Cloudinary is a leading image and video management API and CDN. Compare 2026 pricing plans, features, pros, cons, and alternatives.
Researched and fact-checked by Bartu Cavusoglu · Updated July 19, 2026
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Cloudinary is a cloud-based platform for uploading, storing, transforming, and delivering images and videos through an API, SDKs, and a global CDN. Founded in Israel in 2012, it grew into one of the most widely used media management platforms for developers before relocating its headquarters to San Jose, California.
Rather than requiring developers to pre-generate every image or video size and format, Cloudinary applies transformations on the fly using URL parameters, then caches and serves the result from its CDN, which simplifies responsive image and video delivery across devices.
Developers upload an original asset once, then request different resized, cropped, compressed, or reformatted versions simply by changing parameters in the delivery URL. Automatic format and quality optimization detects the requesting browser and device and serves the smallest acceptable file automatically.
AI-powered features layered on top of this pipeline include automatic tagging, content-aware cropping, background removal, generative AI editing tools, and content moderation, which extend Cloudinary beyond basic resizing into a broader media intelligence platform.
Cloudinary's core Image and Video APIs product uses a freemium, credit-based model with a Free plan (25 monthly credits), a Plus plan starting at 89 dollars per month billed annually, an Advanced plan starting at 224 dollars per month billed annually, and a custom-priced Enterprise plan.
A separate Digital Asset Management (DAM) product is sold on its own pricing track, with a 30-day free trial including 25 GB of storage before moving to a custom-quoted Enterprise DAM plan aimed at marketing and creative teams.
Cloudinary is used to upload, store, transform, optimize, and deliver images and videos for websites and applications, commonly for tasks like responsive image resizing, video transcoding, and automatic format optimization.
Yes. Cloudinary offers a Free plan with 25 monthly credits, 3 users, and 1 account, with no credit card required to sign up.
Cloudinary allocates a monthly credit balance per plan, and different actions such as storage, transformations, and bandwidth consume credits at different rates; higher-tier plans include larger monthly credit allowances.
Yes. Cloudinary supports video upload, transcoding, transformation, and adaptive delivery in addition to its image transformation capabilities.
A transformation URL is a Cloudinary delivery URL where parameters such as width, height, crop mode, format, and quality are embedded directly in the URL, letting Cloudinary generate the requested asset variant on demand.
Unlike a generic CDN that only caches and serves existing files, Cloudinary actively transforms, optimizes, and generates new versions of images and videos on request, in addition to caching and delivering them globally.
No. Cloudinary sells Digital Asset Management as a separate product with its own pricing and trial, aimed at marketing and creative teams managing brand asset libraries, distinct from the core Image and Video APIs product.