# Cloudflare DNS vs Amazon Route 53

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/cloudflare-dns-vs-amazon-route53/

Every value below is read from Cloudflare DNS's and Amazon Route 53's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Cloudflare DNS | Amazon Route 53 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | Yes | No |
| Entry paid plan | None for DNS itself. The product page prices it at nothing and names no paid DNS tier; what a Cloudflare account costs is decided by the other products on it. | $0.50 per hosted zone per month for the first 25, then $0.10 for each additional zone. Extra record sets within a zone are $0.0015 a month each. |
| Pricing model | Free, with no separate meter for zones or queries. DNS comes with any Cloudflare plan rather than being priced on its own. | Per hosted zone and per million queries, with the zone rate falling fivefold after the first 25 and the query rate halving after the first billion. Health checks and DNS firewall rules are metered separately again. |

## Where they differ

### Free tier

- Cloudflare DNS: Yes ([source](https://www.cloudflare.com/products/dns/))
- Amazon Route 53: No ([source](https://pricing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/offers/v1.0/aws/AmazonRoute53/current/index.json))

### Entry paid plan

- Cloudflare DNS: None for DNS itself. The product page prices it at nothing and names no paid DNS tier; what a Cloudflare account costs is decided by the other products on it. ([source](https://www.cloudflare.com/products/dns/))
- Amazon Route 53: $0.50 per hosted zone per month for the first 25, then $0.10 for each additional zone. Extra record sets within a zone are $0.0015 a month each. ([source](https://pricing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/offers/v1.0/aws/AmazonRoute53/current/index.json))

### Pricing model

- Cloudflare DNS: Free, with no separate meter for zones or queries. DNS comes with any Cloudflare plan rather than being priced on its own. ([source](https://www.cloudflare.com/products/dns/))
- Amazon Route 53: Per hosted zone and per million queries, with the zone rate falling fivefold after the first 25 and the query rate halving after the first billion. Health checks and DNS firewall rules are metered separately again. ([source](https://pricing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/offers/v1.0/aws/AmazonRoute53/current/index.json))

## Which should you choose?

Pick Cloudflare DNS if Any domain you are already putting behind Cloudflare. Authoritative DNS on its anycast network costs nothing, meters nothing, and has no volume at which that changes — the query bill other providers charge simply does not exist here.

Pick Amazon Route 53 if A 100% uptime commitment on your nameservers, which only Google matches here, plus the AWS integrations — alias records to load balancers and CloudFront, health checks, and IAM on the zone itself.

Consider something else: Cloudflare DNS — You want DNS bought separately from a CDN and a proxy. Cloudflare prices DNS at zero because it is a way into the rest of the platform, and the product page names no paid DNS tier at all — what the account costs is decided by everything else on it.

Consider something else: Amazon Route 53 — You want DNS to be free. $0.50 a zone and $0.40 per million queries is small until you run hundreds of domains, and Cloudflare and bunny.net charge nothing for either at any volume.

## Documented by only one

- Edge network: Cloudflare DNS: Supported
- Uptime SLA: Amazon Route 53: 100%. AWS defines the monthly uptime percentage as 100% minus the minutes a hosted zone was unavailable, and any month below 100% earns a service credit — 10% down to 99.99%, 25% down to 99.95%.
- Query price: Amazon Route 53: $0.40 per million resolver queries for the first billion a month, $0.20 per million above it. Queries to latency-based-routing alias records are free of charge.
- DNSSEC: Cloudflare DNS: Supported — Cloudflare signs the zone and generates the DS record for you

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: Cloudflare DNS or Amazon Route 53?**

Cloudflare DNS: None for DNS itself. The product page prices it at nothing and names no paid DNS tier; what a Cloudflare account costs is decided by the other products on it.
Amazon Route 53: $0.50 per hosted zone per month for the first 25, then $0.10 for each additional zone. Extra record sets within a zone are $0.0015 a month each.

**Free tier: Cloudflare DNS or Amazon Route 53?**

Cloudflare DNS: Yes
Amazon Route 53: No

**Should I choose Cloudflare DNS or Amazon Route 53?**

Pick Cloudflare DNS if Any domain you are already putting behind Cloudflare. Authoritative DNS on its anycast network costs nothing, meters nothing, and has no volume at which that changes — the query bill other providers charge simply does not exist here.
Pick Amazon Route 53 if A 100% uptime commitment on your nameservers, which only Google matches here, plus the AWS integrations — alias records to load balancers and CloudFront, health checks, and IAM on the zone itself.