AWS CloudFront vs Fastly
AWS CloudFront 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 | Fastly | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data transfer out | $0.085/GB | $0.120/GB | 1.4× AWS CloudFront |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes | — |
Source: Amazon Web Services pricing (May 2026) · Fastly pricing (August 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 | Fastly | 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 | $108 | AWS CloudFrontsaves $108/mo (100%) |
| Media-heavy siteA publisher or video product where delivery dominates the bill and compute is almost an afterthought. | $765 | $1,188 | AWS CloudFrontsaves $423/mo (36%) |
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
Fastly
by Fastly
A programmable CDN with instant global purge and edge compute. Priced at the top of the market per gigabyte and sold on control rather than cost, with a permanent 100 GB monthly free allowance.
Free tier: 100 GB of bandwidth per month, permanently free
Common questions
- Is AWS CloudFront or Fastly cheaper in 2026?
- AWS CloudFront is cheaper in all 2 modelled workloads.
- What is the difference in egress cost between AWS CloudFront and Fastly?
- AWS CloudFront charges $0.085 per GB against Fastly's $0.120, roughly 1.4× cheaper. Egress usually dominates the bill once traffic is measured in terabytes.
- Which has the better free tier, AWS CloudFront or Fastly?
- Both publish one. AWS CloudFront: 1 TB egress and 10M requests per month, always free. Fastly: 100 GB of bandwidth per month, permanently 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.