Amazon CloudFront

Amazon CloudFront is the content delivery network run by Amazon Web Services. It places copies of your content, or acts as a front door for dynamic applications, in locations close to visitors. AWS says the network has more than 750 points of presence, and describes it as the single point of entry for an application, whether the origin is S3, an Application Load Balancer, API Gateway or any public URL.

CloudFront handles static files, cacheable pages, uncacheable API traffic, WebSockets, gRPC and video. It terminates TLS near the viewer and keeps persistent connections back to the origin over the AWS network. AWS sells it two ways: pay-as-you-go billing by usage, and flat-rate monthly plans that bundle CDN, firewall, DNS and storage credits into a single price without overage charges.

• Flat-rate plans. Plans from $0 to $1,000 per month per distribution fold the CDN, AWS WAF, DDoS protection, Route 53 DNS, CloudWatch Logs ingestion, TLS certificate, edge compute and S3 credits into one price, with no overage billing.
• Edge compute. Serverless compute runs code at the edge to balance cost, performance and security. Every flat-rate plan, including Free, lists serverless edge compute, so redirects and request rewriting do not need a separate service.
• DDoS and WAF protection. AWS Shield Standard defends against DDoS attacks at no extra charge, and WAF rules scale with the plan from 5 on Free to unlimited on Premium. Blocked attack traffic does not count against the usage allowance.
• VPC origins and private origins. Business and above list private origins within a VPC, so the application servers need not be reachable from the public internet. This keeps an origin closed except to CloudFront.
• Origin protection features. Premium and Custom add origin load reduction, high-speed origin routing and origin failover. These aim at keeping the application online when an origin is slow or unhealthy, and at collapsing duplicate requests.
• No transfer fee from AWS origins. AWS says data transfer from AWS origins to CloudFront is waived, giving a combined price for delivery and origin egress. This matters most for sites already hosted on S3 or EC2.

• A solo developer with a blog or side project. The Free plan at $0 per month includes CDN, DNS, DDoS protection, 5 WAF rules, 5GB of S3 credit, 1M requests and 100GB of data transfer. That is enough for a modest site and carries no overage risk.
• A small online shop on AWS. The Pro plan at $15 per month adds logging and 25 WAF rules with use-case protections for PHP, WordPress and SQL threats. The 10M request and 50TB transfer allowances give headroom for seasonal peaks.
• A company serving a mission-critical API. Business at $200 per month lists an uptime SLA, advanced DDoS protection, a JavaScript challenge, custom caching rules and private origins. Premium at $1,000 adds origin failover and origin load reduction, and the largest customers can ask for custom pricing.

You need an AWS account. AWS says you select a flat-rate plan when creating a new CloudFront distribution, or switch an existing distribution from pay-as-you-go through the CloudFront console. You point the distribution at an origin, such as an S3 bucket, a load balancer or any public URL, then change DNS to send traffic to the distribution.

AWS offers a guide on how CloudFront works, a hands-on tutorial and Immersion Days training. Plans can differ per application, so one account can run a Free plan for a test site and a Business plan for production.

Two ways to buy: flat monthly plans from zero upward with no overage charges, or metered usage with the first terabyte and ten million requests free each month. Transfer from AWS origins to CloudFront is not charged. The uptime guarantee and custom caching rules start at the Business plan, and the lower plans carry small request allowances.

In our CDN providers ranking Amazon CloudFront stands at #10 of 12: the products next to it are Akamai above and Azure Front Door below. From place 4 the established names follow in their ranked order; we publish no numeric score.

North America is home to 8 of the 12 vendors, Amazon CloudFront among them (the United States).

In the catalogue: Flat-rate plans and pay-as-you-go rates, published.

The pricing page prints four flat-rate plans per distribution, billed monthly with no overage charges: Free at $0, Pro at $15, Business at $200 and Premium at $1,000, plus custom pricing through a specialist. Monthly request allowances are 1M, 10M, 125M and 500M, configurable up to 6B for a new flat-rate price, with Custom unlimited. Data transfer allowances are 100GB, 50TB, 50TB and 50TB, configurable up to 600TB. Included S3 storage runs 5GB, 50GB, 1TB and 5TB. Pay-as-you-go pricing is billed per service; its unit rates were not on the fetched page, which shows tokens instead. Flat-rate plans cannot be combined with other offers.

Read from aws.amazon.com/cloudfront when Best CDN Providers in 2026 was last reviewed (5 November 2026).

Transfer from AWS origins is waived.

AWS lists traffic encryption, access controls, VPC origins, field-level encryption and Shield Standard on the product page. Plans list always-on DDoS protection, WAF, and an uptime SLA from Business upward.

The pricing and product pages checked do not state specific compliance certifications for CloudFront or a data-export procedure. AWS points readers to its Trust Center and Compliance sections in the site navigation for those details. Logs are available on Pro and above.

Integrations the vendor names (10):

• Amazon S3
• Application Load Balancer
• Amazon API Gateway
• AWS WAF
• AWS Shield
• Amazon Route 53
• Amazon CloudWatch Logs
• AWS Elemental media services
• AWS Media Services
• Amazon VPC

5 products in this guide come closest to Amazon CloudFront on tags, pricing and region.

• Bunny CDN (#1 of 12): Per-gigabyte CDN with a one-dollar minimum and no request fees. Best for: Websites and download sites serving mostly Europe and North America on a small budget. (Slovenia)
• KeyCDN (#2 of 12): Not for: teams needing enterprise contracts or lower rates outside Europe. Swiss pay-per-gigabyte CDN with unlimited requests and three zones.
• Gcore (#4 of 12): Not for: buyers who need phone support or a firewall in the base plan. Luxembourg network with a zero-fee plan and one terabyte included. (Luxembourg)
• Akamai (#9 of 12): Many separate delivery products, priced after a sales conversation. Watch out: no delivery price is published and the trial is started through a sales form. (United States)
• Azure Front Door (#11 of 12): Microsoft CDN and load balancer with an hourly base fee.

Read from the vendor’s own pages on 5 November 2026.

• aws.amazon.com/cloudfront: 750+ points of presence, benefits, use cases, getting-started resources
• aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/pricing: flat-rate plan names, prices, allowances, features, FAQ, console setup

Feature lists tell little, so positions rest on setup effort, the true price, portability and fit. The result for Amazon CloudFront: #10, out of 12 ranked. How vendor facts are sourced, and how money can and cannot influence a page, is in the editorial process.