Amazon S3 vs Cloudflare
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Amazon S3 and Cloudflare.
Quick Verdict
4.1/5
Amazon S3
0 reviews
4.3/5
Cloudflare
0 reviews
Cloudflare is rated higher (4.3 vs 4.1). AWS S3 stores and retrieves unlimited amounts of data via a simple web interface. Built for developers, enterprises, and anyone needing reliable, durable cloud storage with pay-as-you-go pricing. 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).
 Amazon S3 Scalable object storage for any data size or type | Cloudflare Global CDN and DDoS protection with object storage | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.1 (0 reviews) | 4.3 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | pay-as-you-go (per GB-month + per 1,000 requests + retrieval/transfer) | freemium |
| Starting price | From $0.023/mo✓ | From $20/mo |
| Best for | Teams building on AWS who need durable, API-stable object storage for backups, data lakes, static content and archives — and who value tooling compatibility over the lowest per-GB rate | 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 | 39 AWS regions / 123-124 AZs | Global — 300+ cities |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tiers3 compatibleapi accessus datacentereu datacenterapac datacenterterraform provider | free tiers3 compatibleddos protectioneu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenterapi accessipv6terraform provider |
| Visit Amazon S3 → | Visit Cloudflare → | |
Amazon S3
Pros
- + Designed for 11 nines durability with cross-AZ replication by default and strong read-after-write consistency
- + The S3 API is the industry standard — code written in 2006 still works, and third-party compatibility is everywhere
- + 23x cost ladder from Standard down to Glacier Deep Archive at $0.00099/GB-month, with lifecycle automation
- + Deepest storage feature set available: versioning, Object Lock, replication, inventory, event notifications, access management
Cons
- - Egress at $0.09/GB and per-request pricing produce surprise bills for chatty or restore-heavy workloads
- - IA and Glacier classes add retrieval fees and latency — the restore path must be priced separately
- - Policy configuration (bucket policies, IAM, Block Public Access, KMS keys) is complex and historically error-prone
- - SLA (99.9%/99.0%) is far below the durability figure — availability and durability are different promises
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
Stay in the loop
Get weekly updates on the best new hosting and infrastructure providers, deals, and comparisons.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.