BunnyCDN deletes files from its Storage zones if they go untouched for 90 days. A Hacker News user discovered this the hard way: their production files vanished over 15 months, with no alerts or logs flagging the purge. This isn’t a one-off glitch—it’s policy, buried in fine print, catching users off guard.
BunnyCDN positions itself as a cheap, fast CDN alternative to Cloudflare or AWS CloudFront. Prices start at $0.01/GB for bandwidth, $0.005/GB/month for storage. They expanded into object storage in 2020, promising S3-compatible buckets with global edge replication. Over 100,000 customers use it, including devs hosting static sites, images, and backups. But storage isn’t forever—docs tucked away reveal the 90-day inactivity rule. Files with zero reads or writes get axed automatically. No email, no dashboard notice, just gone.
The Discovery and Fallout
The HN post, from October 2024, hit 500+ points. The poster checked logs after a client reported missing assets. Turns out, BunnyCDN purged files sporadically since mid-2023. They lost thumbnails, PDFs, and core production media—critical for a live app. Recovery? Zero. BunnyCDN confirmed: policy enforced since at least July 2023. User comments piled on: dozens reported similar losses, from game assets to ML models. One dev estimated $10k in rebuild costs; another ditched Bunny for Backblaze B2.
BunnyCDN’s response was swift but defensive. CEO Martin Tomko posted: “It’s documented in our knowledge base since 2021.” Link: a single paragraph in storage FAQs. They added dashboard warnings and API endpoints to query deletion risks post-incident. No apologies, no compensation offers in the thread. Fair point—ToS covers it—but silent enforcement erodes trust. Users expect storage to mean durable, not “use it or lose it.”
Why This Matters for Your Stack
CDNs excel at caching hot content near users. BunnyCDN delivers: sub-30ms latencies, PoPs in 100+ countries. But mistaking it for archival storage bites hard. Compare to S3: AWS charges $0.023/GB/month with 99.999999999% durability, no auto-delete. Backblaze B2: $0.006/GB/month, explicit retention controls. Bunny’s edge: 25x cheaper bandwidth, but that thrift comes with eviction risks.
Implications run deep. Devs bootstrap with low-cost providers, then scale. A 90-day purge disrupts CI/CD pipelines, cold backups, or infrequently accessed media libraries. In crypto/web3, where immutable storage is king (think IPFS or Arweave), this kills reliability. Finance apps storing transaction proofs? Nightmare. Broader lesson: cloud ToS evolve. Bunny tweaked pricing thrice in 2024; policies shift silently too.
Numbers tell the story. BunnyCDN serves 40T+ GB/month. At 1% inactive files, that’s petabytes purged yearly—revenue saved, but customer data torched. Skeptical take: intentional cost control, not malice. They avoid ballooning unused storage bills. Still, transparency lags. No pre-signup calculator for “purge risk.” Competitors like Cloudflare R2 charge egress but guarantee persistence.
Fix your setup now. Audit Bunny dashboards for inactivity timers. Mirror critical files to S3 Glacier ($0.00099/GB/month) or local RAID. Script health checks: curl your URLs weekly. For Bunny loyalists, enable their new “pinning” via API—marks files as active. But diversify: no single provider holds your prod data.
This exposes cloud storage’s dirty secret: “unlimited” often means “until we decide otherwise.” BunnyCDN remains viable for hot assets—fast, cheap. For cold storage, pay for durability. Read the docs, or pay the price. 15 months of silent losses? Avoidable with diligence, but Bunny shares blame for poor UX.
