How Much Does IPFS Cost? Pinning and Gateway Prices in 2026

IPFS itself costs nothing, since the software is free and there is no network fee. You pay to keep files online, on your own node or through a pinning service. On AIOZ Pin that means $20 per TB per month for storage and $20 per TB for bandwidth.

TL;DR:

• The IPFS protocol is free; your cost is the disk, bandwidth and uptime that keep a CID reachable
• Self-hosting means paying for a machine (Kubo recommends at least 6 GB of RAM and 2 CPU cores), its storage, its traffic and your time
• Pinning services price the same three things differently: AIOZ Pin is pay-as-you-go with no monthly minimum, while Pinata and Filebase sell monthly plans with included allowances
• For 100 GB stored, 500 GB served and 50,000 files, our arithmetic from list prices gives about $13 on AIOZ Pin, $20 on Pinata Picnic and $11.25 on Filebase Pro
• AIOZ Pin bills daily from a wallet you fund with AIOZ tokens, and the first 40,000 pinned files are free

Updated Oct 19, 2026: rewritten to answer how much IPFS costs, with self-hosting cost drivers, competitor list prices checked on their pricing pages today, and worked examples.

Is IPFS Free to Use?

The protocol and the main implementations are free and open source, and nobody charges you for adding a file or looking up a CID. The catch is that IPFS has no built-in payment for storage. A file stays reachable only while at least one node keeps its blocks and announces them.

So the real question is who runs that node and what it costs them. You can run it yourself, rely on a free tier, or pay a pinning service. Each option charges you, in money or in work, for the same three things: storage, bandwidth and uptime.

What Does Self-Hosting IPFS Cost?

Running your own Kubo node looks free until you count the parts. The Kubo README recommends at least 6 GB of RAM and 2 CPU cores, and it warns that machines below that may crash, restart or miss data announcements. That last failure can make your data partly or fully unreachable to other peers.

Large pin sets need more, and the same README estimates about 1 GiB of extra RAM per 20 million items for reproviding to the Amino DHT. A node with many small files grows its memory bill as well as its disk.

Then add the parts no README can price for you:

• Disk for every pinned file, plus room to spare, since garbage collection only frees unpinned blocks
• Outbound traffic, which on most clouds is billed per GB and grows with every gateway request
• Uptime, because a node that goes offline takes its pins with it unless another node has a copy
• Your time for upgrades, monitoring and the occasional repo repair

Self-hosting makes sense when you already run servers or want full control of your data. If a missed upgrade or a full disk would take your NFT images offline, the service fee is usually cheaper than the risk.

What Pinning Services Charge in 2026

We took these list prices from each provider's own pricing page on Oct 19, 2026, and plans change, so check the page before you commit.

Pinata also counts requests: Picnic includes 1 million and charges $0.20 per 10,000 after that, while Fiesta includes 5 million at $0.15 per 10,000. AIOZ Pin's payment page lists no request fee, and Filebase Pro lists its API requests as unlimited for normal use.

Which IPFS Option Is Cheapest?

It depends on how much you store and serve, so here are two usage levels worked out from the list prices above. The arithmetic is ours, assumes a 30-day month and counts 1 TB as 1,000 GB.

On these numbers, Filebase Pro is the cheapest at both levels, AIOZ Pin sits in the middle, and Pinata costs the most unless you fill its bundles. AIOZ Pin's edge is that you pay nothing when usage is low, with no plan to outgrow and a bill that follows your daily usage. If you pin millions of tiny files, the per-file fee matters more, and our 40,000 free files run out fast.

The tables cover list prices only, not speed, features or support. The AIOZ Pin docs also don't state whether the $0.10 file fee repeats every month, so we counted it once.

How AIOZ Pin Handles It

When you create an AIOZ Pin account, the service generates a wallet address that only accepts AIOZ tokens. A deposit must be more than 0.01 AIOZ to count toward your balance, and it converts to credit at the AIOZ/USDT market rate at the moment you deposit.

Billing then runs daily: the payment page divides the $20 per TB monthly storage rate by the days in the month and does the same for bandwidth. Your usage comes out of the balance each day. You can watch the running total in the History Usage tab or through the billing API, which the docs show like this:

GET https://api.aiozpin.network/api/billing/thisMonthUsage
// result.data: { total_storage, storage_usage, bandwidth_usage, storage_cost, bandwidth_cost }

Here is the first example above as daily charges. 100 GB is 0.1 TB, so storage costs $2 a month, or about $0.067 a day in a 30-day month. Serving 500 GB costs $10 over the month, and 50,000 pinned files put you 10,000 over the free 40,000, which adds $1.

If your balance hits zero, the premium gateway turns off and your pinned files stay reachable through the public gateway, according to the premium gateways page. For the full price list and more examples, read our AIOZ Pin pricing breakdown, or go straight to the AIOZ Pin payment docs.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does IPFS cost? The protocol is free, but keeping files online costs whatever your node or pinning service charges. On AIOZ Pin that is $20 per TB per month for storage and $20 per TB for bandwidth.

Is there a free way to store files on IPFS? Yes, within limits, because you can run your own node or use free tiers such as Pinata Free (1 GB) and Filebase Free (5 GB). On AIOZ Pin, the first 40,000 pinned files carry no file fee.

What is the cheapest IPFS pinning service? It depends on usage, but on Oct 19, 2026 list prices Filebase Pro came out cheapest in both of our examples. AIOZ Pin was cheaper than Pinata at both levels.

Does AIOZ Pin have subscription plans? No. You fund a wallet with AIOZ tokens and usage is deducted daily, with no monthly fee, no tier and no plan to upgrade.

What exchange rate applies to an AIOZ Pin deposit? The AIOZ/USDT market rate at the time of the deposit, per the payment docs.

Why does IPFS storage cost money if the protocol is free? Someone has to keep the disk, bandwidth and uptime behind a CID, and IPFS has no built-in way to pay them.

Related Reading

• AIOZ Pin Pricing: The Complete Cost Breakdown - every price and fee in one place
• How AIOZ Pin's Wallet Billing Works - deposits, conversion and daily deductions
• AIOZ Pin vs Pinata: IPFS Pinning Service Compared 2026 - a closer look at one alternative
• Best NFT.storage Alternatives in 2026 - more providers and their free tiers
• Does Unpinning Delete a File on IPFS? - why disk space on your own node only frees after garbage collection

References

• AIOZ Pin docs: Payment
• AIOZ Pin docs: Premium Gateways
• Pinata pricing (checked Oct 19, 2026)
• Filebase pricing (checked Oct 19, 2026)
• Kubo README: Minimal System Requirements