CDN pricing at AWS, Azure and Google Cloud is driven by the data a content delivery network serves from its edge locations to users and by the requests that reach those locations; depending on the provider, cache fill from the origin, a base fee or a flat-rate plan come on top. Bytes delivered at the edge are priced differently from regional egress, and every cache miss adds cost at the origin, so the cache hit ratio shapes the bill.
How it works
A cache hit is served from the edge; a miss makes the edge fetch the object from the origin, such as a bucket or a load balancer. The providers bill delivery, requests and, to different degrees, the path between edge and origin.
AWS
CloudFront has two pricing models. Pay-as-you-go charges data transfer out per GB by edge region and monthly volume, HTTP and HTTPS requests per 10,000, and data transfer to the origin, such as for POST and PUT requests, per GB, while fetches from AWS origins such as S3, EC2 or Elastic Load Balancing are free. Origin Shield, edge functions, invalidations beyond 1,000 paths a month and real-time logs cost extra; the Always Free Tier covers 1 TB and 10 million requests a month. Customers committing to minimum traffic, typically 10 TB a month or more according to AWS, can get discounted rates, a form of private pricing.
AWS also sells flat-rate pricing plans per distribution and month in Free, Pro, Business and Premium tiers. They bundle the CDN with AWS WAF, DDoS protection, Route 53 DNS, log ingestion, a TLS certificate, edge compute and S3 storage credits. Each tier has a monthly allowance of requests and data transfer and no overage charges; the allowance is not a hard limit, but sustained excess may lead AWS to adjust delivery, for example through fewer or more distant edge locations. Requests blocked by WAF or DDoS protection do not count, and Lambda@Edge stays pay-as-you-go.
Azure
Azure Front Door Standard and Premium charge a base fee per profile, billed by the hour, data transfer from edge to client per GB by zone and volume, data transfer from edge to origin per GB, and requests per 10,000, with Premium at a higher rate that includes WAF and Private Link. Transfer from an origin in an Azure data centre to the edge is free.
Azure CDN Standard from Microsoft (classic) retires on 2027-09-30. Since 2025-08-15 it accepts no new resources, domains or managed certificates; Microsoft points to Front Door Standard or Premium.
Google Cloud
Cloud CDN runs behind an external Application Load Balancer and charges cache data transfer out per GiB by destination and monthly volume, counted per project and destination, cache fill per GiB by source and destination, and cache lookups for GET and HEAD requests per 10,000. On a cache miss, cache fill and the load balancer's data processing or Cloud Storage operations come on top, replacing the data transfer of direct serving. Non-cacheable content costs a lookup, load balancer processing and standard internet egress; requests to external origins are charged at internet egress rates. The load balancer's own charges are in Load balancers, NAT gateways and public IP addresses.
| AWS CloudFront | Azure Front Door | Google Cloud CDN | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delivery | Per GB by region and volume | Edge to client per GB by zone and volume | Cache data transfer out per GiB by destination and volume |
| Requests | HTTP and HTTPS per 10,000 | Per 10,000, Premium higher | Lookups per 10,000 |
| Origin side | Fetch from AWS free, to origin per GB | From Azure free, edge to origin per GB | Cache fill per GiB plus load balancer or Cloud Storage |
| Fixed fees | None on pay-as-you-go | Base fee per profile | The load balancer's forwarding rules |
| Plan options | Flat-rate plans Free to Premium | Standard or Premium | Volume discount above 500 TiB a month on request |
What it means for your cost
The cache hit ratio decides how much traffic still leaves the origin. When it drops, CDN lines and origin costs grow together instead of one replacing the other; that case and regional egress prices are covered in Data transfer and egress. When the origin is a bucket, its requests and storage belong to Block, object and file storage.
In billing data the CDN is its own service with line items per geography or zone and per kind: delivery, requests, fill, base fee. On Google Cloud, Cloud CDN charges for cacheable content land in the project holding the CDN-enabled backend service, even when the forwarding rule sits in another project. A CloudFront flat-rate plan replaces the usage prices of the bundled services with one monthly price per distribution, so spikes show in the allowance, not the amount.
Jumps in a CDN line call for anomaly detection, since a new cache rule, a campaign or an attack changes volume and hit ratio within a day (Cost anomaly detection). The decisions are pay-as-you-go or a flat-rate plan, Standard or Premium, the number of Front Door profiles, where the origin sits relative to users, and when to leave the classic Azure CDN.
Where it goes wrong
- An origin in a distant region. Symptom: Cloud CDN cache fill is priced at the rate Google labels "inter-region cache fill (for example between Asia Pacific and North America)" instead of the rate "within North America or Europe". Cause: the backend service sits in a different geography from the users it serves.
- A base fee per profile. Symptom: several Front Door base fees for test and development environments with little traffic. Cause: the base fee is charged per profile regardless of traffic, while several endpoints in one profile share it.
- An allowance exceeded for months. Symptom: no extra charge, but notifications at 50, 80 and 100 per cent of the allowance and later slower delivery. Cause: CloudFront flat-rate plans charge no overage but adjust delivery when usage stays above the allowance.
- Lambda@Edge beside a flat-rate plan. Symptom: Lambda@Edge lines despite a flat-rate plan. Cause: Lambda@Edge is billed pay-as-you-go on every tier; only CloudFront Functions are included.
Example
List prices in USD, read on 2026-10-16. CloudFront pay-as-you-go for Europe, Israel and Türkiye: after the free first TB a month, USD 0.085 per GB for the next 9 TB, data transfer to origin USD 0.02 per GB; flat-rate plans per distribution and month: Free USD 0, Pro USD 15, Business USD 200, Premium USD 1,000. Azure Front Door, Europe zone: USD 0.083 per GB from edge to client for the first 10 TB, USD 0.02 per GB from edge to origin, USD 0.009 per 10,000 requests (Standard), base fee USD 35 (Standard) and USD 330 (Premium) a month. Google Cloud CDN, destination Europe: USD 0.08 per GiB of cache data transfer out for the first 10 TiB, cache fill USD 0.01 per GiB within North America or Europe and USD 0.04 per GiB for inter-region cache fill (for example between Asia Pacific and North America), USD 0.0075 per 10,000 lookups.
Sources
Read on 2026-10-16. Amazon CloudFront pricing, Amazon CloudFront pay-as-you-go pricing, CloudFront flat-rate pricing plans in the Developer Guide, Azure Front Door pricing, Compare pricing between Azure Front Door tiers, Azure CDN Standard from Microsoft (classic) retirement FAQ, Cloud CDN pricing, Cloud Load Balancing pricing.