Easily compare Fastly and CloudFront 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 | Fastly | CloudFront |
|---|---|---|
| Short profile | Founded in 2011, Fastly has grown into a mature CDN provider. Fastly offers a range of services including streaming media delivery and private CDN but Fastly is best known for being a 'real-time CDN', meaning changes happen instantly and the platform can deliver 'uncacheable' content well. | 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. |
Products
| Product | Fastly | CloudFront |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | Video on Demand | |
| Image OptimizationAutomatic image transformation/compression/optimization | Image Optimizer | |
| DNSAuthoritative DNS for customer domain | AWS Route53 | |
| WAFWeb Application Firewall | Web application firewall | AWS WAF |
| Anti-DDoSDDoS attack protection. Specific product(s) for this. | DDoS Mitigation | AWS Shield |
| Private CDNDedicated edge resources & custom configs | Fastly Managed CDN | |
| Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers | Compute@Edge | Lambda@Edge |
Network
How many POP locations do Fastly and CloudFront have in different parts of the world?
| Region | Fastly | CloudFront |
|---|---|---|
| North America | 25 | 19 |
| Latin America | 8 | 7 |
| Europe | 20 | 31 |
| Russia & CIS | 0 | 0 |
| Asia excl. China | 13 | 18 |
| China | 0 | 4 |
| Oceania | 8 | 5 |
| Middle East | 2 | 6 |
| Africa | 3 | 5 |
Pricing
| Pricing & contract duration | Fastly | CloudFront |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum contract term | None | None |
| Minimum monthly costs | $50 | None |
| Requests costsCustomers pay for client to CDN requests | $0.0075 - $0.016 per 10k requests | $0.0075 - $0.022 per 10k requests |
| Ingress costsCustomers pay for origin-to-CDN bytes transferred | None | $0.02 - $0.16 per GB (free if origin is AWS) |
| NA/EU traffic (low volume) | $0.12 per GB | $0.085 per GB |
| APAC traffic (low volume) | $0.19 per GB | $0.12 per GB (India: $0.109) |
| LATAM traffic (low volume) | $0.28 per GB | $0.11 per GB |
Features
| Web acceleration | Fastly | CloudFront |
|---|---|---|
| Instant setupSign up, configure, start testing. | ||
| Change propagation delayHow fast do config changes propagate to all POPs? | Instant! | ~10 minutes |
Apex/root domain OK  No performance degradation when using http(s)://domain.com |
Global anycast IPs are available | Only if used together with AWS Route53 |
| HTTP/2 | HTTP/2 announcement (Sep 2016) | |
| HTTP/3 | Enabling HTTP/3 | HTTP/3 announcement |
| WebSockets | Limited availability | Using WebSockets with CloudFront distributions |
| IPv6Do the edge servers have IPv6? | IPv6 at Fastly | IPv6 support announcement (Oct 2016) |
| Compression Reduce file size for faster delivery |
Resend from origin, or compress on edge. Brotli! |
Resend from origin, or compress on edge
CloudFront can compress many content types on the edge and supports Brotli
|
| 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 be different from origin host | Can't configure specific other Host header |
| Origin ShieldOne POP pulls from origin, other POPs pull from the shield POP | Also available as separate product (Media Shield) | Origin Shield docs |
| Waiting RoomDuring peak traffic, route users to a virtual waiting room | Stateful waiting room with Compute@Edge | Virtual Waiting Room on AWS |
| Push / uploadStore your content directly on CDN, no customer origin | ||
| Cache control - CDN caching | Full and granular control | |
| Cache control - client caching | Full and granular control | |
| Serve Stale CDN serves cached but expired content in case origin is in trouble |
Cache-Control extensions support | Supports Cache-Control extensions |
| Purge Invalidate or delete cached objects on CDN |
Instant! | Purge Speed |
| Purge - capabilities | Purge all and by key | Purge all and by directory/file type (wildcards) |
| Analytics | Real-time! | Amazon CloudFront Reports & Analytics |
| Log files | Real-time streaming of logs to your server |
Only delivered to S3
CloudFront delivers access logs for a distribution up to several times an hour
|
| API | Purge, analytics, configuration | Purge, analytics, configuration |
| HTTPS & Content Protection | Fastly | CloudFront |
|---|---|---|
| CDN domain HTTPSUse the CDN's domain, like cloudfront.net | Free for first 5 domains, $20 per additional domain | Free (not SNI) |
| Customer domain HTTPSYour domain in the CDN's certificate | $100/m per FQDN, $275/m for wildcard domain | |
| Customer cert HTTPSYour certificate on the CDN | EV cert possible. | Free (SNI) or $600/m for non-SNI |
| Token authentication | Enabling URL token validation | Serving Private Content through CloudFront |
| Geo blocking | Restricting the Geographic Distribution of Your Content | |
| Hotlink protectionThird parties cannot deeplink to your content | Creating and using Edge Dictionaries | Use AWS WAF for Referer Checking |
| Basic authenticationUser logs in on the CDN to get content | Authenticating before returning a request | |
| IP white/blacklisting | About Edge ACLs | Use AWS WAF to Block IP Addresses |
Support
| Customer support | Fastly | CloudFront |
|---|---|---|
| Documentation | Yes, public | Yes, public. API docs |
| Humans | Email support during business hours is free. Pay extra if you need more/better. Two paid plans available | Community support is free. Email and phone support (AWS Support) available at extra costs |