AWS CloudFront vs Cloudflare: Which CDN for Your Enterprise?

Choosing a CDN is one of those infrastructure decisions that touches everything — performance, security, cost, and operational complexity. AWS CloudFront and Cloudflare are the two most popular options, but they serve different purposes and excel in different scenarios.

This comparison is based on our experience deploying both CDNs for enterprise clients across SaaS, eCommerce, media, and financial services.

Architecture Differences

Before comparing features, understand the fundamental architectural difference.

CloudFront is a CDN service within the AWS ecosystem. It is designed to work seamlessly with S3, ALB, EC2, Lambda@Edge, API Gateway, and other AWS services. Your origin infrastructure lives in AWS, and CloudFront extends it to the edge.

Cloudflare is a reverse proxy network that sits in front of your entire domain. It proxies all DNS, caches content, and provides security services at the network level. Your origin can be anywhere — AWS, GCP, Azure, on-premises, or another provider.

This distinction matters. CloudFront is best when your stack is on AWS. Cloudflare is best when you need a vendor-agnostic edge network or your infrastructure spans multiple providers.

Performance Comparison

Edge Network Size

CloudFront has more edge locations concentrated in major markets (North America, Europe, Asia). Cloudflare has broader geographic coverage, especially in emerging markets.

For most enterprise use cases in North America and Europe, performance is comparable. For global audiences, especially in Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia, Cloudflare’s broader network may provide lower latency.

Cache Hit Ratios

CloudFront introduced Origin Shield — an additional caching layer between edge locations and your origin that acts as a centralized cache. This significantly improves cache hit ratios for content that is not frequently requested at any single edge location.

Cloudflare achieves similar results through its Tiered Caching feature (available on Business and Enterprise plans), which routes cache misses through regional data centers before going to your origin.

Dynamic Content

For dynamic (non-cacheable) content, both CDNs optimize the network path between the edge and your origin:

• CloudFront: Uses AWS’s private backbone network for connections to AWS origins, reducing latency and jitter compared to the public internet.
• Cloudflare: Uses Argo Smart Routing (paid add-on) to find the fastest path through Cloudflare’s network. This optimizes connections to any origin, not just those in a specific cloud.

Pricing Comparison

CDN pricing is notoriously complex. Here is a simplified comparison for common scenarios.

Data Transfer Pricing

Cloudflare’s pricing model is fundamentally different — bandwidth is unmetered on all plans. You pay a flat monthly fee based on features (Free, Pro at $20/month, Business at $200/month, Enterprise at custom pricing), not per GB transferred.

For high-bandwidth workloads (media streaming, large file distribution, image-heavy sites), Cloudflare’s flat pricing is significantly cheaper. For low-bandwidth workloads with heavy compute at the edge, CloudFront may be more cost-effective.

CloudFront Cost Optimization

If you choose CloudFront, there are strategies to reduce costs:

• CloudFront Security Savings Bundle — Up to 30% discount with a 1-year commitment
• Origin Shield — Reduces origin requests (and origin compute costs) by consolidating cache fills
• Cache policies — Maximize cache hit ratios with well-tuned cache key policies
• Price class selection — Restrict edge locations to lower-cost regions if your audience is concentrated

We have helped clients reduce CloudFront costs by 30% through Savings Bundles and optimized image pipelines.

Security Features

DDoS Protection

Cloudflare includes DDoS protection and basic WAF on all plans, making it significantly cheaper for security-focused deployments. AWS Shield Advanced adds DDoS cost protection (AWS credits for scaling costs during attacks) and 24/7 DDoS Response Team access, which is valuable for enterprise compliance requirements.

Web Application Firewall

AWS WAF is a standalone service that pairs with CloudFront. You define rules or use managed rule groups (AWS, third-party, or custom). Pricing is per web ACL, per rule, and per request evaluated. This gives you granular control but requires active management.

Cloudflare WAF is integrated into the platform with managed rulesets updated by Cloudflare’s threat intelligence team. Less configuration required, but also less granular control over rule behavior.

For organizations with strict security and compliance requirements, AWS WAF provides the audit trail, IAM integration, and custom rule flexibility that enterprise security teams need.

