Amazon CloudFront vs Fastly Comparison
Compare Amazon CloudFront vs Fastly features, pricing, and more.
Last updated: November 2026
Amazon CloudFront
7.9/10
Amazon CloudFront is the AWS content delivery network. It caches and serves websites, APIs and media from more than 750 edge locations, and includes DDoS protection, WAF and edge compute.
Fastly
6.7/10
Fastly is an edge cloud platform that combines a programmable CDN, WebAssembly serverless compute, edge storage, and web security for engineering-led businesses.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | A Amazon CloudFront | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 7.9/10 | 6.7/10 |
| Analytics | 7/10 | 7/10 |
| Cost | 6/10 | 4/10 |
| Customization | 9/10 | 9/10 |
| Ease of Use | 5/10 | 4/10 |
| Integration | 9/10 | 8/10 |
| Reliability | 9/10 | 7/10 |
| Scalability | 10/10 | 8/10 |
| Security | 9/10 | 8/10 |
| Support | 6/10 | 6/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Cheapest paid plan | $15/mo Pro (flat-rate) | $500/mo Compute Starter |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | Free Free (flat-rate) | Free Usage-based (free allowance) |
| Features | ||
| API and CLI | ||
| Content Delivery Network | ||
| DDoS Protection | ||
| Free SSL Certificates | ||
| Multiple Regions | ||
| Serverless Functions | ||
| Dedicated Servers | ||
| Managed Kubernetes | Not listed | |
| Managed WordPress | ||
| Object Storage | Not listed | |
| Shared Hosting | ||
| Uptime SLA | Not listed | |
| VPS Hosting | Not listed | |
Amazon CloudFront vs Fastly cost by team size
Amazon CloudFront and Fastly cost the same at every team size we checked.
| Team size | Amazon CloudFront | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | FreeFree (flat-rate) | FreeUsage-based (free allowance) |
| 5 users | FreeFree (flat-rate) | FreeUsage-based (free allowance) |
| 10 users | FreeFree (flat-rate) | FreeUsage-based (free allowance) |
| 25 users | FreeFree (flat-rate) | FreeUsage-based (free allowance) |
| 50 users | FreeFree (flat-rate) | FreeUsage-based (free allowance) |
The plan that fits each team size, billed monthly, before add-ons and usage charges. Each cost opens that tool's pricing calculator for the team size.
Which One Should You Choose?
AWhy choose Amazon CloudFront
- Higher Cost score (6/10 vs 4/10)
- Higher Reliability score (9/10 vs 7/10)
Why choose Fastly
Our data shows no clear advantage over Amazon CloudFront.
Pros & Cons
AAmazon CloudFront
Pros
- The network is very large, with more than 750 PoPs plus over 1,140 PoPs embedded inside ISP networks.
- Data transfer from AWS origins such as S3 and EC2 to CloudFront costs nothing, which lowers costs for workloads hosted on AWS.
- Flat-rate plans start at $15 a month with no overage charges, which makes bills predictable.
- It has strong compliance coverage, including PCI-DSS Level 1, HIPAA, SOC, ISO and FedRAMP Moderate.
- Two tiers of edge compute are available: CloudFront Functions at $0.10 per million invocations and Lambda@Edge for heavier code.
Cons
- G2 and Capterra reviewers report complex configuration and a steep learning curve for people new to AWS.
- Capterra-network reviewers rate customer support poorly, around 3.4 out of 5.
- Flat-rate plans lack some features, such as real-time logs, dedicated IP SSL and continuous deployment, and going over the allowance reduces performance.
- Dedicated IP SSL at $600 a month and Anycast Static IPs at $3,000 a month are expensive extras.
- Users on AWS re:Post and GitHub report cache invalidations that occasionally hang for hours or time out during deploys.
Fastly
Pros
- Instant Purge clears cached content worldwide in about 150 ms, which suits news and e-commerce sites that change content often.
- VCL and WebAssembly-based Compute give engineers fine control over edge logic per request.
- Real-time log streaming to more than 30 endpoints, including Datadog, Splunk, and BigQuery, is included.
- The Next-Gen WAF, from the Signal Sciences acquisition, is known for low false-positive rates (a vendor claim reported by Technologymatch).
- Self-serve sign-up includes free monthly allowances for delivery, compute, storage, and TLS.
Cons
- Reviewers describe VCL as hard to learn and say the dashboard is complex for beginners.
- Region-based bandwidth rates make monthly bills hard to predict, especially for smaller companies.
- About 76 POPs, far fewer than Cloudflare or Akamai, with no presence in mainland China, Russia, or the CIS region.
- Some PeerSpot reviewers report slow support responses.
- Bot management and the full security suites are sold by sales quote only.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
Amazon CloudFront scores higher on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria: 7.9/10 against 6.7/10 for Fastly. The largest gap is in Cost: 6/10 for Amazon CloudFront and 4/10 for Fastly.
Both are free for 10 users.
Yes, both Amazon CloudFront and Fastly have a free plan.
