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Azure Front Door vs KeyCDN

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Azure Front Door and KeyCDN built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 22 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

Choose Azure Front Door if…

Teams on Azure that want CDN, global load balancing and WAF as one combined entry point rather than separate products.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Choose KeyCDN if…

Low-commitment testing or small sites — no free tier, but the $4/month floor and no-commitment billing make it cheap to try against real traffic.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

  • Azure Front Door: Budget-sensitive at small scale — no free tier and a $35/month base fee before any traffic is a higher floor than most pay-as-you-go CDNs in this category.
  • KeyCDN: Bandwidth volume is large — $0.04/GB is the highest entry-tier bandwidth rate of the CDNs sourced here for North America/Europe.

Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Azure Front Door alternatives · KeyCDN alternatives

8 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.

Visit Azure Front Door documentationVisit KeyCDN documentation

No affiliate links, sponsored placements or paid rankings appear on this site. Ordering follows the sourced data and the stated criteria.

01.

At a glance.

CriterionAzure Front DoorKeyCDN
Pricing
Free tierNoNo
Kind of free offerFree creditNo free offer — The first 3 zones are free, but traffic is not: the account floor is a $4 monthly minimum.
Entry paid plan
Standard tier: $35/month base fee. Premium tier: $330/month base fee. Base fees are billed hourly and only for the hours used.
No plan tiers: pay-as-you-go with a $4 per month minimum charge on combined account usage, and credits must be topped up with a minimum $49 payment.
Pricing modelMulti-dimensional: an hourly base fee, outbound data transfer to clients, outbound transfer to origins, and per-request fees.Pay-as-you-go, tiered by volume, with no commitment required.
Egress over allowance
North America (Zone 1): $0.083/GB for the first 10 TB/month, with tiered reductions at higher volumes.
$0.04/GB for North America and Europe, first 10 TB per month.
Infrastructure
RegionsGlobal service: Front Door is not deployed to an Azure region; the profile is a global resource distributed to all edge locations worldwide.Six regions listed on the network page — North America, Europe, Asia, Oceania, Africa (Johannesburg only) and Latin America — covering 50 named cities counted from the region tables. The same page separately claims 60+ data centers, so cities are not points of presence one-for-one. Counted from the six region tables; KeyCDN publishes no per-region total.
CDN
Points of presence
192 edge locations across 109 metro cities, plus four edge locations in four Azure US Government cloud regions.
60+ data centers in 40+ countries across 6 continents.
Compliance
ISO 27001
Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (ISO 27001) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service.
Stated of the data centers that host KeyCDN's points of presence: they meet ISO 27001 security and compliance standards. Network-page claim about the data center providers, not a KeyCDN corporate certification.
GDPR / data residencyFront Door is a global resource distributed to every edge location; the only location you choose stores the resource group's metadata. From the FAQ answer on which regions Front Door can be deployed in.Committed to GDPR as the data processor (customer is controller); a DPA is issued on support request; client IP addresses are anonymized in delivery logs.

Only criteria both providers publish appear here; a tinted cell marks a real difference. Criteria only one of them documents are listed below, and an absence there means we found no source — not that the feature is missing. How we source this.

The small bar above a value is inetGeek's own lean toward that side — computed from the same facts shown, never a number the provider published. See the picker below "The short answer" to weigh only the criteria you care about.

02.

Where they differ.

Kind of free offer

Azure Front Door
Free credit
KeyCDN
No free offer — The first 3 zones are free, but traffic is not: the account floor is a $4 monthly minimum.
Sources (2) →
  • Azure Front Door pricing ↗

    “Get free cloud services and a $200 credit to explore Azure for 30 days.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • KeyCDN Pricing ↗

    “The first 3 Zones are included for free. Each additional Zone is $1 per month. [...] Our minimum charge is $4 per month based on the combined total account traffic volume and other services used.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

Entry paid plan

Azure Front Door
Standard tier: $35/month base fee. Premium tier: $330/month base fee. Base fees are billed hourly and only for the hours used.
KeyCDN
No plan tiers: pay-as-you-go with a $4 per month minimum charge on combined account usage, and credits must be topped up with a minimum $49 payment.
Sources (2) →
  • Azure Front Door Pricing ↗

    “Base fees (Billed hourly and only for number of hours used) [...] Monthly price Standard $35 Premium $330”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • CDN Pricing - KeyCDN ↗

    “Our minimum charge is $4 per month based on the combined total account traffic volume and other services used. [...] Is there a minimum payment? Yes, the minimum payment is $49.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

Pricing model

Azure Front Door
Multi-dimensional: an hourly base fee, outbound data transfer to clients, outbound transfer to origins, and per-request fees.
KeyCDN
Pay-as-you-go, tiered by volume, with no commitment required.
Sources (2) →
  • Pricing — Azure Front Door ↗

    “Azure Front Door Standard/Premium billing is based on the following pricing dimensions: Base fees (i.e., fixed charge calculated on hourly basis) Outbound data transfer from edge to the client Outbound data transfer from edge to the origin Requests incoming from client to Front Door's edge location”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • KeyCDN Pricing ↗

    “Get access to our entire content delivery network without commitment.”

    Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing · Report a correction

Egress over allowance

Azure Front Door
North America (Zone 1): $0.083/GB for the first 10 TB/month, with tiered reductions at higher volumes.
KeyCDN
$0.04/GB for North America and Europe, first 10 TB per month.
Sources (2) →
  • Azure Front Door Pricing ↗

    “For North America (Zone 1), the first 10 TB/month is $0.083 per GB with tiered reductions for higher volumes.”

    Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • KeyCDN Pricing ↗

    “Region First 10 TB per month Next 40 TB per month Next 50 TB per month Over 100 TB per month North America Europe $0.04/GB $0.03/GB $0.02/GB $0.01/GB”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

Regions

Azure Front Door
Global service: Front Door is not deployed to an Azure region; the profile is a global resource distributed to all edge locations worldwide.
KeyCDN
Six regions listed on the network page — North America, Europe, Asia, Oceania, Africa (Johannesburg only) and Latin America — covering 50 named cities counted from the region tables. The same page separately claims 60+ data centers, so cities are not points of presence one-for-one. Counted from the six region tables; KeyCDN publishes no per-region total.
Sources (2) →
  • Azure Front Door Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) | Microsoft Learn ↗

    “In which regions can I deploy Azure Front Door services? [...] Azure Front Door isn't limited to any Azure region, but operates globally. [...] The Front Door profile is a global resource and its configuration is distributed to all edge locations worldwide.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Network - KeyCDN ↗

    “North America Atlanta Chicago Dallas Denver Los Angeles Miami Montreal New York San Francisco Seattle Europe Amsterdam [...] Oceania Auckland Brisbane Melbourne Perth Sydney Africa Johannesburg Latin America Bogotá Buenos Aires Lima Mexico City Santiago São Paulo”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

Points of presence

Azure Front Door

192 edge locations across 109 metro cities, plus four edge locations in four Azure US Government cloud regions.

KeyCDN

60+ data centers in 40+ countries across 6 continents.

Sources (2) →

ISO 27001

Azure Front Door
Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (ISO 27001) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service.
KeyCDN
Stated of the data centers that host KeyCDN's points of presence: they meet ISO 27001 security and compliance standards. Network-page claim about the data center providers, not a KeyCDN corporate certification.
Sources (2) →

GDPR / data residency

Azure Front Door
Front Door is a global resource distributed to every edge location; the only location you choose stores the resource group's metadata. From the FAQ answer on which regions Front Door can be deployed in.
KeyCDN
Committed to GDPR as the data processor (customer is controller); a DPA is issued on support request; client IP addresses are anonymized in delivery logs.
Sources (2) →
  • Azure Front Door Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) | Microsoft Learn ↗

    “The only location you choose when you create a Front Door is the location of the resource group, which determines where the resource group's metadata is stored. The Front Door profile is a global resource and its configuration is distributed to all edge locations worldwide.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

  • GDPR - KeyCDN ↗

    “KeyCDN customers typically act as data controllers, whereas KeyCDN acts as the data processor. [...] you are required by law to complete a data processing agreement (DPA). Please open a support request to receive the agreement. [...] Client IP addresses are anonymized within the content delivery logs provided.”

    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.

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03.

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.

What the free plan includesKeyCDN: The first 3 zones are included at no charge; traffic itself is billed from the first gigabyte with no free allowance.
When the free offer endsAzure Front Door: 30 days.
Uptime SLAAzure Front Door: Not published as a web page. Microsoft consolidated its per-service SLAs into one downloadable document covering Azure, Dynamics 365, Office 365 and Intune; the former azure.microsoft.com SLA URLs now redirect to its licensing viewer.
Image optimizationKeyCDN: Image Processing: $0.40 per 1,000 operations, transforming and optimizing images in real time via query parameters.
Support on entry paid planKeyCDN: 24/7 technical support for all customers at no additional cost.
SOC 2Azure Front Door: Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service.
HIPAAAzure Front Door: Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (HIPAA) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service.
PCI DSSAzure Front Door: Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (PCI DSS) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service.
Encryption at restAzure Front Door: Microsoft's security baseline for the service records that it stores no customer content at rest; in-transit encryption is on by default.
Customer-managed keysAzure Front Door: Azure Key Vault integration supported for customer keys, secrets and certificates; customer-configured, not enabled by default. Same baseline records the service stores no customer content at rest.
Role-based access controlAzure Front Door: Azure RBAC built-in roles: CDN Profile Contributor manages CDN and Front Door Standard and Premium profiles and their endpoints. Control plane; the page also lists Front Door Domain and Secret Contributor/Reader roles.
Private networking / VPCAzure Front Door: Origins can be reached over Azure Private Link from a Front Door managed regional private network; documented for the Premium tier.
Dedicated infrastructureAzure Front Door: Shared: all customers use a common infrastructure, with per-profile configuration isolation rather than dedicated capacity.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Entry paid plan: Azure Front Door or KeyCDN?

Azure Front Door: Standard tier: $35/month base fee. Premium tier: $330/month base fee. Base fees are billed hourly and only for the hours used.

KeyCDN: No plan tiers: pay-as-you-go with a $4 per month minimum charge on combined account usage, and credits must be topped up with a minimum $49 payment.

Egress over allowance: Azure Front Door or KeyCDN?

Azure Front Door: North America (Zone 1): $0.083/GB for the first 10 TB/month, with tiered reductions at higher volumes.

KeyCDN: $0.04/GB for North America and Europe, first 10 TB per month.

Should I choose Azure Front Door or KeyCDN?

Pick Azure Front Door if Teams on Azure that want CDN, global load balancing and WAF as one combined entry point rather than separate products.

Pick KeyCDN if Low-commitment testing or small sites — no free tier, but the $4/month floor and no-commitment billing make it cheap to try against real traffic.

Provider pages

Azure Front DoorMicrosoft's combined CDN, global entry point and app delivery layer, billed on base fee plus metered data transfer.KeyCDNPay-as-you-go CDN with no long-term commitment and a metered per-operation image processing add-on.

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Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.