Amazon CloudFront vs Fastly
SEPT 2026 auditA comparison of Amazon CloudFront and Fastly built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
Adoption share
BuiltWith counts — how much more of the web runs Amazon CloudFront than Fastly, among the sites BuiltWith actually detects. Measured . Source: BuiltWith.
The short answer
Choose Amazon CloudFront if…
Teams already on AWS that want CDN bundled with other AWS services under one flat monthly price rather than itemized per-GB billing.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Choose Fastly if…
High-traffic sites where volume-discount tiers actually kick in, or teams that want CDN and edge compute (Fastly Compute) on the same platform.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Consider something else if…
- Amazon CloudFront: Traffic profile is unusual or very high volume — the flat-rate plans bundle a fixed allowance, and a metered pay-as-you-go CDN may price better outside that shape.
- Fastly: Traffic is modest — the $1,500/month entry plan for dedicated network services is priced for scale a smaller site won't reach, where a pay-as-you-go CDN has no equivalent floor.
Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Amazon CloudFront alternatives · Fastly alternatives
16 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.
Pick the criteria you care about. The chart counts how many of them lean toward each provider — the same read as scanning the bars below, just totalled for the ones you chose.
Amazon CloudFront 0
Fastly 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Amazon CloudFront | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Kind of free offer | Free tier | Free tier |
| Entry paid plan | Pro plan: $15/month. | Network Services packages start at $1,500/month, including 100M requests. |
| Pricing model | Flat-rate monthly plans bundling CloudFront with multiple AWS services and features, with no overage charges within plan limits. | Usage-based with built-in volume-discount tiers — the per-GB and per-request rate falls as monthly usage rises. |
| Egress over allowance | No overage charges on the flat-rate plans; past the monthly allowance AWS may adjust delivery instead of billing - for example serving traffic from fewer or more distant edge locations. Data transfer allowance: 100 GB Free, 50 TB Pro/Business/Premium, Premium configurable up to 600 TB. | North America and Europe: free to 100 GB, then $0.12/GB to 10 TB and $0.08/GB for the next 10 TB. Priced by region — Africa, India and South Korea are $0.28/GB in the same band. |
| Infrastructure | ||
| Regions | Global edge network: PoPs in 100+ cities across 50+ countries, plus 15 regional edge caches (RECs) sited within AWS Regions. | 10 billing regions priced separately for Full Site Delivery bandwidth: Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, India, Mexico, North America, Saudi Arabia, South America, South Korea. |
| CDN | ||
| Points of presence | Hundreds of edge locations (exact count not published on the pricing page). | 164 POPs, counted from Fastly's own complete list of active POPs in the docs — Fastly publishes the table of POP identifiers rather than a total. |
| Image optimization | Dynamic Image Transformation for Amazon CloudFront (formerly Serverless Image Handler): an AWS Solution you deploy into your own account for real-time image processing through the CloudFront CDN. | Image Optimizer: first 100,000 image requests a month free, then $0.50 per 10,000 requests, with volume discounts scaling down to $0.01 per 10,000 beyond 5 billion monthly requests. |
| Compliance | ||
| SOC 2 | Listed as SOC-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page. — Excludes content delivery through CloudFront Embedded Points of Presence. | SOC 2 Type 2 audited against the AICPA Trust Service Criteria for Security and Availability; reports on request (NDA for prospective customers). |
| ISO 27001 | Covered under AWS's account-wide ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification — not scoped per-service the way SOC, HIPAA and PCI DSS are on AWS's own site. | Certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022 for its Information Security Management System (ISMS). |
| HIPAA | Listed as a HIPAA-eligible service on AWS's own reference page. — Excludes content delivery through CloudFront Embedded Points of Presence. | Audited against relevant sections of the HIPAA Security and Privacy Rules; customers configure a HIPAA-compliant caching product to support compliance. |
| GDPR / data residency | AWS customers can process personal data on all AWS services in compliance with GDPR, and choose the storage type and geographic region for their data. | Audited against key articles of the GDPR, mapped to data protection and privacy controls for Fastly as a data processor. Audit scope as processor; the page states no region-pinned storage guarantee. |
