AWS Elastic Load Balancing vs Cloudflare Load Balancing
SEPT 2026 auditA comparison of AWS Elastic Load Balancing and Cloudflare Load Balancing built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
The short answer
Choose AWS Elastic Load Balancing if…
Balancing traffic that already lives in AWS, where the balancer reaches EC2, containers, Lambda and IP targets natively. $0.0225 an hour plus capacity, billed only on whichever dimension you actually use most rather than on all of them at once.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Choose Cloudflare Load Balancing if…
Balancing across clouds you do not own. It is the only member here that markets balancing between AWS, GCP, Azure and on-premise servers, and at $5 a month it is also the cheapest entry.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Consider something else if…
- AWS Elastic Load Balancing: You want a bill you can forecast. The capacity unit is four dimensions at once — connections per second, active connections, rules and gigabytes — and the one that governs your charge can change with traffic shape rather than traffic volume.
- Cloudflare Load Balancing: You need to know what it costs at your volume. The price is quoted only as a starting figure on a plans page, and it is an add-on to a Cloudflare plan rather than a service you can buy on its own.
2 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.
AWS Elastic Load Balancing 0
Cloudflare Load Balancing 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | AWS Elastic Load Balancing | Cloudflare Load Balancing |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Entry paid plan | $0.0225 per load balancer-hour in us-east-1, charged for partial hours too, plus capacity units on top. There is no plan and no free allowance for the balancer itself — it bills from the hour it exists, whether traffic arrives or not. | From $5 a month, sold as an add-on activated on an existing Cloudflare plan rather than as a standalone service. The cheapest entry in this category. |
| Pricing model | Per load balancer-hour plus per capacity-unit-hour, and the capacity rate depends on which balancer you run: $0.008 per LCU-hour for an Application Load Balancer, $0.006 for a Network Load Balancer, and $0.008 per GB processed on the older Classic balancers. Reserving capacity in advance is cheaper per unit than using it on demand. | A monthly add-on price on top of a Cloudflare plan, not a meter. Nothing here is billed per hour, per rule or per node — the distinction from the three cloud-native balancers, all of which charge for the resource existing. |
Where they differ.
Entry paid plan
- AWS Elastic Load Balancing
- $0.0225 per load balancer-hour in us-east-1, charged for partial hours too, plus capacity units on top. There is no plan and no free allowance for the balancer itself — it bills from the hour it exists, whether traffic arrives or not.
- Cloudflare Load Balancing
- From $5 a month, sold as an add-on activated on an existing Cloudflare plan rather than as a standalone service. The cheapest entry in this category.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- AWS Price List — AWSELB, us-east-1 ↗
“$0.0225 per Network LoadBalancer-hour (or partial hour)”
Read 2026-09-15 · official docs
- Cloudflare Plans ↗
“Local and global traffic load balancing, geographic routing, health checks, and failover for continuous availability. Starting at $5/mo”
Read 2026-09-15 · official pricing
Pricing model
- AWS Elastic Load Balancing
- Per load balancer-hour plus per capacity-unit-hour, and the capacity rate depends on which balancer you run: $0.008 per LCU-hour for an Application Load Balancer, $0.006 for a Network Load Balancer, and $0.008 per GB processed on the older Classic balancers. Reserving capacity in advance is cheaper per unit than using it on demand.
- Cloudflare Load Balancing
- A monthly add-on price on top of a Cloudflare plan, not a meter. Nothing here is billed per hour, per rule or per node — the distinction from the three cloud-native balancers, all of which charge for the resource existing.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- AWS Price List — AWSELB, us-east-1 ↗
“$0.008 per used Application load balancer capacity unit-ho”
Read 2026-09-15 · official docs
- Cloudflare Plans ↗
“Starting at $5/mo Activate Load Balancing”
Read 2026-09-15 · official pricing
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.
Questions this comparison answers.
Entry paid plan: AWS Elastic Load Balancing or Cloudflare Load Balancing?
AWS Elastic Load Balancing: $0.0225 per load balancer-hour in us-east-1, charged for partial hours too, plus capacity units on top. There is no plan and no free allowance for the balancer itself — it bills from the hour it exists, whether traffic arrives or not.
Cloudflare Load Balancing: From $5 a month, sold as an add-on activated on an existing Cloudflare plan rather than as a standalone service. The cheapest entry in this category.
Should I choose AWS Elastic Load Balancing or Cloudflare Load Balancing?
Pick AWS Elastic Load Balancing if Balancing traffic that already lives in AWS, where the balancer reaches EC2, containers, Lambda and IP targets natively. $0.0225 an hour plus capacity, billed only on whichever dimension you actually use most rather than on all of them at once.
Pick Cloudflare Load Balancing if Balancing across clouds you do not own. It is the only member here that markets balancing between AWS, GCP, Azure and on-premise servers, and at $5 a month it is also the cheapest entry.