SSL/TLS

Both services provide free SSL certificates and support custom certificates:

• CloudFront: Uses ACM (AWS Certificate Manager) for free certificates. Supports custom certificates uploaded to IAM.
• Cloudflare: Provides Universal SSL automatically. Supports custom certificates on Business and Enterprise plans. Also offers full (strict) mode that encrypts traffic between Cloudflare and your origin.

Edge Compute

CloudFront Functions and Lambda@Edge

CloudFront offers two edge compute options:

• CloudFront Functions — Lightweight JavaScript functions that run on every request for simple transformations (URL rewrites, header manipulation, request routing). Sub-millisecond execution, very low cost.
• Lambda@Edge — Full Lambda functions that run at CloudFront edge locations. Support Node.js and Python. Can modify requests and responses at four lifecycle stages (viewer request, origin request, origin response, viewer response). More powerful but higher latency and cost.

Cloudflare Workers

Cloudflare Workers is a full serverless computing platform at the edge:

• Supports JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Rust, and other languages via WebAssembly
• Workers KV — Global key-value storage at the edge
• Durable Objects — Stateful edge compute with strong consistency
• R2 — S3-compatible object storage with no egress fees
• D1 — SQLite database at the edge

Workers is a more mature and capable edge compute platform. If your use case requires significant logic at the edge (A/B testing, personalization, authentication, API routing), Cloudflare Workers is the stronger option.

If your edge compute needs are limited to simple request/response transformations and your backend is on AWS, CloudFront Functions + Lambda@Edge is sufficient and avoids introducing another vendor.

Integration Considerations

AWS-Native Stack

If your infrastructure is on AWS, CloudFront integrates seamlessly:

• S3 origins — Direct integration with Origin Access Control (OAC) for secure, private bucket access
• ALB/EC2 origins — Private origins through VPC connectivity
• API Gateway — Custom domain with CloudFront distribution for API acceleration
• Lambda@Edge — Run code at the edge with full access to AWS SDK and services
• AWS WAF — Unified security management through AWS console
• CloudWatch — Native metrics, access logs, and real-time logs
• ACM — Free SSL certificates with automatic renewal

Multi-Cloud or Hybrid

If your infrastructure spans multiple clouds or includes on-premises servers, Cloudflare’s vendor-agnostic approach is advantageous:

• Proxies any origin regardless of hosting provider
• Consistent security policies across all origins
• Single DNS management for all domains
• Cloudflare Tunnel for secure origin connections without public IPs

When to Choose CloudFront

• Your infrastructure is primarily on AWS
• You need deep integration with S3, ALB, API Gateway, and Lambda
• You are already using AWS WAF and Shield for security
• You want a single vendor for infrastructure and CDN billing
• You need CloudFront-specific optimizations like Origin Shield, field-level encryption, or real-time logs to Kinesis

When to Choose Cloudflare

• You need a vendor-agnostic CDN that works with any origin
• Your bandwidth costs are high and you want unmetered pricing
• You need always-on DDoS protection without per-request WAF charges
• You want a mature edge compute platform (Workers) for complex edge logic
• Your infrastructure spans multiple cloud providers or includes on-premises

When to Use Both

Some organizations use both — Cloudflare in front of CloudFront. Cloudflare handles DNS, DDoS protection, and global load balancing, while CloudFront provides optimized delivery from AWS origins with Lambda@Edge compute. This is a valid pattern for enterprises that want defense in depth, but adds operational complexity.

Our Recommendation

For organizations with AWS-native infrastructure, we generally recommend CloudFront. The integration benefits — IAM security, CloudWatch monitoring, S3 origin access, Lambda@Edge — reduce operational overhead and keep your security perimeter within a single ecosystem.

For organizations with multi-cloud architectures, high-bandwidth workloads, or a need for sophisticated edge compute, Cloudflare is the stronger choice.

Either way, the CDN is only as good as its configuration. Misconfigured cache policies, missing security headers, and unoptimized origin architectures waste the CDN’s potential. Our CloudFront consulting services ensure your CDN is properly configured for your specific workload.

Contact us to optimize your content delivery architecture →