Storage Costs

Understanding storage costs helps you budget effectively and avoid service interruptions. This guide explains how to calculate costs and fund your account for Filecoin storage.

How Storage Costs Work

Storage operates on a pay-per-epoch model where you deposit USDFC tokens and set allowances that control how much the storage service can spend.

Pricing Components

Component	Cost	Notes
Storage	$2.50/TiB/month	Minimum $0.06/month per data set (~24.567 GiB threshold)
Sybil Fee	0.1 USDFC (one-time)	Per new data set creation; prevents state-growth spam
CDN Egress	$14/TiB downloaded	1 USDFC top-up ≈ 71.5 GiB of downloads
CDN Setup	1 USDFC (one-time)	Per data set; reusing existing data sets incurs no cost

Pricing Logic:

Storage < 24.567 GiB: Minimum $0.06/month applies
Storage ≥ 24.567 GiB: Actual cost (bytes / TiB) × $2.50/month
CDN data sets require 1 USDFC setup on first creation only
CDN egress credits can be topped up anytime

Real-World Cost Examples

Example 1: NFT Collection (10,000 × 5 KiB ≈ 48.82 MiB)

// @lib: esnext,dom
// 48.82 MiB less than 24.567 GiB threshold
// Price is $0.06/month
const PRICE_PER_MONTH = 0.06;
const months = 24;
const PRICE_FOR_24_MONTHS = PRICE_PER_MONTH * 24; // 1.44 USDFC

Duration	Total Cost
1 month	0.06 USDFC
24 months	1.44 USDFC

Example 2: User Content Platform with CDN

Storage: 1,000 users × 100 MiB ≈ 100,000 MiB
Traffic: 1,000 users × 100 MiB/month ≈ 100,000 MiB/month egress

// @lib: esnext,dom
const STORAGE_PRICE_PER_TIB_PER_MONTH = 2.5; // $2.50/TiB/month
const CDN_EGRESS_PRICE_PER_TIB = 14; // $14/TiB downloaded
const storageMiB = 100_000;
const egressMiB = 100_000;

// Storage: 100,000 MiB ≈ 0.0953 TiB
const storageTiB = storageMiB / 1024 / 1024;

// Egress: 100,000 MiB ≈ 0.0953 TiB
const egressTiB = egressMiB / 1024 / 1024;

// Storage cost per month: 0.0953 TiB × $2.50 ≈ $0.238/month
const storageCostPerMonth = storageTiB * STORAGE_PRICE_PER_TIB_PER_MONTH;

// Egress cost per month: 0.0953 TiB × $14 ≈ $1.334/month
const egressCostPerMonth = egressTiB * CDN_EGRESS_PRICE_PER_TIB;

// Total cost per month: $0.238/month + $1.334/month ≈ $1.572/month
const totalCostPerMonth = storageCostPerMonth + egressCostPerMonth;

// Total cost for 24 months: $1.572/month × 24 ≈ $37.728
const totalCostFor24Months = totalCostPerMonth * 24;

Cost Component	Per Month	24 Months
Storage	≈ 0.238 USDFC	≈ 5.71 USDFC
CDN Egress	≈ 1.334 USDFC	≈ 32.016 USDFC
Total	≈ 1.572 USDFC	≈ 37.728 USDFC

Warm Storage Service Approvals

Before uploading, the WarmStorage operator must be approved and your account must be funded. FWSS requires a 30-day prepayment buffer — when your balance drops below 30 days, the provider may remove your data.

The SDK’s prepare() method handles all of this automatically. It computes the exact deposit needed, checks whether the FWSS operator is approved, and returns a single transaction that handles both.

Querying Upload Costs

Use getUploadCosts() to preview costs without executing any transaction. This is useful for displaying pricing in a UI or letting users confirm before proceeding.

// @lib: esnext,dom
import { Synapse, formatUnits } from "@filoz/synapse-sdk";
import { privateKeyToAccount } from 'viem/accounts'
const synapse = Synapse.create({ account: privateKeyToAccount('0x...'), source: 'my-app' });
// ---cut---
const costs = await synapse.storage.getUploadCosts({
  dataSize: 1073741824n, // 1 GiB in bytes
})

The returned UploadCosts object contains:

Field	Type	Description
`rate.perEpoch`	`bigint`	Storage rate per epoch (30 seconds)
`rate.perMonth`	`bigint`	Storage rate per month (for display)
`depositNeeded`	`bigint`	USDFC to deposit (`0n` if sufficient funds)
`needsFwssMaxApproval`	`boolean`	Whether FWSS operator approval is needed
`ready`	`boolean`	`true` when no deposit or approval is needed

Funding Your Account

Use prepare() to compute costs and get a ready-to-execute transaction. This is the recommended approach for most use cases — it replaces the previous manual flow of calculating allowances, checking approvals, and branching between deposit/approve methods.

// @lib: esnext,dom
import { Synapse, formatUnits } from "@filoz/synapse-sdk";
import { privateKeyToAccount } from 'viem/accounts'
const synapse = Synapse.create({ account: privateKeyToAccount('0x...'), source: 'my-app' });
const totalCostNeeded = null as unknown as bigint;
const rateAllowanceNeeded = null as unknown as bigint;
const lockupAllowanceNeeded = null as unknown as bigint;
const approval = await synapse.payments.serviceApproval();
const accountInfo = await synapse.payments.accountInfo();
// ---cut---
// Compute costs and get a transaction (if needed)
const prep = await synapse.storage.prepare({
  dataSize: 1073741824n, // 1 GiB
})

// Inspect costs
console.log("Rate per month:", formatUnits(prep.costs.rate.perMonth))
console.log("Deposit needed:", formatUnits(prep.costs.depositNeeded))

// Execute if the account isn't ready
if (prep.transaction) {
  console.log("Deposit amount:", formatUnits(prep.transaction.depositAmount))
  console.log("Includes approval:", prep.transaction.includesApproval)

  const { hash } = await prep.transaction.execute()
  console.log("Transaction confirmed:", hash)
}

// Now safe to upload

prepare() returns:

costs: The full UploadCosts breakdown
transaction: A transaction object with execute(), or null if the account is already ready

The transaction automatically picks the right contract call:

Needs deposit + approval: calls depositWithPermitAndApproveOperator
Needs approval only: calls approveService
Needs deposit only: calls depositWithPermit
Already ready: returns transaction: null

Next Steps

Storage Operations - Storage concepts and workflows
Storage Context - Contexts and data sets

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