AWS CloudFront vs Cloudflare CDN
Cloudflare CDN 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 | AWS CloudFront | Cloudflare CDN | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | — | $20.00/mo | — |
| Data transfer out | $0.085/GB | Free | — |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes | — |
Source: Amazon Web Services pricing (May 2026) · Cloudflare 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 | AWS CloudFront | Cloudflare CDN | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Side projectA personal site or small app with modest traffic, a few gigabytes of assets, and one small always-on process. | $0 | $0 | Not comparable |
| Growing SaaSA funded product serving a few thousand daily users, with an image-heavy frontend and two application servers. | $0 | $0 | Not comparable |
| Media-heavy siteA publisher or video product where delivery dominates the bill and compute is almost an afterthought. | $765 | $0 | Cloudflare CDNsaves $765/mo (100%) |
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
AWS CloudFront
by Amazon Web Services
Amazon's CDN, priced per gigabyte with regional tiers and steep volume discounts that only apply once you are moving petabytes. The permanent 1 TB free tier makes it effectively free for small sites.
Free tier: 1 TB egress and 10M requests per month, always free
Cloudflare CDN
by Cloudflare
Bandwidth is not metered on any Cloudflare plan, so the CDN bill is a flat plan fee regardless of volume. That makes cost prediction trivial and makes it the default choice for bandwidth-heavy static sites.
Free tier: Unmetered CDN bandwidth on every plan including free
Common questions
- Is AWS CloudFront or Cloudflare CDN cheaper in 2026?
- Cloudflare CDN is cheaper in all 1 modelled workloads.
- What is the difference in egress cost between AWS CloudFront and Cloudflare CDN?
- Cloudflare CDN does not charge for data transfer out at all, while AWS CloudFront charges $0.085 per GB. On a read-heavy workload that difference is the entire comparison.
- Which has the better free tier, AWS CloudFront or Cloudflare CDN?
- Both publish one. AWS CloudFront: 1 TB egress and 10M requests per month, always free. Cloudflare CDN: Unmetered CDN bandwidth on every plan including free.
- 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.