Massive Cloudfront Charges

Hello @humpinghummer

Thank you for your review and I am sorry about the issue you are experiencing with CF invalidations.
Cloudflare doesn’t charge for “request”, but for invalidation path.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/Invalidation.html#PayingForInvalidation
The first 1,000 invalidation paths that you submit per month are free; you pay for each invalidation path over 1,000 in a month. An invalidation path can be for a single file (such as /images/logo.jpg) or for multiple files (such as /images/*). A path that includes the * wildcard counts as one path even if it causes CloudFront to invalidate thousands of files.
so you can:
invalidate all your images per-case basis,
i.e.
https//my-host/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/my-jan-image1.jpg
https//my-host/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/my-jan-image2.jpg
https//my-host/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/my-feb-image1.jpg
that will be charged as 3 paths and that’s what w3tc does.
2. invalidate everything.
that’s what w3tc’s purge all button does. all objects will be removed from cache so your traffic will grow and performance temporarily decline. also, of course, you have to do it once after multiple posts updated, otherwise, if you purge after each change you’ll get the worse situation in the end (3 invalidate-all requests for 3 posts).
3. invalidate grouped based on knowing what you’ve modified. in the example below, you may invalidate one of:
3.1 https//my-host/wp-content/uploads/2019/* – one path, will invalidate all 2019 images only
3.2 https//my-host/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/*, https//my-host/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/* – 2 paths, but will invalidate only all 2019 jan and feb images.
Can you please share what settings you have enabled in Peformance>CDN. there is an option “Only Purge CDN manually” in the advanced section. Is that option enabled?
Thank you!