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 | 5 |
Africa | 3 | 4 |
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 |