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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:
 

ROI

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
6.0
Fastly boosts return on investment with improved performance, reduced latency, and cuts infrastructure costs by 40-60%.
Reducing infrastructure costs by 40 to 60% because Edge Caching minimizes backend traffic, resulting in lower computing costs.
Senior software engineer at Simplifyvms
I have seen a return on investment, particularly in time savings, especially regarding the changes.
Cloud Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

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
6.3
Fastly's customer care is efficient with multi-channel support, but has inconsistencies in response times and transparency across time zones.
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
demonstrating the team's technical expertise in CDN and Edge architecture
Senior software engineer at Simplifyvms
We have SLAs defined because we opted for enterprise support pricing.
Staff Engineer at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
I would describe Fastly's customer support as fast and efficient when I have had to use it.
Cloud Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Amazon CloudFront excels in scalability, reliably supporting large-scale operations and high traffic for diverse businesses and events.
Sentiment score
6.4
Fastly is praised for scalability, ease of growth support, cloud flexibility, excellent support, and successful global integrations.
Seamlessly handling massive traffic without requiring backend changes due to its globally distributed Edge network and stateless API-driven design.
Senior software engineer at Simplifyvms
 

Stability Issues

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
7.3
Fastly is stable and reliable with high uptime, no technical issues, and strong performance in enterprise applications.
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
Highly reliable for enterprise-scale applications with high uptime guarantees.
Senior software engineer at Simplifyvms
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon CloudFront faces integration, latency, user-friendliness, and support challenges, with calls for price cuts and more data centers.
Fastly requires improvements in China presence, configuration complexity, pricing, customer support, security features, documentation, and bot detection.
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
I chose 8 out of 10 because it has excellent performance and low latency delivery, making it suitable for larger applications, with strong Edge Caching and instant purging capabilities.
Senior software engineer at Simplifyvms
Fastly could improve by improving the documentation and having some code examples.
Cloud Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Fastly should provide features similar to Cloudflare regarding a block list.
Technical support engineer at Adobe
 

Setup Cost

Amazon CloudFront's pricing is mixed, appreciated for flexibility and free tier, but criticized for complexity and high costs.
Fastly is competitively priced with usage-based costs and customizable options, but some find it expensive with a learning curve.
It operates on a pay-as-you-go structure, but costs scale with traffic, requiring monitoring to avoid unexpected spikes based on data transfers and the number of requests handled.
Senior software engineer at Simplifyvms
In terms of price, I find it good.
Cloud Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

Amazon CloudFront delivers fast, secure content through global caching, easy integration, and seamless AWS service compatibility, enhancing performance.
Fastly CDNs integrate with Signal Sciences WAF for efficient content delivery, enhancing performance with global edge locations and code management.
It drastically reduces latency, which is very useful for web performance and user experience.
Cloud Support Engineer at Operisoft Technologies
This scalability has positively reflected in my customer's web performance and user experience, allowing for better loading times.
Head of Data & Content at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
We observed a 30 to 50% reduction in response time and a significant reduction in backend load of 40 to 60%, improving visibility through a real-time dashboard for monitoring traffic, errors, and performance.
Senior software engineer at Simplifyvms
We have improvements in traceability by having the changes integrated into the Git repositories and having the possibility of doing a rollback in the event of any problem in a very simple way.
Cloud Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
In this project, it is working as a reverse proxy for CDN and WAF, web application firewall, additionally image optimization.
Technical support engineer at Adobe
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon CloudFront
Ranking in CDN
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fastly
Ranking in CDN
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (24th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudFront is 5.3%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fastly is 5.2%, up from 4.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon CloudFront5.3%
Fastly5.2%
Other89.5%
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Pranay Jain - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior software engineer at Simplifyvms
Edge caching has transformed response times and delivers faster candidate data globally
Fastly can be improved in certain areas such as VCL, which is powerful but has a steep learning curve for normal users. A more user-friendly, UI-based configuration could simplify the experience, alongside better templates for common use cases and dashboard improvements, as the current dashboard feels complex for beginners, and pricing can be hard to predict for smaller companies. I chose 8 out of 10 because it has excellent performance and low latency delivery, making it suitable for larger applications, with strong Edge Caching and instant purging capabilities. However, VCL complexity and pricing predictability, especially for smaller companies, along with a user-friendly dashboard are areas impacting my score.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise7
 

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 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 needs improvement with Amazon CloudFront?
Honestly, Amazon CloudFront does its job really well, but it doesn’t always feel easy to work with. The setup can be a bit confusing at first—there are a lot of settings, and it’s not always clear ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fastly?
In terms of price, I find it good, and as I mentioned, the implementation cost had some difficulty at the beginning due to the learning curve.
What needs improvement with Fastly?
I think Fastly could improve by improving the documentation and having some code examples so that it is easier for developers, since at the beginning it becomes a bit complicated.
What is your primary use case for Fastly?
My primary use case for Fastly is using it as a CDN to speed up my customers' access to the applications. A specific example of how Fastly has helped improve my customers' access to the application...
 

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: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.