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Cloud pricing term

What is Pooled data transfer?

Pooled data transfer combines allowances and usage across a provider-defined account, team, project, or product group.

Also called: bandwidth pool, pooled bandwidth, shared transfer allowance, team transfer pool, per-instance transfer.

The expensive mistake

Applying one plan's allowance once to an account that actually pools several allowances, or multiplying an allowance when the provider applies it per resource. For more than one instance, check the provider's pooling rule directly; this calculator uses one combined allowance unless the cited source proves a different scope.

Where it appears on your bill

The invoice often shows aggregate outbound usage and only the bytes above the team or account pool as overage, with resource-level detail elsewhere.

Worked example

Two full-month $4 DigitalOcean Basic Droplets each contribute 500 GB, creating a 1,000 GB team pool. At 1,200 GB total outbound, the vendor calculation is (1,200 - 1,000) x $0.01 = $2. Applying the allowance only once would incorrectly produce $7.

Example prices checked:

Primary sources