Amazon CloudFront vs Fly.io Comparison

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Why choose Amazon CloudFront

• Has a free plan (Fly.io does not)
• Lower estimated cost for 10 users: Free vs $2/mo
• Higher Reliability score (9/10 vs 4/10)
• Higher Integration score (9/10 vs 6/10)
• Better fit for enterprise (8/10 vs 5/10)

Why choose Fly.io

• Higher Cost score (7/10 vs 6/10)
• Higher Ease of Use score (6/10 vs 5/10)

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Amazon 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.

Fly.io

Pros

• Very low entry cost: a small shared Machine is about $2.19 a month, and invoices under $5 are waived.
• Apps can run in many regions with Anycast routing and global load balancing included at no extra cost.
• Per-hour billing and one-year reserved blocks that save 40 percent give flexible ways to manage cost.
• Managed Postgres plans include high availability, automated backups and connection pooling.
• A HIPAA package with a pre-signed BAA costs $99 a month on any paid plan.

Cons

• Status trackers show recurring network and API incidents through 2025 and 2026, and the CEO admitted reliability problems in 2023.
• The 99.9% uptime SLA is available only with Enterprise support, which starts at $2,500 a month.
• Bills spread across Machines, volumes, egress, IPs and support, which makes costs harder to predict.
• Apps need a Dockerfile and a fly.toml, which adds setup work compared with buildpack-style PaaS products.
• Compute costs more in some regions, up to 1.615 times in Sao Paulo.