| PCI DSS | Listed as PCI DSS-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page. — Excludes content delivery through CloudFront Embedded Points of Presence. | PCI DSS compliant as a Level 1 Service Provider; a PCI-compliant caching product covers Network services, Compute and Observability. |
| Encryption at rest | CloudFront Functions code and configuration is always stored in an encrypted format on the edge location PoPs and in CloudFront's other storage locations. | Customer-provided private keys are encrypted at rest; disk encryption and secure boot are maintained as additional controls where deemed appropriate. |
| Customer-managed keys | Field-level encryption uses an RSA public key you supply: CloudFront encrypts the named POST fields at the edge and only your private key can decrypt them. | Supported logging endpoints take a PGP public key you supply; Fastly encrypts log files with it before writing to disk and you hold the private key. Scope: streamed log files only; separate from Fastly TLS bring-your-own-certificate keys. |
| Role-based access control | IAM managed policies CloudFrontReadOnlyAccess and CloudFrontFullAccess attach to users, groups and roles, alongside custom identity-based policies. | User roles and permissions control account access; account-management roles (Superuser, User Admin, Billing) plus service-configuration roles are assigned per user. |
| Private networking / VPC | VPC origins: CloudFront serves ALBs, NLBs and EC2 instances in private subnets over a private connection, with no public access to the origin. Listed as "Private Origins Within VPC" from the Business flat-rate plan upward on the CloudFront pricing page. | Origin Connect provides a dedicated private network interconnection between a customer origin server and a Fastly Shield POP. |
| Dedicated infrastructure | Dedicated IP custom SSL costs $600/month per certificate; Anycast Static IPs provide a dedicated set of static IP addresses for distributions. | Dedicated anycast IPv4/IPv6 address pools assigned exclusively to a single customer, maintained and managed by Fastly across its global edge cloud platform. Scope is dedicated IP addressing on Fastly's edge platform. |
Where they differ.
Entry paid plan
- Amazon CloudFront
- Pro plan: $15/month.
- Fastly
- Network Services packages start at $1,500/month, including 100M requests.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Amazon CloudFront Pricing ↗
“$15/month Pro plan.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Fastly Pricing ↗
“Price per Month $1,500 $6,000 Contact sales Contact sales Requests per Month 100M Requests 500M Requests 2B Requests 5B Requests”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
Pricing model
- Amazon CloudFront
- Flat-rate monthly plans bundling CloudFront with multiple AWS services and features, with no overage charges within plan limits.
- Fastly
- Usage-based with built-in volume-discount tiers — the per-GB and per-request rate falls as monthly usage rises.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Amazon CloudFront Pricing ↗
“Flat-rate pricing plans combine the CloudFront CDN with multiple AWS services and features into a monthly price with no overage charges.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Fastly Pricing ↗
“only pay for what you use, with built in discounts as usage grows. [...] Usage-based, volume discounts Spend less as you use more with our built-in pricing tiers”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
Egress over allowance
- Amazon CloudFront
- No overage charges on the flat-rate plans; past the monthly allowance AWS may adjust delivery instead of billing - for example serving traffic from fewer or more distant edge locations. Data transfer allowance: 100 GB Free, 50 TB Pro/Business/Premium, Premium configurable up to 600 TB.
- Fastly
- North America and Europe: free to 100 GB, then $0.12/GB to 10 TB and $0.08/GB for the next 10 TB. Priced by region — Africa, India and South Korea are $0.28/GB in the same band.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- CloudFront flat-rate pricing plans - Amazon CloudFront ↗
“you will not incur overage charges, regardless of how much you exceed your allowance [...] we might serve your traffic from fewer or more distant edge locations or adjust performance”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Fastly Pricing ↗
“Bandwidth (per month) Africa Asia Australia Europe India Mexico North America Saudi Arabia South America South Korea 0 - 100 GB Free Free Free Free Free Free Free Free Free Free 100 GB - 10 TB $0.28 $0.19 $0.19 $0.12 $0.28 $0.16 $0.12 $0.19 $0.19 $0.28 Next 10 TB $0.24 $0.14 $0.14 $0.08 $0.24 $0.12 $0.08 $0.14 $0.14 $0.24”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
Regions
- Amazon CloudFront
- Global edge network: PoPs in 100+ cities across 50+ countries, plus 15 regional edge caches (RECs) sited within AWS Regions.
