Cloud Provider Comparison: Cloudflare vs AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud — The Complete Guide

There's no single cheapest provider — it depends on your workload. Cloudflare has the lowest pricing for bandwidth-heavy workloads (zero egress fees, free DDoS protection). AWS is cost-competitive for compute-heavy workloads with Reserved Instances or Savings Plans. Azure offers the best discounts for organizations with existing Microsoft enterprise agreements. Google Cloud is often cheapest for data analytics workloads (BigQuery) and sustained-use compute.

Start with your primary workload type. For web applications, compare CDN + serverless + database options. For data-intensive workloads, compare storage + compute + analytics. For security-first organizations, compare DDoS + WAF + Zero Trust. Our 13 deep-dive comparisons each include decision frameworks specific to that service category, and this guide provides cross-cutting analysis.

Ecosystem breadth. AWS has 200+ services, Azure has deep enterprise/Microsoft integration, and Google Cloud leads in data analytics and ML. Cloudflare's catalog is smaller and more focused — you won't find managed Kubernetes, relational database engines (beyond SQLite-based D1), ML training infrastructure, or dozens of specialized services. Cloudflare is deep where it plays, but it doesn't play everywhere.

Most organizations benefit from a multi-provider strategy (one primary cloud plus specialized services from others) rather than true multi-cloud (running identical workloads across providers). True multi-cloud adds complexity, cost, and operational overhead. Cloudflare is particularly well-suited as a multi-cloud 'glue layer' — sitting in front of any backend provider for CDN, DNS, security, and edge compute.

Cloudflare has the most generous free tier for web-facing services: unlimited CDN bandwidth, free DNS, free DDoS protection, 100K Workers requests/day, 10M R2 reads/month, and free SSL. AWS has the broadest free tier across services (12-month trial). Google Cloud offers 00 in credits for 90 days. Azure also provides 00 in credits plus 12 months of free services.

Cloudflare Workers: 0ms (V8 isolates, no cold start). AWS Lambda: 100-500ms typical, up to seconds for VPC-attached or large runtimes. Google Cloud Functions: 200-800ms typical. Azure Functions (Consumption): 500ms-3s, worse with .NET. Workers eliminate cold starts architecturally, but trade-off with narrower language support and smaller memory/CPU limits.

Cloudflare has the most comprehensive bundled security — DDoS, WAF, bot management, and Zero Trust access are all included or low-cost because security is integral to their network architecture. AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud offer equivalent or superior capabilities in specific areas (Azure's identity integration, AWS's IAM granularity, Google's BeyondCorp heritage) but as paid add-ons that require explicit configuration.

Egress fees are what cloud providers charge when data leaves their network. AWS charges ~/bin/sh.09/GB, Azure ~/bin/sh.087/GB, and Google Cloud ~/bin/sh.12/GB. Cloudflare charges /bin/sh for egress across all services (CDN, R2, Workers). At scale, egress fees become one of the largest line items in cloud bills — a company transferring 100TB/month pays ,700-2,000/month in egress alone on hyperscalers. Zero egress removes this cost entirely and eliminates a major source of vendor lock-in.

All pricing data in this series reflects published rates as of February 2026. Cloud providers regularly adjust pricing, free tiers, and service terms. We recommend verifying current pricing on each provider's official pricing pages before making purchasing decisions, especially for committed-use discounts and enterprise agreements.