Amazon Web Services vs Cloudflare
Cloudflare is cheaper in all 2 categories where both compete.
Category by category
Each provider's cheapest published option in each category, on the axis that category is billed on. A dash means they do not sell into it.
| Category | Amazon Web Services | Rate | Cloudflare | Rate | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CDN & edge delivery | AWS CloudFront | $0.085 | Cloudflare CDN | Free | Cloudflare |
| Cloud compute & VPS | AWS EC2 | $0.042 | — | — | only one competes |
| GPU cloud | AWS EC2 P5 | $7.57 | — | — | only one competes |
| Object storage | AWS S3 | $0.023 | Cloudflare R2 | $0.015 | Cloudflare1.5× cheaper |
| Serverless functions | — | — | Cloudflare Workers | $5.00 | only one competes |
| Managed databases | AWS RDS for PostgreSQL | $12.40 | — | — | only one competes |
About each provider
Amazon Web Services
Headquartered in US · 7 priced services
The largest cloud provider by revenue, with the broadest service catalogue and the most complex pricing. Rates are rarely the cheapest on any single axis, and egress in particular is priced well above the market.
Cloudflare
Headquartered in US · 3 priced services
An edge-first network that made zero egress fees its main commercial weapon. Storage and CDN products undercut the hyperscalers specifically on data transfer out.
Questions
- Is Amazon Web Services or Cloudflare cheaper in 2026?
- Cloudflare is cheaper in all 2 categories where both compete. Picking a provider on an aggregate "cheaper" verdict is usually a mistake — what matters is which of them is cheaper in the categories you actually buy.
- What does Amazon Web Services offer that Cloudflare does not?
- In this dataset: Cloud compute & VPS, GPU cloud, Managed databases. Cloudflare has no priced equivalent in those categories.
- What does Cloudflare offer that Amazon Web Services does not?
- In this dataset: Serverless functions. Amazon Web Services has no priced equivalent in that category.
- Should I use both?
- Often the cheapest answer, and the table above shows where the seams are. Splitting workloads across providers costs you cross-provider data transfer and a second bill to reason about, so it pays off when the per-category gap is large and the traffic between them is small.