Infura IPFS and Infura IPFS Pricing 2026: When to Use IPFS via Infura

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TL;DR for 2026

• Access is gated: If you want to use IPFS on Infura, you'll need to get approval first. The public gateway is no longer available, so dedicated gateways are the way to go. Check it out on infura.io.
• Pricing: There’s a minimum of $5 a month for active IPFS subscriptions, which gives you 5 GB of storage, ingress, and egress. If you go over those limits, it’s $0.08/GB for storage and $0.12/GB for bandwidth. More details available on support.metamask.io.
• Throughput: You can expect 150 requests per second (RPS) for write API, 1500 RPS for read API, and 100 RPS for each dedicated gateway read. Just keep in mind that there are plan caps based on credits-per-second. More info can be found at docs.metamask.io.
• Operations: Both API and gateway traffic count towards your usage stats and billing, and credit quotas reset daily at 00:00 UTC. For more info, check out docs.metamask.io.

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What changed since last time you evaluated Infura IPFS

Decision-makers who checked out Infura’s IPFS in 2023-2024 will notice three key updates in 2025-2026:

• Now, you’ll find dedicated, project-specific gateways taking the place of the old public gateway. Each of these gateways comes with its own subdomain that you get to manage. (docs.metamask.io)
• Access isn’t as open as it used to be. Infura has decided to limit IPFS services to only those pre-qualified use cases, so if you want in, you’ll need to reach out to support for approval (make sure to select Ticket Type “IPFS API/Gateway”). (infura.io)
• They’ve also tightened up on billing: starting September 1, 2025, there’s a $5 monthly minimum for active IPFS subscriptions. You’ll get a pool of 5 GB for storage, 5 GB for ingress, and another 5 GB for egress, with extra charges of $0.08/GB for storage and $0.12/GB for bandwidth. The first invoices under this new policy began rolling out on October 1, 2025. (support.metamask.io)

Just to give you a quick heads-up, Infura had previously rolled out the news about shutting down the public IPFS gateway, and that’s been completed for quite a while now. The new setup is all about authenticated usage and using dedicated subdomains. Check out the details here: (infura.ghost.io).

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How Infura’s IPFS works in 2026: the actionable details

API and gateway split

• You can upload or pin your stuff using authenticated HTTP API endpoints like /api/v0/add or /api/v0/pin/add. Just keep in mind there are write rate limits for these. (docs.metamask.io)
• To read your content, you have a couple of options:
  • Use API reads (like /api/v0/cat), which allow for higher requests per second (RPS), or
  • Grab it through your Dedicated Gateway subdomain, which makes it super easy to access in your browser. (docs.metamask.io)

Key note: Just a heads up, dedicated gateways are read-only. You'll need to upload through the API. Check out the details here.

Throughput limits you have to engineer around

• Writes: 150 requests per second for add/pin/dag.put.
• Reads (API): Up to 1500 requests per second for read-only methods.
• Reads (Dedicated Gateway): 100 requests per second per gateway.

If you're looking for custom RPS limits, feel free to reach out to Infura! Check out more details here.

Beyond the endpoint-level ceilings, your Infura plan also has some caps on credits per second. For instance, you're looking at 2,000 cps on the Core plan, 4,000 cps on Developer, and a hefty 40,000 cps on Team. If you hit that limit, you’ll be throttled, even if you haven’t maxed out the specific IPFS endpoint limit yet. Check out more details here.

Dedicated Gateway specifics you can set and rely on

• The URL format you’ll share with clients:

  https://<CUSTOM-SUBDOMAIN>.infura-ipfs.io/ipfs/<CID>/<optional-path>

You have control over the subdomain, and just a heads up, it needs to follow this format: ^[a-z0-9-]*$ and can’t be more than 63 characters long. (docs.metamask.io)

