Quick answer
Neither Azure nor Cloudflare is cheaper for everything. Monthly costs at official US East list prices checked October 14, 2026: Static site + API, $5.15 on Cloudflare and $89.95 on Azure; Mobile app backend, $103.80 on Azure and $113.10 on Cloudflare; Media and downloads, $113.25 on Cloudflare and $1,012.10 on Azure. The biggest difference is the NoSQL database: $35.00 a month on Azure against $82.00 on Cloudflare.
- Official list prices
- 3 usage levels
- 12 regions
- Feature comparison
- Free calculator
How to compare Azure 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 Azure and Cloudflare bill each line.
Which is cheaper, Azure or Cloudflare?
Monthly list prices in US East with the always-free allowances applied:
| Usage per month | Azure | Cloudflare | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Static site + API: CDN-served site with a few serverless endpoints | $89.95 | $5.15 | Cloudflare by $84.80 |
| Mobile app backend: serverless API, NoSQL, user uploads | $103.80 | $113.10 | Azure by $9.30 |
| Media and downloads: 5 TB of files, 10 TB downloaded a month | $1,012.10 | $113.25 | Cloudflare by $898.85 |
Azure is cheaper for a mobile app backend in 7 of the 12 regions the calculator covers and Cloudflare in 5. 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 Azure and Cloudflare unit prices?
List prices in Azure eastus (East US) and Cloudflare (one global price), read on October 14, 2026:
| Price (US East, on-demand) | Azure | Cloudflare |
|---|---|---|
| Server, 2 vCPU / 8 GB, per hour | $0.096 (D2s v5) | No VMs |
| SSD disk | $19.71 a month per 128 GiB disk (P10) | No disks |
| Serverless, per million requests | $0.20 | $0.30 after 10M included |
| Serverless compute | $0.000016 per GB-s | $0.02 per million CPU ms |
| Object storage, per GB-month | $0.0208 | $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 | $0.25 (1 RU each) | $0.50 after 10M included |
| NoSQL, per million writes | $1.38 (5.5 RU each) | $5.00 after 1M included |
| Internet egress, per GB | $0.087 | $0 |
| CDN, per GB | $0.0825 | $0 (no bandwidth charges) |
Is Azure 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 | Azure | Cloudflare | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| US East | $103.80 | $113.10 | Azure |
| US West | $103.20 | $113.10 | Azure |
| Canada | $108.90 | $113.10 | Azure |
| Brazil (São Paulo) | $150.25 | $113.10 | Cloudflare |
| Ireland | $107.90 | $113.10 | Azure |
| UK (London) | $112.01 | $113.10 | Azure |
| Germany (Frankfurt) | $111.23 | $113.10 | Azure |
| India | $116.90 | $113.10 | Cloudflare |
| Singapore | $114.23 | $113.10 | Cloudflare |
| Japan (Tokyo) | $115.04 | $113.10 | Cloudflare |
| South Korea (Seoul) | $112.62 | $113.10 | Azure |
| Australia (Sydney) | $116.96 | $113.10 | Cloudflare |
How do Azure and Cloudflare compare on features?
| Azure | Cloudflare | |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic VM discount | None | No VMs (Workers and Containers) |
| VM billing | Per minute | No VMs |
| Free serverless each month | 1M Functions executions + 400,000 GB-s | 100,000 Workers requests a day |
| Free internet egress | 100 GB a month | No egress fees |
| New-customer credit | $200 for 30 days | Free plans instead |
Facts from each provider's own documentation, checked October 14, 2026.
What are the key differences between Azure and Cloudflare?
- Egress. Azure charges per GB of internet egress after 100 GB a month; Cloudflare charges nothing for data from Workers and R2.
- CDN. Azure Front Door Standard has a $35 monthly base fee plus per-GB charges; Cloudflare's CDN has a free plan with no bandwidth charges.
- Compute. Azure Functions run in one region with up to 1.5 GB on the Consumption plan; Workers run in 335+ cities with 128 MB and bill CPU time only.
- Data. Cosmos DB offers five consistency levels and SQL-like queries; Workers KV is eventually consistent key-value storage.
Should you choose Azure or Cloudflare?
Choose Azure if
- you need servers, managed PostgreSQL or Microsoft integration
- your data needs rich queries and tunable consistency (Cosmos DB)
- your functions need more memory or longer runs
Choose Cloudflare if
- your app serves a lot of data and bandwidth dominates the bill
- you want a CDN without a base fee
- you want global low latency without managing regions
More comparisons: AWS vs Google Cloud · AWS vs Azure · Google Cloud vs Azure · AWS vs Cloudflare · Google Cloud vs Cloudflare.
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.
- Azure: Azure Functions pricing · Blob Storage pricing · Cosmos DB serverless pricing · Bandwidth pricing · Azure Front Door 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 Azure 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.