- Fastly
- 10 billing regions priced separately for Full Site Delivery bandwidth: Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, India, Mexico, North America, Saudi Arabia, South America, South Korea.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Key Features of a Content Delivery Network - Performance, Security - Amazon CloudFront ↗
“CloudFront has 15 RECs globally. [...] CloudFront has 750+ POPs in 100+ cities across 50+ countries. [...] there are 1,140+ embedded POPs across 300+ cities in North America, Europe, and Asia”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
- Explore Fastly Pricing Tiers and Package Options | Fastly ↗
“Billed per GB per Region per month [...] Africa Asia Australia Europe India Mexico North America Saudi Arabia South America South Korea”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
Points of presence
- Amazon CloudFront
- Hundreds of edge locations (exact count not published on the pricing page).
- Fastly
- 164 POPs, counted from Fastly's own complete list of active POPs in the docs — Fastly publishes the table of POP identifiers rather than a total.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Amazon CloudFront Pricing ↗
“Viewers anywhere in the world connect to one of CloudFront's hundreds of edge locations nearest to them”
Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Using Fastly's global POP network | Fastly Documentation ↗
“The following table lists all POPs current active in the Fastly network”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
Image optimization
- Amazon CloudFront
- Dynamic Image Transformation for Amazon CloudFront (formerly Serverless Image Handler): an AWS Solution you deploy into your own account for real-time image processing through the CloudFront CDN.
- Fastly
- Image Optimizer: first 100,000 image requests a month free, then $0.50 per 10,000 requests, with volume discounts scaling down to $0.01 per 10,000 beyond 5 billion monthly requests.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Dynamic Image Transformation for Amazon CloudFront ↗
“Dynamic Image Transformation for Amazon CloudFront (formerly Serverless Image Handler) enables real-time image processing through the global content delivery network (CDN) of Amazon CloudFront. [...] This AWS Solution helps you automatically optimize visual content delivery”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
- Fastly Pricing ↗
“Image Optimizer Turn image-heavy into conversion-ready Sign up for free Image Requests 100,000 free Billed per 10,000 Image Requests Image Requests (per month) Monthly Price (per 10,000 Image Requests) 0 - 100,000 Free 100,000 - 10 Million $0.50 10 Million - 50 Million $0.15 50 Million - 150 Million $0.07 150 Million - 500 Million $0.03 500 Million - 1 Billion $0.02 1 Billion - 5 Billion $0.015 Beyond 5 Billion $0.01”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
SOC 2
- Amazon CloudFront
- Listed as SOC-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page. — Excludes content delivery through CloudFront Embedded Points of Presence.
- Fastly
- SOC 2 Type 2 audited against the AICPA Trust Service Criteria for Security and Availability; reports on request (NDA for prospective customers).
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- AWS Services in Scope — SOC ↗
“This webpage provides a list of AWS Services in Scope of AWS assurance programs. [...] Amazon CloudFront [excludes content delivery through Amazon CloudFront Embedded Point of”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
- Compliance | Fastly ↗
“Fastly is audited against the Trust Service Criteria for Security and Availability as established by the AICPA [...] If you are a Fastly customer, you can request these audit reports via your customer success point of contact.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
ISO 27001
- Amazon CloudFront
- Covered under AWS's account-wide ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification — not scoped per-service the way SOC, HIPAA and PCI DSS are on AWS's own site.
- Fastly
- Certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022 for its Information Security Management System (ISMS).
