Azure Front Door vs Google Cloud CDN
Google Cloud 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 | Azure Front Door | Google Cloud CDN | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | $35.00/mo | — | — |
| Data transfer out | $0.081/GB | $0.080/GB | 1× Google Cloud CDN |
| Free tier | No | No | — |
Source: Microsoft pricing (May 2026) · Google 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 | Azure Front Door | Google Cloud CDN | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Side projectA personal site or small app with modest traffic, a few gigabytes of assets, and one small always-on process. | $8.10 | $8.00 | Google Cloud CDNsaves $0.10/mo (1%) |
| Growing SaaSA funded product serving a few thousand daily users, with an image-heavy frontend and two application servers. | $81 | $80 | Google Cloud CDNsaves $1.00/mo (1%) |
| Media-heavy siteA publisher or video product where delivery dominates the bill and compute is almost an afterthought. | $810 | $800 | Google Cloud CDNsaves $10/mo (1%) |
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
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.
Google Cloud CDN
by Google
Caching in front of Google Cloud load balancers, billed on cache egress plus cache-fill from origin. Only sensible when the origin already runs on Google Cloud.
Common questions
- Is Azure Front Door or Google Cloud CDN cheaper in 2026?
- Google Cloud CDN is cheaper in all 3 modelled workloads.
- What is the difference in egress cost between Azure Front Door and Google Cloud CDN?
- Google Cloud CDN charges $0.080 per GB against Azure Front Door's $0.081, roughly 1× cheaper. Egress usually dominates the bill once traffic is measured in terabytes.
- Which has the better free tier, Azure Front Door or Google Cloud CDN?
- 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.