CDN Showdown: Cloudflare vs CloudFront vs Azure CDN vs Google Cloud CDN

Yes. Cloudflare's free plan includes unlimited bandwidth with no caps or overage charges. Pro (0/mo), Business (00/mo), and Enterprise plans add features like image optimization, WAF rulesets, and priority support, but the core CDN with unlimited bandwidth is genuinely free. This is possible because Cloudflare's business model monetizes security and compute services, not bandwidth.

At 10TB/month: Cloudflare costs /bin/sh (all plans include unlimited bandwidth), AWS CloudFront costs approximately 50/month, Azure CDN costs approximately 70/month, and Google Cloud CDN costs approximately 00/month. The hyperscaler costs can decrease with committed use discounts, but Cloudflare's /bin/sh bandwidth pricing is difficult to compete with at any scale.

Cloudflare purges cache globally in under 150 milliseconds — nearly instantaneous. Google Cloud CDN invalidations complete within seconds. AWS CloudFront takes up to 10-15 minutes for full invalidation propagation across all edge locations. Azure CDN purge times vary by tier, typically completing within minutes.

Partially. Cloudflare offers CNAME-based setup on Business and Enterprise plans, allowing you to use Cloudflare's CDN without changing nameservers. However, the full-site setup (changing nameservers to Cloudflare) unlocks the complete feature set including DDoS protection, WAF, and Workers. Most Cloudflare advantages come from the full proxy integration.

Cloudflare includes DDoS protection (unlimited, unmetered), basic WAF rules, bot detection, and SSL/TLS on all plans including free. AWS CloudFront includes AWS Shield Standard for free but charges separately for WAF (/mo base + per-rule), advanced bot control (0/mo + per-request), and Shield Advanced (,000/mo). Azure and Google follow similar à la carte security pricing models.

No. Google Cloud CDN has no native edge compute capability. Google's approach relies on Cloud Run or Cloud Functions in specific regions. AWS offers Lambda@Edge (full Node.js/Python, runs at regional edge caches) and CloudFront Functions (lightweight JavaScript at edge locations). Only Cloudflare runs full V8 isolate compute at every edge location.

Azure CDN is the legacy content delivery product (with Microsoft, Verizon, and Akamai tiers). Azure Front Door is Microsoft's strategic direction — it combines global HTTP load balancing, CDN caching, WAF, and DDoS protection into a unified service. Front Door Standard/Premium is Microsoft's answer to Cloudflare's integrated approach. New Azure deployments should use Front Door.

CloudFront is the natural choice for AWS-native workloads because of zero-cost data transfer from S3, ALB, and other AWS origins, plus deep integration with Lambda@Edge and AWS Certificate Manager. However, many organizations use Cloudflare in front of AWS origins for its superior DDoS protection, simpler WAF, and /bin/sh bandwidth costs — the egress from AWS to Cloudflare still applies, but the savings on CDN bandwidth often outweigh it.

All four providers now support HTTP/3 with QUIC. For WebSockets: Cloudflare supports WebSockets on all plans (including free), CloudFront supports WebSockets natively, Azure Front Door supports WebSockets, but Google Cloud CDN does not support WebSocket connections — you would need to bypass the CDN for WebSocket traffic on GCP.