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Amazon CloudFront vs Fastly comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon CloudFront
Ranking in CDN
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fastly
Ranking in CDN
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (19th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudFront is 7.9%, down from 11.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fastly is 4.3%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

Parth Buch - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamlessly manages security and dynamic content hosting in diverse applications
Hosting static content or with engineering dynamic content is beneficial. CloudFront provides a common access point, manages routing to different methods, and serves as an access point plus API routing. With AWS, maintenance is not required as it's a service offered by AWS which maintains itself. Security concerns are manageable through AWS's security mechanisms, with additional security enhancement possible through options like WAF and NACL.
Nick Wilsdon - PeerSpot reviewer
An easily scalable and stable product that provides exceptional support
The product should provide improved bot detection and management. The product should also provide support for code management. Everybody working in CDN is currently looking for ways to better manage code deployment with various authorization levels and synchronization with our lower environments. Matching up what's happening in CDN with what's happening on the origin regarding testing would always be useful.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution improves performance by reducing latency and cost."
"It has built-in DDoS protection, which protects against DDoS attacks."
"Its main advantage is that it offers something in this region that wasn't available before; previously, you had to go outside of the region to get the same level of service that you can now access right here in Bahrain. It's truly incredible. Building this IX has significantly changed how traffic is handled. The technical support is good. The initial setup is very straightforward. I rate the solution a perfect ten."
"The AWS environment was very helpful in terms of integration."
"Feature-wise, I like the solution's signed URL because it provides security for me."
"The solution makes our platform fully accessible and available globally, helping us to ensure that our customers can rely on it being up and running."
"The product’s most valuable feature is the availability of the websites."
"The product's most valuable feature is its ability to deliver content to users nearby."
"Rate limiting is a good feature that protects from volumetric attacks."
"Fastly uses configuration versioning, where you can deploy a new version in less than one minute."
"Compute@Edge features are valuable to me."
"Its initial setup process is straightforward."
"Support is good; the product works as advertised. We have a Slack connection with them. So we can basically ask for help, live, engage, and ring when they respond. Very quickly."
"The product helps our organization to access sites located in different regions quickly."
"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."
 

Cons

"With a mixed stack, things become a problem. With GCP and Azure, the DNS setup gets tricky when using CloudFront."
"Improvements are needed as per customer requirements."
"CloudFront could improve in the areas of auto-scaling, reports, and insights. End clients desire more detailed reports to understand usage patterns better."
"The support must be improved."
"There is room for improvement in customer service and support."
"The only issues we've faced were when AWS itself had problems, and that's very rare. I can only recall one instance when they had issues, but they managed to resolve it quickly."
"Amazon CloudFront's setup is a bit difficult, and we would love it if they made it easier."
"There are some solutions needed for integration that are not free."
"The product should provide improved bot detection and management."
"Support is not that great."
"Stronger analytics would be helpful, like showing configurations that haven't served a certain amount of traffic in a while. With many properties, things can get lost track of - duplicates or unused configurations not properly decommissioned."
"What I don't like about Fastly is that they charge a heavy price."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."
"It is missing a "staging" platform to deploy a test configuration with all of the real settings, which would allow us to properly test before putting it into production."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product has a mid-range pricing."
"Compared to competitors like Azure and Google, we find AWS pricing to be advantageous."
"I used to work with AWS and Azure, and we provided cost comparisons for customers to help them choose the right services. Azure tends to be more user-friendly and easier to understand, while AWS may take more time."
"The tool is affordable."
"Amazon CloudFront is an expensive solution."
"I rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten. The licensing follows a pay-as-you-go model."
"The product could improve its price."
"Amazon's pricing varies depending on the data transfer."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The solution is cheaper than other products in the market."
"I've generally found Fastly to be very competitive in pricing, especially around Compute@Edge."
"Fastly is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"The pricing has been very competitive."
"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."
"You need to pay a premium price for the tool."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Educational Organization
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How do I choose between AWS Global Accelerator and Amazon CloudFront?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Global Accelerator or Amazon CloudFront global content delivery network was the better fit for us. We decided to go w...
What do you like most about Amazon CloudFront?
The solution has good security features.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon CloudFront?
I find Amazon's pricing good, rating it eight out of ten and considering it affordable and rightly placed, not expensive.
What do you like most about Fastly?
Support is good; the product works as advertised. We have a Slack connection with them. So we can basically ask for help, live, engage, and ring when they respond. Very quickly.
What needs improvement with Fastly?
What I don't like about Fastly is that they charge a heavy price. The pricing is different per region. If you have a customer who is international and has deployments in different regions, it is ve...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Unilever, Spotify, Pinterest, MLB Advanced Media, Foursquare, PBS, Airbnb, Netflix, WIX, Comcast, Automobili Lamborghini, Rovio, Discovery Communications
Twitter, Airbnb, Alaska Airlines, Pinterest, Vimeo, The Guardian, The New York Times, Ticketmaster, The Drupal Association, Opera, about.com, imgur, Etsy, Foursquare, GitHub, New Relic, shopify, Shazam, Firebase
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudFront vs. Fastly and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.