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Compliance — AWS ↗
“AWS has certification for compliance with ISO/IEC 27001:2022, 27017:2015, and 27018:2019. These certifications are performed by independent third-party auditors.”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction
- Compliance | Fastly ↗
“Fastly is certified to the ISO/IEC 27001:2022 standard for its Information Security Management System (ISMS).”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
HIPAA
- Amazon CloudFront
- Listed as a HIPAA-eligible service on AWS's own reference page. — Excludes content delivery through CloudFront Embedded Points of Presence.
- Fastly
- Audited against relevant sections of the HIPAA Security and Privacy Rules; customers configure a HIPAA-compliant caching product to support compliance.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- HIPAA Eligible Services Reference — AWS ↗
“The services listed below are eligible to create, receive, process, maintain, or transmit electronic protected health information (ePHI). [...] Amazon CloudFront [excludes content delivery through Amazon CloudFront Embedded Point of”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
- Compliance | Fastly ↗
“Fastly is audited against relevant sections of the Security and Privacy Rules of the Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accessibility Act (HIPAA). Customers can configure their services using our HIPAA-compliant caching product to support their compliance with these requirements.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
GDPR / data residency
- Amazon CloudFront
- AWS customers can process personal data on all AWS services in compliance with GDPR, and choose the storage type and geographic region for their data.
- Fastly
- Audited against key articles of the GDPR, mapped to data protection and privacy controls for Fastly as a data processor. Audit scope as processor; the page states no region-pinned storage guarantee.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- GDPR — Amazon Web Services ↗
“AWS customers can use all AWS services to process personal data [...] in compliance with the GDPR. [...] Customers have control of their customer data. With AWS, customers can: Determine where their customer data will be stored, including the type of storage and geographic region of that storage.”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction
- Compliance | Fastly ↗
“Fastly is audited against key articles of the General Data Protection Regulation, mapped to data protection and privacy controls for Fastly as a data processor.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
PCI DSS
- Amazon CloudFront
- Listed as PCI DSS-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page. — Excludes content delivery through CloudFront Embedded Points of Presence.
- Fastly
- PCI DSS compliant as a Level 1 Service Provider; a PCI-compliant caching product covers Network services, Compute and Observability.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- AWS Services in Scope — PCI DSS ↗
“This webpage provides a list of AWS Services in Scope of AWS assurance programs. [...] Amazon CloudFront [excludes content delivery through Amazon CloudFront Embedded Point of”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
- Compliance | Fastly ↗
“Fastly is Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant as a Level 1 Service Provider.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
Encryption at rest
- Amazon CloudFront
- CloudFront Functions code and configuration is always stored in an encrypted format on the edge location PoPs and in CloudFront's other storage locations.
- Fastly
- Customer-provided private keys are encrypted at rest; disk encryption and secure boot are maintained as additional controls where deemed appropriate.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Data protection in Amazon CloudFront - Amazon CloudFront ↗
“Function code and configuration in CloudFront Functions is always stored in an encrypted format on the edge location POPs, and in other storage locations used by CloudFront.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Security program | Fastly Products ↗
“Encrypt customer-provided private keys at rest. [...] Maintain additional technical security controls, such as disk encryption and secure boot, where deemed appropriate.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
Customer-managed keys
- Amazon CloudFront
- Field-level encryption uses an RSA public key you supply: CloudFront encrypts the named POST fields at the edge and only your private key can decrypt them.
- Fastly
- Supported logging endpoints take a PGP public key you supply; Fastly encrypts log files with it before writing to disk and you hold the private key. Scope: streamed log files only; separate from Fastly TLS bring-your-own-certificate keys.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Use field-level encryption to help protect sensitive data - Amazon CloudFront ↗
“CloudFront field-level encryption uses asymmetric encryption, also known as public key encryption. [...] You provide a public key to CloudFront, and all sensitive data that you specify is encrypted [...] only your private key can do that”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Encrypting logs | Fastly Documentation ↗
“For supported logging endpoints, Fastly allows you to encrypt your log files before they are written to disk. [...] Keep your private key safe! If you lose it, your encrypted log files will be permanently unreadable.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
Role-based access control
- Amazon CloudFront
- IAM managed policies CloudFrontReadOnlyAccess and CloudFrontFullAccess attach to users, groups and roles, alongside custom identity-based policies.