• You can have one active subdomain for each project, but don’t worry--across all your IPFS projects, you can create up to 20 unique subdomains per account, and the cool thing is, you can reuse them! (docs.metamask.io)
• There’s also a “Pinned content only” option. When you flip this switch, it limits the gateway to only serving what your project has pinned. This is super handy for reducing abuse and keeping your bills predictable. (docs.metamask.io)
• Just so you know, gateway traffic is billed the same way as API traffic, and both are counted together in your stats and billing. (docs.metamask.io)

Availability and operational signals

Infura shares their uptime stats for each service. In the last 90 days, “Infura IPFS Services” had an impressive uptime of 99.82%, while the “IPFS Dedicated Gateway” was at 99.65%. Plus, they offer real-time incident updates and subscriptions through various channels like email, SMS, Slack, webhooks, and RSS. Make sure to incorporate this info into your SLOs. (status.infura.io)

Access reality check in 2026

• Just a heads up, new IPFS key creation is turned off for now. If you had keys active in late 2024, you're still good, but if you're working on new projects, you’ll need to follow the approval path. Keep this in mind as you plan your timelines. (support.metamask.io)
• Also, the official product pages are clear: IPFS service is only for pre-qualified customers. Make sure to go through the support flow to check if your use case qualifies. (infura.io)

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Pricing: what you will actually pay in 2026

• Minimum monthly charge: You’ll pay $5 for IPFS when it’s active, which gives you 5 GB of storage, plus 5 GB of ingress and egress. The first invoice with this setup came out on October 1, 2025, covering September. (support.metamask.io)
• Overage rates: If you need more storage, it’s $0.08 per GB, and for extra bandwidth (whether ingress or egress), it’s $0.12 per GB. Just a heads up, anything beyond what’s included gets charged based on your usage. (support.metamask.io)
• Plan context: Your overall Infura plan is still based on credits, not just “requests.” Here’s how it breaks down: Core (Free), Developer ($50/month), Team ($225/month), and Enterprise (custom pricing). If you’re on a paid plan, you can snag an extra 55 million credits for just $200--great if your dapp leans heavily on blockchain APIs and sometimes kicks up those IPFS stats. (infura.io)
• Daily reset: Keep in mind that credit quotas reset daily at 00:00 UTC. If you hit your cap, you’ll get an HTTP 402 response, and it might cut off your WebSocket connections until the reset. It’s smart to set up alerts before you hit that limit. (docs.metamask.io)

Billing Nuance

Just a heads up: when it comes to your dashboard and invoices, the “API vs gateway” traffic for IPFS gets bundled together. So, it’s smarter to plan your budget based on bytes and cache hit rates instead of worrying about specific endpoints. You can find more info here.

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Should you use Infura IPFS? A decision framework

Choose Infura IPFS when:

• You want a reliable and scalable solution for storing your files on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS).
• You need to make your files accessible from anywhere without dealing with the hassle of running your own IPFS node.
• You want to take advantage of Infura's infrastructure to ensure your files are always available and managed efficiently.
• You're working on a project that requires quick and easy integration with IPFS, and you appreciate the robust support that Infura offers.
• You're looking for a straightforward way to handle large amounts of data without worrying about server maintenance or uptime issues.
• You value a service that's been tested and trusted by many developers in the blockchain and decentralized application space.

In short, if you're serious about leveraging IPFS for your project, Infura is a solid choice!

• If you’re looking for a dedicated gateway for your projects, you’ll want strict subdomain controls, some “pinned-only” serving, and predictable rate ceilings that you can really plan around. Check it out here.
• Maybe you’re already using Infura’s blockchain APIs and would love to have everything under one roof--with unified billing, limits, and monitoring all in a single dashboard, plus the option to grab credit packs. You can find more details here.
• If your security approach favors authenticated reads and keeping projects isolated from public gateways, that’s definitely something to consider. Learn more about it here.

Reassess if:

• If you're looking for quick approval but find that new keys are gated, or if you need to onboard a bunch of temporary projects all at once, check out Infura.
• If your workload leans towards being read-heavy and you're dealing with lots of unpredictable public traffic, a CDN-fronted, usage-based gateway might be the way to go. For instance, Cloudflare offers a free plan with 50 GB of egress, and their paid options can scale up as needed. You can find more details here.
• For those who prefer a straightforward “storage + egress” subscription without the hassle of a credits model cluttering up your workflow, take a look at services like Web3.Storage or Pinata.

