Skip to content

CloudFront versus Cloudflare

Easily compare CloudFront and Cloudflare for POP locations, products, pricing, features & support. We hope this helps you better understand the similarities and differences between these content delivery networks.

CloudFront logo Cloudflare logo

Company

Company CloudFront Cloudflare
Short profile CloudFront is the CDN of AWS (Amazon Web Services), the world's largest cloud services provider. CloudFront offers a mature set of content delivery products and has a big network of POPs on many continents. Solid documentation and APIs make CloudFront a developer-friendly CDN. Cloudflare provides a global CDN with unique performance capabilities and a strong focus on security. The company has a global infrastructure built from the ground up using only next-generation, high-performance equipment—no legacy software or hardware. The result is a CDN that's easy to set up, affordable, and built to continuously adapt and integrate emerging technologies to meet future needs of everyone's Internet properties.

Products

Yes
Sort of/partially
No
Extra costs
Unknown
Product CloudFront Cloudflare
Dynamic content deliveryNon-cacheable content delivery. User login, shopping cart ... Dynamic Content Delivery
Small file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of small files (file size <1 MB)
Large file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of large files (file size >1 MB)
Live videoDelivery of live video. RTMP? Transcoding/transmuxing? Streaming Media Stream Live
Video on demandDelivery of on demand video Stream
Image OptimizationAutomatic image transformation/compression/optimization Image Resizing, Mirage, Polish
DNSAuthoritative DNS for customer domain AWS Route53 DNS
WAFWeb Application Firewall AWS WAF Cloud Web Application Firewall
Anti-DDoSDDoS attack protection. Specific product(s) for this. AWS Shield DDoS Protection
Private CDNDedicated edge resources & custom configs
Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers Lambda@Edge Workers

Network

How many POP locations do CloudFront and Cloudflare have in different parts of the world?

Region CloudFront Cloudflare
North America 19 49
Latin America 7 48
Europe 31 45
Russia & CIS 0 11
Asia excl. China 18 45
China 4 37
Oceania 5 10
Middle East 5 15
Africa 4 24

Pricing

Pricing & contract duration CloudFront Cloudflare
Minimum contract term None None
Minimum monthly costs None $0
Requests costsCustomers pay for client to CDN requests $0.0075 - $0.022 per 10k requests None
Ingress costsCustomers pay for origin-to-CDN bytes transferred $0.02 - $0.16 per GB (free if origin is AWS) None
NA/EU traffic (low volume) $0.085 per GB $0
APAC traffic (low volume) $0.12 per GB (India: $0.109) $0
LATAM traffic (low volume) $0.11 per GB $0

Features

Yes
Sort of/partially
No
Extra costs
Unknown
Web acceleration CloudFront Cloudflare
Instant setupSign up, configure, start testing.
Change propagation delayHow fast do config changes propagate to all POPs? ~10 minutes Instant
Apex/root domain OK Blog: Root domain on CDN and performanceNo performance degradation when using http(s)://domain.com Only if used together with AWS Route53 Global Anycast network
HTTP/2 HTTP/2 announcement (Sep 2016)
HTTP/3 HTTP/3 announcement HTTP/3 Prioritization
WebSockets Using WebSockets with CloudFront distributions WebSockets docs
IPv6Do the edge servers have IPv6? IPv6 support announcement (Oct 2016)
Compression CDN Guide: CompressionReduce file size for faster delivery Resend from origin, or compress on edge
tooltip CloudFront can compress many content types on the edge and supports Brotli
Resend from origin, or compress on edge
Origin pull - protocolHTTP only or HTTPS possible too? HTTP and HTTPS HTTP and HTTPS
Origin pull - Host headerUse client > edge value? Set specific value? Can't configure specific other Host header Can be an IP address
Origin ShieldOne POP pulls from origin, other POPs pull from the shield POP Origin Shield docs Tiered Cache, included in all paid plans
Waiting RoomDuring peak traffic, route users to a virtual waiting room Virtual Waiting Room on AWS Cloudflare Waiting Room
Push / uploadStore your content directly on CDN, no customer origin
Cache control - CDN caching Page rules for overriding caching headers
Cache control - client caching
Serve Stale CDN Guide: Serve StaleCDN serves cached but expired content in case origin is in trouble Supports Cache-Control extensions Only 'stale while revalidate'
Purge CDN Guide: PurgeInvalidate or delete cached objects on CDN Purge Speed Purge Speed
Purge - capabilities Purge all and by directory/file type (wildcards) Purge per file and purge all
Analytics Amazon CloudFront Reports & Analytics Web analytics, threats and more. Live-updating for paying customers
Log files Only delivered to S3
tooltip CloudFront delivers access logs for a distribution up to several times an hour
Only for Enterprise customers, instantly available
API Purge, analytics, configuration Purge, analytics, configuration
HTTPS & Content Protection CloudFront Cloudflare
CDN domain HTTPSUse the CDN's domain, like cloudfront.net Free (not SNI) SNI
Customer domain HTTPSYour domain in the CDN's certificate More info
Customer cert HTTPSYour certificate on the CDN Free (SNI) or $600/m for non-SNI
Token authentication Serving Private Content through CloudFront More info
Geo blocking Restricting the Geographic Distribution of Your Content Access Rules
Hotlink protectionThird parties cannot deeplink to your content Use AWS WAF for Referer Checking
Basic authenticationUser logs in on the CDN to get content Possible with Workers
IP white/blacklisting Use AWS WAF to Block IP Addresses Access Rules

Support

Customer support CloudFront Cloudflare
Documentation Yes, public. API docs Yes, public. Cloudflare Community.
Humans Community support is free. Email and phone support (AWS Support) available at extra costs Email support for all. Phone only for Enterprise customers