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AWS WAF vs Amazon CloudFront comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.1
Cloudflare improves performance, security, and financial outcomes with affordable plans, enhancing user satisfaction and operational efficiency significantly.
Sentiment score
7.3
Amazon CloudFront boosts global accessibility, reduces costs, enhances stability, improves e-commerce profits, and decreases server maintenance and hiring needs.
Sentiment score
6.9
AWS WAF enhances security and cost efficiency by integrating with AWS, reducing the need for additional security personnel.
For the small project I was working on, using the basic tier provided a huge improvement at zero cost.
Security Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
In terms of return on investment with Cloudflare, it costs my time to set them up, but basically once they're set up, it's done.
Owner at Hga consulting
With AWS WAF, it is easier for us to block unwanted malicious DDoS attacks and threats from coming into our web application.
DevOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.9
Cloudflare's customer service is praised for promptness, but technical support feedback varies, especially favoring Enterprise tier users.
Sentiment score
6.4
Amazon CloudFront's support varies by tier, with premium users receiving better service, though some experience delays and documentation issues.
Sentiment score
6.7
AWS WAF support receives mixed reviews, praised for responsiveness and expertise, yet criticized for cost and inconsistent communication.
Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model.
Senior Consultant CDN at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to call them.
Owner at Hga consulting
We use other solutions where support is available through Slack channels and is more interactive, with someone responding within a couple of minutes or seconds.
General Manager at bKash Limited
I would rate the technical support by Amazon AWS as satisfactory, as they generally address issues promptly.
Head of Data & Content at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Resolving issues can take time because the support personnel may lack product expertise, leading to delays.
Security Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
They reach out when you send them a ticket, and within 24 hours or less, someone is able to get back to you to solve your problem.
DevOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Users praise Cloudflare's scalability, flexibility, and seamless tier transitions for maintaining high performance under increasing traffic and demands.
Sentiment score
8.3
Amazon CloudFront excels in scalability, reliably supporting large-scale operations and high traffic for diverse businesses and events.
Sentiment score
7.8
AWS WAF excels in scalability and auto-scaling, efficiently handling traffic for businesses of all sizes, though improvements are possible.
It is a SaaS tool, but the fact that they have workloads deployed across the world proves that it is a highly scalable tool.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
The tool offers very good performance, even during high-traffic periods.
Engineer at SITMEXICO
I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.
Independent Consultant at Unaikui
AWS WAF does scale in the sense that it is fully managed and has automatic scaling.
DevOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Cloudflare is generally stable and reliable, with some initial setup challenges but excellent performance and positive user feedback.
Sentiment score
8.2
Amazon CloudFront is highly reliable with global availability, low latency, and stability ratings of eight to ten by users.
Sentiment score
8.3
AWS WAF is highly rated for stability due to reliable performance, strong protection, and effective redundancy features.
I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.
Independent Consultant at Unaikui
The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.
Engineer at SITMEXICO
If Amazon CloudFront is present, it will decrease latency; if it is not, then latency would be slightly greater, but it would still work.
Cloud Support Engineer at Operisoft Technologies
Since it protects web applications from common attacks such as SQL injection and XSS, it is very stable.
DevOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
In terms of reliability, I would rate AWS WAF about six out of ten due to the need for improved signature sets.
Security Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We faced issues with AWS WAF when writing the custom rules.
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
 

Room For Improvement

Cloudflare needs enhancements in speed, support, reliability, pricing, and documentation, while expanding integration, security, and analytics capabilities.
Amazon CloudFront faces integration, latency, user-friendliness, and support challenges, with calls for price cuts and more data centers.
AWS WAF requires improved integration, usability, security features, and flexible pricing to better support global users and services.
Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.
Managed Services Manager at Adapture Technology Group
Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements.
General Manager at bKash Limited
There are some performance considerations when it comes to dynamic content that involves fetching data from databases or using APIs.
Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions
The pricing for Amazon CloudFront is quite expensive; I would rate it six if we use all edges.
Cloud Support Engineer at Operisoft Technologies
I believe they may lack certain functionalities.
Head of Data & Content at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Compared to firewalls, WAFs generally provide limited stateful analysis capabilities.
Security Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The way we see it now is just mentioned as a percentage from bots and actual users, which should include proper graphs and detailed information.
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
Features like bot protection or DDoS mitigation, available with other WAF vendors, do not come natively with AWS WAF.
Security Analyst at M2P Fintech
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise users find Cloudflare cost-effective, with valuable upgrades and competitive pricing, despite unclear enterprise price lists.
Amazon CloudFront's pricing is mixed, appreciated for flexibility and free tier, but criticized for complexity and high costs.
AWS WAF offers cost-effective, pay-as-you-go pricing, starting at $5 monthly, valued for integration with AWS services.
I find it to be cheap.
Engineer at SITMEXICO
I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.
Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions
The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Due to our status as an AWS shop, AWS WAF is cost-effective for us, and we benefit from discounts due to our extensive use of AWS services.
Security Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The licensing cost for AWS WAF is just pay-as-you-go; it is a service-based model.
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
 