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Cost modeling examples (use these to budget)

Assumptions:

• Just a quick note: 1 GB is actually 1024 MB, and the prices for bandwidth cover both ingress and egress.
• We’re going to set up a CDN in front of the dedicated gateway. This way, we can cut down on the origin egress.
• Feel free to plug in your own numbers into these formulas; we've laid out the math step by step for you.

Example A: NFT drop, image + metadata, first 30 days

• 10,000 items
• Each asset consists of a 400 KB image and a 2 KB JSON file
• 50,000 unique viewers, each checking out about 3 assets on average, and after a warm-up, the CDN hits an 80% hit rate

Compute bytes from gateway (origin egress):

• Total asset bytes requested = 50,000 × 3 × ~402 KB ≈ 60.3 GB gross.
• With an 80% CDN hit rate, origin egress is about 12.06 GB.
• Ingress for the initial upload is roughly 10,000 × 402 KB ≈ 3.8 GB.

Billable Beyond Included Pool:

• Included egress/ingress: You get 5 GB for both egress and ingress, plus another 5 GB when it comes to storage. Check out the details here.
• Overages: If you go over, egress is around 7.06 GB which will cost you about $0.12 per GB, so that’s roughly $0.85. Ingress shouldn’t cost anything as long as you stay within that 5 GB limit. For storage, if you’re dealing with 10,000 items at around 402 KB each, you’ll be looking at about 3.8 GB, which fits right into the 5 GB cap.
• Minimum charge applies: There's a baseline charge of $5 that covers those included pools. So, for the month, you’re looking at a total of about $5.85 for IPFS, assuming you’ve got all the approvals and access sorted out. You can read more about this here.

Throughput Check

• Make sure that peak traffic bursts don't exceed 100 requests per second (RPS) for each dedicated gateway. If you need to, feel free to use multiple subdomains, just remember that you’re limited to 20 subdomains. (docs.metamask.io)

Example B: On-app content feeds, 5M daily reads of small assets

• 5 million asset reads every day, each one a 5 KB JSON file
• CDN hits 95% after warming up
• Handling up to 2,000 requests per second at peak

Egress:

• We’re looking at around 23.8 GB of gross daily bytes. If the origin egress is about 5%, that gives us roughly 1.19 GB per day, which adds up to around 35.7 GB for the month.

Cost:

• Once you account for the 5 GB egress, it breaks down to about ~30.7 GB × $0.12, which is roughly $3.68. Add the $5 minimum charge, and you’re looking at around ~$8.68 a month. (support.metamask.io)

Throughput:

• The origin read RPS that breaks free from the CDN is about 100 RPS (which is 5% of 2,000). This hits the upper limit of 100 RPS per gateway, so it's a good idea to use two gateways to keep some extra capacity on hand. (docs.metamask.io)
• Don’t forget to check that your Infura plan's credits-per-second (cps) limit can handle bursts. For Developers, it’s 4,000 cps, while for Teams, it’s 40,000 cps. (support.infura.io)

Example C: Archive 1 TB of media, low read traffic

• Keep 1,024 GB handy, with just a few downloads for integrity checks

Storage:

• 1,024 GB - With 5 GB included, that leaves about 1,019 GB of extra storage. At $0.08 per GB, that totals around $81.52 a month, and don’t forget the $5 minimum fee, bringing it to about $86.52. (infura.ghost.io)

Comparison (for perspective, not a recommendation):

• Pinata “Fiesta”: For $100 a month, you get a solid 5 TB of storage along with 2.5 TB of bandwidth. If you go over, it’ll cost you $0.035 per GB for extra storage and $0.08 per GB for extra bandwidth. Honestly, when you’re looking at storage on this scale, Pinata’s plan could be a more budget-friendly option. (pinata.cloud)
• Web3.Storage Business: Also priced at $100 a month, this plan gives you 2 TB of storage and 2 TB for egress. If you exceed those limits, it’s $0.03 per GB for both storage and egress. This could also be a good pick for anyone needing substantial cold storage. (web3.storage)

