Show HN: A WordPress plugin that rewrites image URLs for near-zero-cost delivery

I built a WordPress plugin called Bandwidth Saver. It takes the images your site already has and serves them through Cloudflare R2 and Workers, which means zero egress fees and extremely low storage cost. The goal is to make image delivery fast and cheap without adding any of the complexity of traditional optimization plugins.

The idea is simple. WordPress keeps generating images normally. The plugin rewrites the URLs on the frontend so images are served from a Cloudflare Worker. On the first request, the Worker fetches the original image and stores it in R2. After that, Cloudflare’s edge serves the image from its global cache with no egress charges. There’s no need to preload or sync anything, and if something fails, the original image loads. That’s the entire system.

I built this because most image CDN plugins try to do everything: compression, resizing, AI transforms, asset management, custom dashboards, and monthly fees. That’s useful for some users, but it’s unnecessary for most sites that just want their existing media to load faster without breaking the bank. Bandwidth Saver focuses only on delivery, not transformations. It’s intentionally minimal.

There are two ways to use it. The plugin is completely free if you want to run your own Cloudflare Worker. I included the Worker code and the steps needed to deploy it. If you don’t want to deal with any Cloudflare setup, there’s a managed option for $2.99 per month that uses my Worker and my R2 bucket. I’m trying to keep it accessible while also covering operational costs.

The plugin works with any theme or builder and doesn’t modify the database. It only rewrites URLs on output. WordPress remains the system of record for all media. R2 simply becomes a cheap, durable cache layer backed by Cloudflare’s edge.

I’m especially interested in feedback about the approach. Does the fetch-on-first-request model make sense? Is the pricing fair for a plugin of this scope? Should I prioritize allowing users to connect their own R2 buckets or the managed service? And for those with experience in edge compute or CDNs, I would love thoughts on how to improve the Worker or the rewrite strategy.

Thanks for reading, happy to answer any questions.

Show HN: A WordPress plugin that rewrites image URLs for near-zero-cost delivery
wordpress.org

I think some here will say "why not just use Cloudflare directly", but I disagree, I think this plugin makes sense. Cloudflare is relatively straightforward for technical users, but many Wordpress users are non-technical. $2.99 is a very small amount for reliable fast images, while also packing a pretty nice margin for you for most users who will need a tiny fraction of that.

I wrote a basic plugin for Jekyll to automatically prefix my images with this. Pretty much just set it and forget it: https://github.com/catskull/catskull.github.io/blob/master/_...

Am I missing something or is this way harder to do in Wordpress?

But technically would it be better to have the plugin to any transformation and then have just cloudflare in front of the website raking care of all caching ? (I thought they even provide a WordPress plugin for that).

Also careful with hosting other people content under your domain/service under your name especially with CSAM stuff and other illegal material that your domain becomes the face of.