do not roll over, and usage above the pool is billed as overage. Paid add-ons such as AI tagging and moderation are only available on Plus and higher. Cloudinary suits e-commerce, media and SaaS teams that serve large numbers of image and video variants. It is not general hosting: it does not run servers, applications or databases. Its main limitation is cost predictability. Reviewers say the credit model is hard to understand at first, storage costs grow over time, and the jump from Free to the 99 USD Plus plan is large.
Our Rating
Marketing7.3/10
Hosting & Infrastructure7.2/10
Who Cloudinary is best for
Best software for DevelopersGood fit
It has broad official SDK coverage, REST APIs and URL-based transformations, all aimed at engineers.
It optimizes and resizes product imagery at scale, and retailers such as adidas and Neiman Marcus are named customers.
The Enterprise plan adds SSO, multi-CDN delivery, SLAs, EEA data residency and security reviews.
The Upload API and widget handle images and video that users upload inside an app.
The DAM product and AI tagging help content teams organize and reuse brand assets.
Less suited
The free 25-credit plan helps early projects, but the jump to the 99 USD Plus plan is steep.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- One credit pool covers storage, bandwidth and transformations, so a spike in one resource can be absorbed without changing plans.
- Images and video can be resized, cropped and reformatted just by changing URL parameters, which saves developers from building their own image pipelines.
- Official SDKs cover backend, frontend and mobile platforms, including Next.js, Flutter and Go.
- Integrated storage, an upload widget and video transcoding cover the whole path from upload to delivery, which imgix does not offer.
- The trust page lists SOC 2 Type II reports audited by Deloitte, a 99.9% uptime commitment and an EEA data residency option for Enterprise.
Cons
- Reviewers often describe the credit pricing as confusing, and some report unexpected overage charges.
- There is no plan between Free and the 99 USD Plus plan, a gap reviewers on Trustpilot and G2 complain about.
- Storage counts against credits every month, so costs rise steadily as the asset library grows.
- Multi-CDN delivery, SSO and formal SLAs are limited to custom-priced Enterprise contracts.
- Unused credits do not roll over, and file-size and seat caps can force an upgrade even when credits remain.
Key Features
Not included
- Managed Databases
- Managed WordPress
- Managed Kubernetes
- Dedicated Servers
- VPS Hosting
- Shared Hosting
Cloudinary Pricing
Free
- MCP server access
- 25 monthly credits
- 3 users, 1 account
- Base features and free add-ons
Plus
or $1,068/year (save 10%)
- Backup to S3
- Role-based admin
- Expedited support
- 225 monthly credits
- 3 users, 2 accounts
- Auto-tagging search
- Paid add-ons available
Advanced
or $2,688/year (save 10%)
- Everything in Plus
- 5 users, 3 accounts
- 600 monthly credits
- Custom CNAME domain
- Authentication options
- Optional HTTPS SSL certificate for custom domain
DAM Enterprise
- AI-powered features
- Content operations and collaboration tools
- 30-day free trial with 25 GB storage and 3 users
Enterprise
- Multi-CDN
- Enterprise SLAs
- Customer success manager
- SSO and provisioning API
- Video bandwidth boost 2:1
- Custom contracts and invoicing
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. The Free plan is free forever with 25 monthly credits, 3 users and access to free add-ons. The DAM product offers a 30-day free trial.
One credit equals 1,000 transformations, 1 GB of managed storage, 1 GB of image bandwidth, or 2 GB of video bandwidth on paid plans.
Yes. Plus drops from 99 to 89 USD a month and Advanced from 249 to 224 USD a month when billed annually.
Standard delivery runs on Fastly. Enterprise customers can switch between multiple CDNs, including Akamai and CloudFront.
Cloudinary publishes SOC 2 Type II reports covering security, availability, privacy and confidentiality. It provides a GDPR data processing agreement, holds ISO 14001, and shows an ISO 27001 seal on its trust page.
Custom CNAME domains and private CDN distributions require the Advanced plan or higher.
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