AWS CloudFront vs Cloudflare
A detailed comparison to help you choose between AWS CloudFront and Cloudflare.
Quick Verdict
3.9/5
AWS CloudFront
0 reviews
4.3/5
Cloudflare
0 reviews
Cloudflare is rated higher (4.3 vs 3.9). CloudFront is AWS's global CDN with 750+ PoPs and 15 regional edge caches Global network that speeds up and protects websites with CDN caching, DDoS protection, free SSL and DNS. Free plan; Pro costs $20/month billed annually ($25 monthly).
 AWS CloudFront AWS CDN with Lambda@Edge for programmable delivery | Cloudflare Global CDN and DDoS protection with object storage | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.9 (0 reviews) | 4.3 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | freemium (pay-as-you-go + flat-rate monthly plans since the pricing redesign) | freemium |
| Starting price | Free tier available✓ | From $20/mo |
| Best for | AWS-invested teams needing a CDN deeply integrated with S3, ALB, WAF and Lambda, with a genuine zero-cost tier for small-to-medium traffic | Websites and SaaS front ends that want a free or flat-priced global CDN with DDoS protection and TLS included — and can accept proxying all traffic through one vendor. |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ✓ | |
| Free tier | ||
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | Global edge network (price classes 100/200/All) | Global — 300+ cities |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tierapi accesseu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenter | free tiers3 compatibleddos protectioneu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenterapi accessipv6terraform provider |
| Visit AWS CloudFront → | Visit Cloudflare → | |
AWS CloudFront
Pros
- + Always Free Tier (1 TB transfer, 10M requests, 2M function invocations monthly) covers small sites at zero cost
- + 750+ edge PoPs with 15 regional edge caches — one of the largest delivery networks available
- + Programmable edge: CloudFront Functions and Lambda@Edge with a KeyValueStore for config
- + Native WAF, Shield Standard DDoS protection, free ACM certificates and tight S3/ALB integration
Cons
- - SLA is 99.9% — weaker than AWS's load balancer SLA — and flat-rate Free/Pro plans carry no uptime commitment
- - Two pricing models (pay-as-you-go tiers vs flat-rate plans) with features gated to Business ($200/month) and above
- - Deep configuration surface: cache behavior ordering, TTL semantics and invalidation costs at scale
- - Edge compute and access-control bindings are AWS-specific — hard to migrate to another CDN
Cloudflare
Pros
- + Unmetered bandwidth and requests on every plan, including Free
- + Free managed WAF ruleset, Universal SSL and unmetered DDoS protection by default
- + 330+ city network with Anycast routing and no region pricing
- + Flat per-domain pricing is easy to budget; no egress surprises
- + Terraform provider and full API for configuration as code
Cons
- - No uptime SLA below the Business plan
- - Per-domain billing gets expensive for domain portfolios
- - Advanced WAF tuning and rate limiting are plan-gated
- - Proxy architecture is a concentration risk during network-level incidents
- - Large feature surface means caching misconfigurations can go unnoticed
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