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Alternatives you’ll be asked about (with current numbers)

• Pinata: You've got some options here--free, $20 for Picnic, $100 for Fiesta, or go big with an enterprise plan. They offer some pretty generous storage and requests, and if you go over, it's based on usage. Plus, they recently upped the storage limits and lowered overage fees. Definitely worth a look if you're dealing with a lot of public traffic or need creator tools. (pinata.cloud)
• Web3.Storage: Starting off, you can get 5 GB for free with their Starter plan. If you need more, there’s the Lite plan at $10 for 100 GB or Business at $100 for 2 TB. They keep it simple with per-GB overages, which makes budgeting easier. (web3.storage)
• Cloudflare IPFS Gateway: This one's usage-based and gives you 50 GB of egress for free. If you’re already using Cloudflare, you'll appreciate their solid CDN controls and analytics. (developers.cloudflare.com)
• NFT.Storage: Here’s an interesting option--pay a one-time fee of $4.99 per GB for long-term storage that’s backed by an on-chain endowment. It could be a cool pick if you care about the economics of NFT permanence. (nft.storage)

Feel free to use these as your starting point for negotiations or as references, but make sure to tailor them to fit your own performance and security requirements.

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Implementation patterns and emerging best practices (2026)

Plan for Gateway Sharding

• Each dedicated gateway can handle a maximum of 100 read requests per second (RPS). If you need to maintain a steady 500 RPS from your origin, just split that traffic across five subdomains. Remember, you still need to stay under the cap of 20 subdomains per account. (docs.metamask.io)

Enable “Pinned Content Only”

• This setting helps keep your gateway from turning into a general-purpose IPFS exit path, which can reduce the risk of abuse and unexpected charges. (docs.metamask.io)

Put a CDN in Front of Your Gateway

• Optimize your cache by tuning cache keys based on the full path, setting a long time-to-live (TTL) for those immutable CIDs, and using the stale-while-revalidate strategy to ease the load on your origin. This way, your costs will be calculated as cache miss bytes × $0.12/GB, which you can manage actively. (docs.metamask.io)

Budget to Plan Caps, Not Just Endpoint Limits

• Keep an eye on both the RPS ceilings for your endpoints and the credits-per-second and daily credit limits of your plan. If you hit those limits, throttling or 402 errors will kick in until midnight UTC. It's a good idea to set alerts at 75%, 85%, and 95%, and consider pre-buying additional credits if you've got launches or mints coming up. (support.infura.io)

Subscribe to Status Updates

• Treat your IPFS Dedicated Gateway and API as vital dependencies that come with Service Level Objectives (SLOs). Integrate status updates from status.infura.io into your incident management channels to stay in the loop. (status.infura.io)

Separate Keys per Environment and App Surface

• Using different API keys and gateways for each product area helps keep your blast radius manageable and makes it easier to analyze performance when you need to tweak caching or rate limits. (docs.metamask.io)

Approval Lead Time

• Since getting new access can take some time, be sure to kick off the “IPFS API/Gateway” support ticket early in your project planning process. (infura.io)

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Quick start: standing up Infura IPFS the right way in 2026

1. Get your access approved

• Head over to Infura and submit a support request. Choose the ticket type “IPFS API/Gateway,” and don’t forget to include your use case, how much storage and egress you expect, along with your RPS needs. Just a heads up, if you’re not already an active user by late 2024, creating a new key will be disabled. Check it out here: (infura.io)

1. Set up or repurpose an IPFS project and keys

• Head over to your Infura dashboard to find the project ID and secret you’ll need for API authentication. If you're moving things around, no worries! Infura has some handy tools and documentation to help you migrate your existing IPFS data smoothly. Check it out here: (support.infura.io)

3) Enable a Dedicated Gateway

• Head over to your project’s Settings and flip the switch for “Enable Dedicated Gateways.” Don’t forget to snag a unique subdomain while you’re there. If it fits your needs, think about turning on “Pinned Content Only.” Just make sure your names stick to the format and character limits. You can check out more details here.