Valuable Features

Cloudflare provides caching, DDoS protection, and CDN services with enhanced security features, making it vital for optimized web performance.
Amazon CloudFront delivers fast, secure content through global caching, easy integration, and seamless AWS service compatibility, enhancing performance.
AWS WAF offers threat blocking, scalability, automation, and seamless integration, enhancing security and performance with easy deployment and affordability.
Techniques like minification and image compression reduce the size of assets, leading to better performance and faster user load times.
Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions
The solution has been able to compare it to the market, and I think the product has taken great strides in automating quite a bit of things, and they use a lot of AI.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Most of our DNS records that are presented to the internet are proxied whenever possible, providing another layer of defense from our perspective.
Senior Security Engineer at ManpowerGroup
It drastically reduces latency, which is very useful for web performance and user experience.
Cloud Support Engineer at Operisoft Technologies
I would assess the impact of Amazon CloudFront's integration with services such as EC2, S3, and Lambda on my content customization as quite significant.
Head of Data & Content at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
The biggest benefit of AWS WAF for us is to filter malicious requests, so we can protect our environment and application from malicious actors.
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
It has also helped to improve the posture of our application, prevent all DDoS attacks, and unnecessary traffic and SQL injection that is reducing the performance of our application.
DevOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
The cloud-native nature of AWS is crucial since most of our workload is in AWS, making AWS WAF native to Amazon Web Services.
Security Analyst at M2P Fintech
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (10th)
Amazon CloudFront
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
CDN (3rd)
AWS WAF
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
61
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

CDN Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon CloudFront6.4%
Cloudflare19.0%
Akamai14.7%
Other59.900000000000006%
CDN
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
AWS WAF5.6%
Fortinet FortiWeb7.8%
Imperva Application Security Platform7.8%
Other78.8%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager at bKash Limited
Advanced protection has secured critical web workloads and provides clear traffic visibility
From a security perspective, there remains a security loophole, as some browsers in the market can bypass the Turnstile solution, which requires approximately 40 seconds to do so. From a performance perspective, this is acceptable. We also tried Google reCAPTCHA, and that can also be bypassed. From a security perspective, I would say neither solution is completely secured. Regarding uptime, we have faced a couple of incidents due to Cloudflare in recent years, so I cannot say we receive 100% uptime for our region. We sometimes face challenges, including downtime and other issues. As a result, we are not receiving 100% uptime from Cloudflare's solution. Since most of our customers are in this region, we need alternatives. We need something more competitive than Cloudflare. Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, Cloudflare has three points of presence already, and we cannot find any other solution provider in Bangladesh as an alternative, which presents another challenge. Competitor solutions have more attack signatures, which ensure better security compared to Cloudflare's predefined configurations. Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements. Cloudflare could improve in this area. Additionally, regarding visibility, Cloudflare has static visibility, but they could adopt dynamic graph features for their customers.
Nicolas Forgues - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Data & Content at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Improved web performance has boosted content customization and currently delivers faster user experiences
From my perspective, I see some weaknesses in Amazon CloudFront; I would rate the product something around nine out of ten, but there are disadvantages compared to its competitors. Talking specifically about Amazon CloudFront, I think they could have some additional features in the future, and I believe they may lack certain functionalities.
Azam S M - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
Has successfully filtered malicious traffic and allowed country-specific access controls
For improvement in AWS WAF, we can have better monitoring. One of the things that should be improved in AWS WAF is the monitoring; we need to identify the requests and where they are coming from. If it's a bot, we should differentiate the requests, whether they are automated or not. The way we see it now is just mentioned as a percentage from bots and actual users, which should include proper graphs and detailed information. We also need a feature where we can filter specific requests. If there are scripts in the requests, we should be able to filter those requests to see if there are any scripts running from them.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise26
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
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 CloudFro...
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 expens...
What are the limitations of AWS WAF vs alternative WAFs?
Hi Varun, I have had experienced with several WAF deployments and deep technical assessments of the following: 1. Im...
How does AWS WAF compare to Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Web Application Firewall or Microsoft...
What do you like most about AWS WAF?
The most valuable feature of AWS WAF is its highly configurable rules system.
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
AWS Web Application Firewall
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Unilever, Spotify, Pinterest, MLB Advanced Media, Foursquare, PBS, Airbnb, Netflix, WIX, Comcast, Automobili Lamborghini, Rovio, Discovery Communications
eVitamins, 9Splay, Senao International
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare, Imperva, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in CDN. Updated: February 2026.
882,410 professionals have used our research since 2012.