Cloudflare R2 For Model Distribution

Argos Translate
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@pierotofy suggested using Cloudflare R2 for distributing the model packages so I’m trying it out.

I’ve uploaded all of the argosmodel files to an R2 bucket and am testing the ar->en model download on the prod CDN:

If there aren’t any problems I’m planning to expand the Cloudflare use to replace DigitalOcean (which is expensive) and just use Cloudflare and Sharktech.

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From my (slow) internet connection at home:

R2:

translate-ar_en- 100%[==========>]  78.08M  11.2MB/s    in 7.1s

DigitalOcean:

translate-ar_en- 100%[==========>]  78.08M  11.2MB/s    in 7.1s

From Europe data center:

R2:

translate-ar_en- 100%[==========>]  78.08M  53.1MB/s    in 1.5s

Digital Ocean:

translate-ar_en- 100%[==========>]  78.08M  20.0MB/s    in 4.4s
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Thanks for the test; it’s looking good to me too.

Since all the models are under 10GB (~8GB) and download bandwidth is free I think I’m going to be able to stay on the Cloudflare free tier.

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I just moved all of the DigitalOcean links to Cloudflare:

If Cloudflare is cheaper and faster then this is a big win!

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Awesome! :clap: Excited to see how R2 will perform here.

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I moved the CDN to 100% Cloudflare R2 since it seems to be working well and is fast/free.

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These are the current Cloudflare analytics for people downloading the Argos Translate models. 35k unique downloaders in a month. I’m also using 225TB a month of bandwidth basically for free (I only pay for the domain) with Cloudflare.

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image871×656 65.9 KB

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That is quite a bit of bandwidth!

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Here are some Cloudflare stats from June 2026. Overwhelmingly our users seem to be in the U.S.. We also have a lot of users in Europe, especially Germany.

India is #7 for countries despite us only currently supporting Hindi and Urdu. We’ve talked about trying to expand the number of Indian languages we support, maybe we should make that a priority. Also maybe we should do more direct models between European languages to avoid pivoting through English. Like de-es, de-fr, de-fi, fi-fr.

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image1320×907 169 KB

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It would be cool to have direct models without the English pivot. My only question is how to choose which ones to prioritize.

Perhaps finding a way to answer this question might be the first step.

  • Via community outreach (surveys)
  • Via analytics (perhaps recording anonymous statistics for which language pairs are most used on libretranslate.com)
  • Web Traffic

Or a combination.

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I’ve been running a Github Discussion for people to request languages for Argos Translate on since 2021. I have a rule “Top level comments only names of languages.” This way people can vote and you can sort by top.

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I made French-Spanish, French-Finnish, German-Finnish, Hindi-French top level posts on my Github Discussion so people can vote.

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