1. Upload and pin via API

• Go ahead and use the authenticated API (like /api/v0/add with your project credentials). If you’re more into command lines, Infura offers a handy upload client tool for that. Check it out here: (docs.metamask.io)

1. Get Your CDN Set Up

• Direct your CDN origin to the dedicated gateway URL and cache using CID paths. Keep an eye on miss rates through your CDN analytics and the Infura stats dashboard. Remember, both API and gateway usage will contribute to your billing. Check out the details here.

1. Monitor and alert

• Set up alarms for your daily credits, cps, and IPFS egress. Just a heads up, those numbers reset every day at 00:00 UTC. If you find yourself getting close to those limits, consider scaling your gateways or grabbing some extra credits (it’s $200 for an additional +55M). Don’t forget to sign up for those status alerts! (docs.metamask.io)

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When Infura IPFS is the strategic win

When you're looking for a solid, trustworthy IPFS path that works smoothly with all your Consensys tools, Infura's a great choice. It comes with clear limits on throughput and bytes, so you know what to expect. The dedicated gateway setup gives you consistent behaviors--think subdomains, pinned-only serving, and per-gateway RPS--which are music to the ears of SREs and keep costs predictable. Just make sure to kick off the approval process early and think about your egress with a CDN-first approach. Check out more details here.

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Appendix: head-to-head pricing snapshots you’ll reference in meetings

• Infura IPFS: Starting at just $5/month, you get 5 GB of storage along with 5 GB for both ingress and egress. If you need extra space, it’s $0.08 per GB for storage and $0.12 per GB for bandwidth. Access is gated, so keep that in mind! (support.metamask.io)
• Pinata: They offer a few tiers: Free, $20, and $100. For instance, the $100 plan (called Fiesta) gives you a whopping 5 TB of storage and 2.5 TB of bandwidth. After the updates in 2025, any overages will drop to just $0.035 per GB for storage and $0.08 per GB for bandwidth. (pinata.cloud)
• Web3.Storage: You can kick things off with 5 GB for free. If you need more, it’s $10 for 100 GB or $100 for 2 TB. The overage rates are pretty competitive at around $0.03 per GB. (web3.storage)
• Cloudflare IPFS Gateway: Their Free plan includes 50 GB of egress, which is pretty solid. After that, it's usage-based. If you're already using Cloudflare, this might be a natural fit for you. (developers.cloudflare.com)
• NFT.Storage: Here, you’ll pay a one-time fee of $4.99 per GB for long-term storage, and it’s backed by an on-chain endowment. It’s a unique option if you need to store data securely. (nft.storage)

While these aren't exactly the same (features, SLAs, and performance can vary), they’re solid benchmarks to guide your internal discussions about TCO.

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Final call: our recommendation playbook

• For startups with a small ops team and moderate usage: Infura’s IPFS combined with a CDN offers you easy controls and keeps your operational hassle to a minimum. You’re looking at a budget of around $5 to $30 a month, unless you’re streaming a ton of data. Make sure to start the approval process early! (support.metamask.io)
• For consumer apps that see tons of anonymous traffic: Check out Pinata or Cloudflare. They offer some pretty sweet bundled egress and gateway analytics. If you don't specifically need the project isolation or Consensys connection that Infura provides, these could be great options for you! (pinata.cloud)
• If you're dealing with archives or preserving data at TB scale: It's worth comparing the cost per GB for storage. Pinata Fiesta or Web3.Storage Business often beat Infura’s $0.08/GB for bulk cold storage. However, if you want dedicated gateway controls and a unified platform, Infura might still be your best bet. (pinata.cloud)

If you're feeling a bit uncertain about which route to take, try mapping out your month-one egress and RPS based on the specific limits mentioned above. Make a decision based on solid data instead of just gut feelings. Check it out here: (docs.metamask.io)

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