Amazon CloudFront vs Lumen Comparison
Compare Amazon CloudFront vs Lumen 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.
Lumen
5.5/10
Lumen Technologies offers Edge Bare Metal, single-tenant servers in US edge locations that you can rent by the hour or month, aimed at enterprises running low-latency workloads.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | A Amazon CloudFront | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 7.9/10 | 5.5/10 |
| Analytics | 7/10 | 4/10 |
| Cost | 6/10 | 4/10 |
| Customization | 9/10 | 7/10 |
| Ease of Use | 5/10 | 5/10 |
| Integration | 9/10 | 5/10 |
| Reliability | 9/10 | 6/10 |
| Scalability | 10/10 | 5/10 |
| Security | 9/10 | 7/10 |
| Support | 6/10 | 6/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | Yes | No |
| Cheapest paid plan | $15/mo Pro (flat-rate) | $360/mo Edge Bare Metal entry (10 cores) |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | Free Free (flat-rate) | $360/mo Edge Bare Metal entry (10 cores) |
| Features | ||
| Dedicated Servers | ||
| API and CLI | ||
| Multiple Regions | ||
| Content Delivery Network | Not listed | |
| DDoS Protection | Not listed | |
| Free SSL Certificates | Not listed | |
| Managed WordPress | Not listed | |
| Serverless Functions | Not listed | |
| Shared Hosting | Not listed | |
| Uptime SLA | Not listed | |
Amazon CloudFront vs Lumen cost by team size
Amazon CloudFront costs less at every team size we checked.
| Team size | Amazon CloudFront | Lumen |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | FreeFree (flat-rate) | $360/moEdge Bare Metal entry (10 cores) |
| 5 users | FreeFree (flat-rate) | $360/moEdge Bare Metal entry (10 cores) |
| 10 users | FreeFree (flat-rate) | $360/moEdge Bare Metal entry (10 cores) |
| 25 users | FreeFree (flat-rate) | $360/moEdge Bare Metal entry (10 cores) |
| 50 users | FreeFree (flat-rate) | $360/moEdge Bare Metal entry (10 cores) |
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
- Has a free plan (Lumen does not)
- Lower estimated cost for 10 users: Free vs $360/mo
- Higher Scalability score (10/10 vs 5/10)
- Higher Integration score (9/10 vs 5/10)
- Better fit for startups (7/10 vs 3/10)
Why choose Lumen
- Includes Dedicated Servers, which Amazon CloudFront lacks
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.
Lumen
Pros
- Single-tenant physical servers in more than 60 US edge nodes, designed for latency of about 5 ms or less.
- Servers can be provisioned in about an hour, with both hourly and monthly billing.
- Flexible OS options, including bring-your-own ISO, plus IPv4/IPv6 dual stack and private networking.
- Published price estimates for each configuration, which is unusual for an enterprise carrier.
Cons
- Servers are billed hourly even when powered off.
- Published prices exclude OS licensing, setup fees, bandwidth, and connectivity, and apply only to qualifying US customers.
- There are no managed databases, Kubernetes, or object storage alongside the servers.
- There are almost no public user reviews, and Lumen has been divesting units such as its CDN and EMEA businesses.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
Amazon CloudFront scores higher on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria: 7.9/10 against 5.5/10 for Lumen. The largest gap is in Scalability: 10/10 for Amazon CloudFront and 5/10 for Lumen.
Amazon CloudFront costs less for 10 users: free on its Free (flat-rate) plan, against about $360/mo on its Edge Bare Metal entry (10 cores) plan for Lumen, billed monthly.
Amazon CloudFront has a free plan; Lumen does not list one.
Amazon CloudFront is the better fit for startups: we rate it 7/10 for them, against 3/10 for Lumen.
Lumen has Dedicated Servers, which Amazon CloudFront lacks.
