Amazon CloudFront
7.9/10Amazon 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.
Data last updated November 2026 · Our methodology
Overview
Amazon CloudFront is the content delivery network in Amazon Web Services. It serves static and dynamic content, APIs and video from more than 750 points of presence in over 100 cities, with 15 regional edge caches and more than 1,140 PoPs embedded inside ISP networks. It works natively with AWS origins such as S3, EC2, Elastic Load Balancing and Media Services, and it can also front any external HTTP server. Fetches from AWS origins cost nothing. Security comes through AWS Shield, AWS WAF, free auto-renewing ACM certificates, signed URLs and cookies, and geo-restriction. For edge logic there are CloudFront Functions for light request rewriting and Lambda@Edge for heavier code. CloudFront offers two pricing models. Pay-as-you-go includes an always-free allowance of 1 TB of transfer and 10 million requests per month, after which US and Europe transfer starts at about $0.085 per GB. Since November 2025 there are also flat-rate plans per distribution: Free, Pro at $15, Business at $200, Premium at $1,000 and a Custom tier. These plans bundle CDN, DNS, WAF and DDoS protection, and they carry no overage charges. The service suits developers and companies already running on AWS who want fine-grained control through the API, CloudFormation or Terraform. Its main drawback is complexity. Reviewers often mention a steep learning curve for people new to AWS, and costs can be hard to predict on metered billing. Flat-rate plans also exclude some features, including Lambda@Edge per some sources, real-time logs and dedicated IP SSL.
Our Rating
Who Amazon CloudFront is best for
Good fit
It offers a full API, works with CloudFormation and the SDKs, and runs code at the edge, which suits engineers who want deep control.
It holds PCI-DSS, HIPAA, SOC and FedRAMP Moderate compliance, offers custom pricing, and runs on a very large edge network.
It integrates natively with AWS origins and supports blue/green continuous deployment, a good fit for SaaS products hosted on AWS.
The always-free tier and the $15 Pro flat-rate plan keep early costs low.
Less suited
Reviewers cite configuration complexity and costs as hurdles for smaller teams that are not technical.
Pros & Cons
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.
Key Features
Not included
- Managed WordPress
- Dedicated Servers
- Shared Hosting
Amazon CloudFront Pricing
Free (flat-rate)
- 5 WAF rules
- 5 GB S3 storage
- No logging and no SLA
- 1M requests and 100 GB transfer per month
- CDN, DNS, DDoS protection and TLS certificate
Pro (flat-rate)
- Logging
- 25 WAF rules
- 50 GB S3 storage
- No overage charges
- 10M requests and 50 TB transfer per month
Business (flat-rate)
- Uptime SLA
- 50 WAF rules
- mTLS support
- 1 TB S3 storage
- 125M requests and 50 TB transfer per month
Premium (flat-rate)
- Uptime SLA
- 75 WAF rules
- 5 TB S3 storage
- 500M requests and 50 TB transfer per month
Custom (flat-rate)
- Uptime SLA
- Contact sales
- No limit on WAF rules
- Up to 6B requests and 600 TB transfer, configurable
Pay-as-you-go
- Metered transfer and request charges after that
- Optional Security Savings Bundle: 30% off with a 1-year commitment
- Always free: 1 TB transfer, 10M requests and 2M CloudFront Function invocations per month
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Pay-as-you-go includes an always-free allowance of 1 TB of transfer, 10 million requests and 2 million CloudFront Function invocations per month. There is also a separate Free flat-rate plan with 100 GB of transfer and 1 million requests.
No. AWS says flat-rate plans have no overage charges. Third-party reviewers report that going over the allowance can reduce performance instead.
AWS commits to 99.9% monthly uptime. Missing it earns service credits of 10%, 25% or 100%, which are applied to future CloudFront bills. Among flat-rate plans, only Business and higher include the SLA.
Yes. AWS Certificate Manager issues free certificates that renew automatically. Only the dedicated IP SSL option is paid, at $600 per month per certificate.
Yes. Any HTTP server can be an origin. Fetches from AWS origins are free, while traffic from other origins is billed normally.
No. Pay-as-you-go and flat-rate plans need no annual commitment. The optional Security Savings Bundle gives 30% off in exchange for a 1-year commitment.
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