How Prisma saved 98% on distribution costs with Cloudflare R2

The Prisma ORM team recently transitioned their engine distribution from AWS S3 and CloudFront to Cloudflare's R2 product for significant cost savings without compromising on performance or latency. They started by evaluating GitHub Releases, npm, CDNs, and Cloudflare as potential distribution channels. Ultimately, they chose to move their engine files to Cloudflare R2 due to its compatibility with S3 and the potential for an estimated 70% cost reduction compared to using AWS S3 + CloudFront. To ensure a smooth transition without any disruption or impact on users, Prisma modified their release pipeline and established monitoring checks. They also used DNS load balancing to gradually increase traffic routed to R2 while keeping a fallback in place, just in case. The rollout went smoothly, with no reported issues from users, and they now enjoy 98% lower costs for engine distribution.