Amazon CloudFront vs Netlify Comparison
Compare Amazon CloudFront vs Netlify 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.
Netlify
6.9/10
Netlify is a web platform for building, deploying and hosting frontend sites and web apps from Git, with serverless functions, a global CDN and preview deploys.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | A Amazon CloudFront | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 7.9/10 | 6.9/10 |
| Integration | 9/10 | 8/10 |
| Support | 6/10 | 5/10 |
| Cost | 6/10 | 6/10 |
| Customization | 9/10 | 6/10 |
| Security | 9/10 | 8/10 |
| Reliability | 9/10 | 8/10 |
| Ease of Use | 5/10 | 9/10 |
| Analytics | 7/10 | 6/10 |
| Scalability | 10/10 | 7/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Cheapest paid plan | $15/mo Pro (flat-rate) | $9/mo Personal |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | Free Free (flat-rate) | Free Free |
| Features | ||
| API and CLI | ||
| Content Delivery Network | ||
| DDoS Protection | ||
| Free SSL Certificates | ||
| Serverless Functions | ||
| Uptime SLA | ||
| Dedicated Servers | ||
| Git Deployments | Not listed | |
| Managed Databases | Not listed | |
| Managed Kubernetes | Not listed | |
| Managed WordPress | Not listed | |
| Multiple Regions | Not listed | |
| Object Storage | Not listed | |
| Shared Hosting | ||
| VPS Hosting | Not listed | |
Amazon CloudFront vs Netlify cost by team size
Amazon CloudFront and Netlify cost the same at every team size we checked.
| Team size | Amazon CloudFront | Netlify |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | FreeFree (flat-rate) | FreeFree |
| 5 users | FreeFree (flat-rate) | FreeFree |
| 10 users | FreeFree (flat-rate) | FreeFree |
| 25 users | FreeFree (flat-rate) | FreeFree |
| 50 users | FreeFree (flat-rate) | FreeFree |
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 Customization score (9/10 vs 6/10)
- Higher Scalability score (10/10 vs 7/10)
Why choose Netlify
- Higher Ease of Use score (9/10 vs 5/10)
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.
Netlify
Pros
- Every pull request gets a deploy preview URL at no credit cost, which makes reviewing changes easy.
- Git push-to-deploy with instant rollbacks keeps releases low-risk.
- The free plan allows commercial use and includes functions, a database and Blob storage.
- The Pro plan includes unlimited team members for $20 a month.
- Broad compliance audits (SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HIPAA) plus built-in DDoS protection and a WAF.
Cons
- Credit-based pricing is hard to predict, and Free-plan sites are paused when credits run out.
- Bandwidth costs 20 credits per GB, so the Pro plan's 3,000 credits cover only about 150 GB if spent on bandwidth alone.
- 300 free credits cover only about 20 production deploys a month.
- SSO, the SLA and 24/7 support are limited to the custom-priced Enterprise plan.
- Reviewers say it lags Vercel for Next.js and complain about AI agent credit costs.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
Amazon CloudFront scores higher on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria: 7.9/10 against 6.9/10 for Netlify. The largest gap is in Ease of Use: 5/10 for Amazon CloudFront and 9/10 for Netlify.
Both are free for 10 users.
Yes, both Amazon CloudFront and Netlify have a free plan.
