Quick answer
Neither AWS nor Cloudflare is cheaper for everything. Monthly costs at official US East list prices checked October 14, 2026: Static site + API, $3.50 on AWS and $5.15 on Cloudflare; Mobile app backend, $84.63 on AWS and $113.10 on Cloudflare; Media and downloads, $113.25 on Cloudflare and $1,052.80 on AWS. The biggest difference is the NoSQL database: $13.75 a month on AWS against $82.00 on Cloudflare.
- Official list prices
- 3 usage levels
- 12 regions
- Feature comparison
- Free calculator
How to compare AWS and Cloudflare costs
- 1Pick a usage level (Static site + API, Mobile app backend, Media and downloads), then change the numbers or add more items with the + buttons.
- 2Choose the Region where your users are. Prices differ by region.
- 3Adjust the numbers in each card. Every field has an i tip explaining it.
- 4Compare the two monthly totals, then open Cost breakdown to see exactly how AWS and Cloudflare bill each line.
Which is cheaper, AWS or Cloudflare?
Monthly list prices in US East with the always-free allowances applied:
| Usage per month | AWS | Cloudflare | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Static site + API: CDN-served site with a few serverless endpoints | $3.50 | $5.15 | AWS by $1.65 |
| Mobile app backend: serverless API, NoSQL, user uploads | $84.63 | $113.10 | AWS by $28.47 |
| Media and downloads: 5 TB of files, 10 TB downloaded a month | $1,052.80 | $113.25 | Cloudflare by $939.55 |
AWS is cheaper for a mobile app backend in 11 of the 12 regions the calculator covers and Cloudflare in 1. Cloudflare does not rent servers, so these presets use serverless, storage, NoSQL and bandwidth only. On Cloudflare, Workers KV stands in for the NoSQL database, at $5.00 per million writes after 1 million included.
What are the AWS and Cloudflare unit prices?
List prices in AWS us-east-1 (N. Virginia) and Cloudflare (one global price), read on October 14, 2026:
| Price (US East, on-demand) | AWS | Cloudflare |
|---|---|---|
| Server, 2 vCPU / 8 GB, per hour | $0.096 (m6i.large) | No VMs |
| SSD disk | $0.08 per GB-month (gp3) | No disks |
| Serverless, per million requests | $0.20 | $0.30 after 10M included |
| Serverless compute | $0.0000166667 per GB-s | $0.02 per million CPU ms |
| Object storage, per GB-month | $0.023 | $0.015 |
| Object writes, per million | $5.00 | $4.50 |
| Object reads, per million | $0.40 | $0.36 |
| PostgreSQL, 2 vCPU / 8 GB, per hour | $0.178 | D1: billed per row |
| Database storage, per GB-month | $0.115 | $0.75 |
| NoSQL, per million reads | $0.125 | $0.50 after 10M included |
| NoSQL, per million writes | $0.625 | $5.00 after 1M included |
| Internet egress, per GB | $0.09 | $0 |
| CDN, per GB | $0.085 | $0 (no bandwidth charges) |
Is AWS or Cloudflare cheaper in your region?
A serverless mobile app backend (functions, NoSQL and user uploads), priced in each of the 12 regions the calculator covers:
| Region | AWS | Cloudflare | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| US East | $84.63 | $113.10 | AWS |
| US West | $84.63 | $113.10 | AWS |
| Canada | $88.31 | $113.10 | AWS |
| Brazil (São Paulo) | $115.08 | $113.10 | Cloudflare |
| Ireland | $86.42 | $113.10 | AWS |
| UK (London) | $88.48 | $113.10 | AWS |
| Germany (Frankfurt) | $89.43 | $113.10 | AWS |
| India | $90.89 | $113.10 | AWS |
| Singapore | $93.03 | $113.10 | AWS |
| Japan (Tokyo) | $90.68 | $113.10 | AWS |
| South Korea (Seoul) | $91.51 | $113.10 | AWS |
| Australia (Sydney) | $93.63 | $113.10 | AWS |
How do AWS and Cloudflare compare on features?
| AWS | Cloudflare | |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic VM discount | None | No VMs (Workers and Containers) |
| VM billing | Per second, 60-second minimum | No VMs |
| Free serverless each month | 1M Lambda requests + 400,000 GB-s | 100,000 Workers requests a day |
| Free internet egress | 100 GB a month | No egress fees |
| New-customer credit | $100, plus up to $100 more | Free plans instead |
| Global footprint | 39 regions, 124 availability zones | 335+ cities |
Facts from each provider's own documentation, checked October 14, 2026.
What are the key differences between AWS and Cloudflare?
- Egress. Cloudflare charges nothing for data sent from Workers and R2; AWS charges per GB after 100 GB a month.
- Compute. Workers run in 335+ cities and bill CPU time only; Lambda runs in one region and bills duration × memory, but allows up to 10 GB of memory and 15-minute runs.
- Breadth. AWS offers VMs, managed PostgreSQL, data warehouses and hundreds of other services. Cloudflare focuses on edge compute, storage and networking.
- Databases. Cloudflare D1 is serverless SQLite with up to 10 GB per database; AWS offers RDS PostgreSQL up to 64 TiB.
Should you choose AWS or Cloudflare?
Choose AWS if
- you need servers, large relational databases or specialized managed services
- your functions need more than 128 MB of memory or long run times
- you rely on the wider AWS ecosystem
Choose Cloudflare if
- your app serves a lot of data to users and egress is a large part of the bill
- you want low latency worldwide without managing regions
- your APIs mostly wait on I/O, so CPU-time billing is cheaper
More comparisons: AWS vs Google Cloud · AWS vs Azure · Google Cloud vs Azure · Google Cloud vs Cloudflare · Azure vs Cloudflare · AWS Lambda vs Cloudflare Workers · Amazon S3 vs Cloudflare R2 · Amazon CloudFront vs Cloudflare CDN.
Where do these prices come from?
Both sides use the provider's own published price list, read on October 14, 2026, for the same region, with the always-free allowances applied.
- AWS: AWS Lambda pricing · Amazon S3 pricing · Amazon DynamoDB pricing · EC2 data transfer pricing · Amazon CloudFront pricing
- Cloudflare: Workers pricing · R2 pricing · Workers KV pricing · Cloudflare plans
Prices are in US dollars, on-demand, for Linux, with no commitments. Every figure on this page is generated from the same price snapshot as the calculator, and automated tests check each claim whenever the prices change. A month is 730 hours and 1 TB is 1,024 GB. Providers change prices from time to time, so for a purchase decision confirm the final figure in the provider's console.
Moving between AWS and Cloudflare?
Playxoft builds and runs production backends on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure and Cloudflare, and plans migrations between them with no surprise downtime, including white-label work for agencies. Send us your architecture or last month's invoice and we will tell you, free, which side is cheaper for your real usage. Get a free cloud cost review.
Frequently asked questions
Last updated by the Playxoft engineering team.