This page provides quick answers to the most common questions that developers ask when evaluating or getting started with Cloudinary Programmable Media.
Some Enterprise or other Custom plans may be based on 'units', rather than 'credits'. If your plan works with units, contact your Customer Success Manager for details.
One credit can be used for:
1000 transformations
Most image transformations, including complex chained transformations count as a single transformation.
Most video transformations are counted per second. (The number of transformations per second depends on the delivered video resolution).
Some advanced transformations or formats that require sophisticated processing have special transformation counting rules.
1 GB of managed storage
Storage includes your main asset storage, a cached copy of each derived asset (from delivered transformations), and any revisions backed up to the Cloudinary backup storage.
1 GB of delivered bandwidth
For images, the bandwidth is based on the delivered image file size.
For videos, 1 GB generally comes to ~500 seconds of delivered SD video or ~250 seconds of HD video)
Or combined portions of each.
For example, suppose that in one 30-day period, you need:
2 GB of image and video storage (2 credits)
4 GB of delivery bandwidth (4 credits)
4000 transformations (4 credits)
You'll use 10 credits during that period. In this case, the Free plan would be more than enough for you to use and to continue to add more Cloudinary functionality.
You can see your current credit usage and breakdowns in the Programmable Media Dashboard page of the Console.
If you find you're approaching the upper limit of your current plan, you can upgrade to another self-service plan using the Change plan option in the Accounts page of the Console Settings.
This topic relates only to customers on one of Cloudinary's paid plans whose account is using the image impressions metric as part of the calculation of their credit usage.
What is an image impression?
An image impression occurs when an image is successfully delivered (loaded) in a web page or application. All images that load are considered successful image impressions. If an image doesn't load, it's not counted as an image impression.
This metric is an alternative to counting the bandwidth delivered for images. Thus, if your account uses image impressions, then your bandwidth metric is not impacted at all by those image deliveries.
Why is Cloudinary making this change?
Image impressions support more predictable and simplified pricing. We're using it to align with your success. When you deliver images with Cloudinary, you create more engaging moments with your customers.
What is the benefit to me/my business?
With this update, you'll gain access to our latest format support and more advanced optimization algorithms (e.g., support for AVIF (.avif) and JPEG-XL (.jxl) formats in your f_auto deliveries and our latest q_auto algorithms) to support your engaging experiences with even faster load times.
You'll now also be able to forecast image impressions for easier-to-understand and easier-to-predict pricing usage.
How are image impression credits calculated?
One credit equals 20,000 image impressions. In your dashboard, you'll see usage data calculated for you and converted into credits consumed.
Will this change make me reach my account limits faster? / Will I have to upgrade my account due to this change?
You may consume your credits slightly faster or slower, but will not likely need a plan change.
Are all delivered image formats counted as image impressions?
Almost all image formats are equally counted as image impressions.
Currently, 3D and animated images are excluded from the image impressions metric, and are measured based on delivered bandwidth (as they have been until now).
How will video count towards my consumption of credits?
Your video delivery continues to be measured by bandwidth used. This update does not change the video bandwidth metric in any way.
Can I just keep my current plan?
We aim to be transparent about our pricing, and this is a change that is being gradually rolled out to everyone as it aligns better with the value you receive from Cloudinary.
Soon, all existing and new customers will use the image impressions metric. Accordingly, we are not switching accounts back to using the bandwidth metric for images.
Will there be additional modifications to pricing?
As part of our commitment to enhancing our product and delivering maximum value, we continuously refine our pricing structure to align with our value proposition and improve its simplicity and predictability. Any forthcoming changes will adhere to these principles and will be communicated well in advance, as demonstrated in this instance.
Tip
In certain scenarios, your self-service account may be blocked for downgrading to a lower plan. See this knowledge base article for some reasons this might occur. In those cases, if you can't solve the problem on your own, please contact Cloudinary support.
Important
If you leave the New Password field with a required character missing, or if the passwords in the Confirm New Password field don’t match, you’ll need to request a new verification code to continue.
Important
You cannot use Cloudinary to store or deliver illegal or highly controversial content. If you’re uncertain whether your files fall into this category, you may want to read our Terms of Use. You are also obligated to follow our CDN partners' acceptable use policies.
Note
Because this option requires manual setup on our end, it's currently only available for paid plans.
Avoid duplications: Sometimes the identical (or nearly identical) image unintentionally gets uploaded more than once. You can use the Duplicate Image Detection Add-on to determine whether the images you upload, or existing images in your account are identical, or similar above a threshold you define, to other existing assets. Those assets are automatically set to a 'rejected' moderation status, enabling you to review them or programmatically delete them.
Watch a video tutorial on how to find and work with your Cloudinary credentials
The initial creator of a new account always starts with a Master admin role. If you have multiple users in your account, there must always be at least one user in the account with that role. For more details, see Role-based permissions.
These credentials include your:
Cloud Name: The product environment identifier. Required for configuring front-end SDKs and included as an identifer in all media asset URLs delivered from Cloudinary.
API Key and API Secret: Needed to configure backend SDKs or to directly run REST API requests.
API environment variable: A string that combines all three credential values. Copy the API environment variable format from the API Keys page of the Cloudinary Console Settings. Replace<your_api_key> and <your_api_secret> with your actual values, while your cloud name is already correctly included in the format.
If you need only your cloud name, such as for configuring a frontend SDK, you can find that on the Dashboard.
Important
You use your cloud name and API key for enabling or configuring a variety of Cloudinary Programmable Media features. As mentioned above, your cloud name is also a part of every media asset URL you deliver from Cloudinary. There's no problem to expose these values in client-side code.
You use your API secret for authentication. You should never expose Your API secret in client-side code or in any other way outside your organization.
Your cloud name, API key, and API secret are all specific to a product environment.
Free accounts have only one product environment. Paid accounts can have multiple product environments that you can use for things such as production and staging environments, or you might have different product environments to parallel different products, websites, organizations, geographies, or apps that you use with Cloudinary.
You can manage your API keys in the API Keys page of the Console Settings, including adding, activating, disabling, and naming API keys.
You can also configure granular API key permissions for your API keys, so that you can give different developers access to specific Upload and Admin API methods, but not others. Customers on a paid plan can contact support to enable this feature.
Enterprise accounts that have the Provisioning API enabled can use it to programmatically create and manage API keys using the access_keys endpoint and product environments using the subaccounts endpoint, as well as users and user groups. To use the Provisioning API, you need a dedicated API key. If your account includes support for the Provisioning API, you can find your Provisioning API Access credentials in the Account page of the Cloudinary Console Settings.
Note
You can use upload presets to save a particular upload configuration that you can use to upload assets without having to set the same parameters each time.
Digital Asset Management