- Fastly
- User roles and permissions control account access; account-management roles (Superuser, User Admin, Billing) plus service-configuration roles are assigned per user.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- AWS managed policies for Amazon CloudFront - Amazon CloudFront ↗
“To add permissions to users, groups, and roles, it's easier to use AWS managed policies [...] AWS managed policy: CloudFrontReadOnlyAccess [...] AWS managed policy: CloudFrontFullAccess”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- About user roles and permissions | Fastly Documentation ↗
“This guide explains user roles and permissions and how they control access to your account. [...] These roles control access to account-level configuration, user management, and billing”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
Private networking / VPC
- Amazon CloudFront
- VPC origins: CloudFront serves ALBs, NLBs and EC2 instances in private subnets over a private connection, with no public access to the origin. Listed as "Private Origins Within VPC" from the Business flat-rate plan upward on the CloudFront pricing page.
- Fastly
- Origin Connect provides a dedicated private network interconnection between a customer origin server and a Fastly Shield POP.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Restrict access with VPC origins - Amazon CloudFront ↗
“You can use CloudFront to deliver content from applications that are hosted in your virtual private cloud (VPC) private subnets. [...] You can use Application Load Balancers (ALBs), Network Load Balancers (NLBs), and EC2 instances in private subnets as VPC origins. [...] User requests go from CloudFront to the VPC origins over a private, secure connection”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Origin Connect | Fastly ↗
“Origin Connect provides a fully supported, dedicated private network interconnection between your origin server and a Fastly Shield POP.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
Dedicated infrastructure
- Amazon CloudFront
- Dedicated IP custom SSL costs $600/month per certificate; Anycast Static IPs provide a dedicated set of static IP addresses for distributions.
- Fastly
- Dedicated anycast IPv4/IPv6 address pools assigned exclusively to a single customer, maintained and managed by Fastly across its global edge cloud platform. Scope is dedicated IP addressing on Fastly's edge platform.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Amazon CloudFront pay-as-you-go pricing ↗
“You pay $600 per month for each custom SSL certificate associated with one or more CloudFront distributions using the Dedicated IP version of custom SSL certificate support. [...] Amazon CloudFront Anycast Static IPs provide a dedicated set of static IP addresses for your CloudFront distributions.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
- IP Addresses | Fastly ↗
“Dedicated IP addresses provide a pool of IPv4 and IPv6 IP addresses, maintained and managed by Fastly, across our global edge cloud platform. [...] A dedicated IP address is an IP assigned exclusively to a single Fastly customer instead of being shared with other customers.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.
Documented by only one.
These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing — except where we say we read the other provider's own page on a given date and it does not state it. Those rows lean, and the provider can correct them with a link.
Questions this comparison answers.
Entry paid plan: Amazon CloudFront or Fastly?
Amazon CloudFront: Pro plan: $15/month.
Fastly: Network Services packages start at $1,500/month, including 100M requests.
Egress over allowance: Amazon CloudFront or Fastly?
Amazon CloudFront: No overage charges on the flat-rate plans; past the monthly allowance AWS may adjust delivery instead of billing - for example serving traffic from fewer or more distant edge locations. Data transfer allowance: 100 GB Free, 50 TB Pro/Business/Premium, Premium configurable up to 600 TB.
Fastly: North America and Europe: free to 100 GB, then $0.12/GB to 10 TB and $0.08/GB for the next 10 TB. Priced by region — Africa, India and South Korea are $0.28/GB in the same band.
Should I choose Amazon CloudFront or Fastly?
Pick Amazon CloudFront if Teams already on AWS that want CDN bundled with other AWS services under one flat monthly price rather than itemized per-GB billing.
Pick Fastly if High-traffic sites where volume-discount tiers actually kick in, or teams that want CDN and edge compute (Fastly Compute) on the same platform.
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