Akamai CDN vs Azure Front Door
Azure Front Door is cheaper across every workload modelled here.
List prices checked
Rate cards side by side
Only the axes at least one of them bills on. A dash means that provider does not charge for it.
| Billing axis | Akamai CDN | Azure Front Door | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | — | $35.00/mo | — |
| Data transfer out | $0.085/GB | $0.081/GB | 1× Azure Front Door |
| Free tier | No | No | — |
Source: Akamai pricing (May 2026) · Microsoft pricing (May 2026). Published list prices only — committed-use discounts, regional variation, and per-request charges are not included. Not yet independently re-checked against the vendor’s page.
Monthly cost for three real workloads
The rate cards applied to identical usage. This is where the winner changes.
| Workload | Akamai CDN | Azure Front Door | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Side projectA personal site or small app with modest traffic, a few gigabytes of assets, and one small always-on process. | $8.50 | $8.10 | Azure Front Doorsaves $0.40/mo (5%) |
| Growing SaaSA funded product serving a few thousand daily users, with an image-heavy frontend and two application servers. | $85 | $81 | Azure Front Doorsaves $4.00/mo (5%) |
| Media-heavy siteA publisher or video product where delivery dominates the bill and compute is almost an afterthought. | $850 | $810 | Azure Front Doorsaves $40/mo (5%) |
Workload definitions are identical on every comparison page, so figures here can be read against any other pair in the same category.
What each one is for
Akamai CDN
by Akamai
The largest delivery network by points of presence, sold through negotiated enterprise contracts. Published rates apply only to the self-service tier and understate what large customers actually pay.
Azure Front Door
by Microsoft
Microsoft's edge delivery and application acceleration layer, carrying a base platform fee on top of metered egress. Priced for organisations already committed to Azure.
Common questions
- Is Akamai CDN or Azure Front Door cheaper in 2026?
- Azure Front Door is cheaper in all 3 modelled workloads.
- What is the difference in egress cost between Akamai CDN and Azure Front Door?
- Azure Front Door charges $0.081 per GB against Akamai CDN's $0.085, roughly 1× cheaper. Egress usually dominates the bill once traffic is measured in terabytes.
- Which has the better free tier, Akamai CDN or Azure Front Door?
- Neither publishes a free tier; both bill from the first unit of usage.
- What do these estimates not include?
- Committed-use and reserved discounts, regional price variation, per-request API charges, support plans, and minimum retention periods. All of those move real invoices, sometimes by a lot. These figures compare published list prices for the same workload, which is the comparison the rate cards alone cannot give you.