Easily compare CloudFront and Leaseweb for POP locations, products, pricing, features & support. We hope this helps you better understand the similarities and differences between these content delivery networks.
Company
| Company | CloudFront | Leaseweb |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | Leaseweb has been an established player in the (enterprise) hosting market for many years and launched their CDN mid 2013. Leaseweb claims 'the most competitive price in the CDN market' and has a reseller program. |
Products
| Product | CloudFront | Leaseweb |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | |
| Video on demandDelivery of on demand video | ||
| Image OptimizationAutomatic image transformation/compression/optimization | ||
| DNSAuthoritative DNS for customer domain | AWS Route53 | |
| WAFWeb Application Firewall | AWS WAF | |
| Anti-DDoSDDoS attack protection. Specific product(s) for this. | AWS Shield | DDoS IP Protection |
| Private CDNDedicated edge resources & custom configs | Private CDN | |
| Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers | Lambda@Edge |
Network
How many POP locations do CloudFront and Leaseweb have in different parts of the world?
| Region | CloudFront | Leaseweb |
|---|---|---|
| North America | 19 | 6 |
| Latin America | 7 | 0 |
| Europe | 31 | 6 |
| Russia & CIS | 0 | 0 |
| Asia excl. China | 18 | 2 |
| China | 4 | 0 |
| Oceania | 5 | 0 |
| Middle East | 6 | 0 |
| Africa | 5 | 0 |
Pricing
| Pricing & contract duration | CloudFront | Leaseweb |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum contract term | None | One month |
| Minimum monthly costs | None | $49 |
| 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 | $0.06 per GB |
| APAC traffic (low volume) | $0.12 per GB (India: $0.109) | $0.06 per GB |
| LATAM traffic (low volume) | $0.11 per GB | $0.06 per GB |
Features
| Web acceleration | CloudFront | Leaseweb |
|---|---|---|
| Instant setupSign up, configure, start testing. | Leaseweb needs 1 business day to get you started | |
| Change propagation delayHow fast do config changes propagate to all POPs? | ~10 minutes | Instant |
Apex/root domain OK  No performance degradation when using http(s)://domain.com |
Only if used together with AWS Route53 | No global Anycast |
| HTTP/2 | HTTP/2 announcement (Sep 2016) | |
| HTTP/3 | HTTP/3 announcement | |
| WebSockets | Using WebSockets with CloudFront distributions | |
| IPv6Do the edge servers have IPv6? | IPv6 support announcement (Oct 2016) | |
| Compression Reduce file size for faster delivery |
Resend from origin, or compress on edge
CloudFront can compress many content types on the edge and supports Brotli
|
Resend from origin or compress on the 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 | |
| Origin ShieldOne POP pulls from origin, other POPs pull from the shield POP | Origin Shield docs | |
| Waiting RoomDuring peak traffic, route users to a virtual waiting room | Virtual Waiting Room on AWS | |
| Push / uploadStore your content directly on CDN, no customer origin | ||
| Cache control - CDN caching | Can set max-age override and set 404 caching TTL | |
| Cache control - client caching | ||
| Serve Stale CDN serves cached but expired content in case origin is in trouble |
Supports Cache-Control extensions | CDN serves cached if origin is down |
| Purge Invalidate or delete cached objects on CDN |
Purge Speed | Instant most of the time |
| Purge - capabilities | Purge all and by directory/file type (wildcards) | Purge per file and purge all |
| Analytics | Amazon CloudFront Reports & Analytics | Bandwidth, geo distribution and more |
| Log files |
Only delivered to S3
CloudFront delivers access logs for a distribution up to several times an hour
|
One hour delay. Fetch via FTP |
| API | Purge, analytics, configuration | Purge, analytics, configuration |
| HTTPS & Content Protection | CloudFront | Leaseweb |
|---|---|---|
| CDN domain HTTPSUse the CDN's domain, like cloudfront.net | Free (not SNI) | Free. SNI |
| Customer domain HTTPSYour domain in the CDN's certificate | ||
| Customer cert HTTPSYour certificate on the CDN | Free (SNI) or $600/m for non-SNI | Free. SNI |
| Token authentication | Serving Private Content through CloudFront | |
| Geo blocking | Restricting the Geographic Distribution of Your Content | |
| Hotlink protectionThird parties cannot deeplink to your content | Use AWS WAF for Referer Checking | |
| Basic authenticationUser logs in on the CDN to get content | ||
| IP white/blacklisting | Use AWS WAF to Block IP Addresses |
Support
| Customer support | CloudFront | Leaseweb |
|---|---|---|
| Documentation | Yes, public. API docs | Yes, public KB |
| Humans | Community support is free. Email and phone support (AWS Support) available at extra costs | 24/7 personal support via telephone and email. |