Amazon CloudFront vs Cloudinary
Amazon CloudFront
aws.amazon.comCloudinary
cloudinary.comSide by side
| Figure | Amazon CloudFront | Cloudinary |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $15/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 4 |
| Spec score · Web Accelerator Software | 8.5 (#2) | 8.4 (#4) |
| Spec score · CDN Software | 8.4 (#5) | 8.5 (#4) |
| Spec score · CDN services | 8.4 (#8) | 8.7 (#4) |
| Compliance | AWS states that CloudFront infrastructure and processes are designed to comply with PCI-DSS Level 1, HIPAA, ISO 9001, ISO/IEC 27001, 27017, and 27018, SOC 1, 2, and 3, and FedRAMP Moderate. | Cloudinary’s Trust page identifies SOC 2 Type II certification and GDPR controls. |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Security | CloudFront integrates with AWS Shield, AWS WAF, and Amazon Route 53 for layered protection against network and application layer attacks, including DDoS. | Cloudinary says it supports access controls, single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, and least-privilege access, and conducts third-party penetration tests at least annually. |
Plans
Amazon CloudFront
- FreeFree
- Pro$15 a month
- Business$200 a month
- Premium$1,000 a month
- Custom pricingPriced on request
Cloudinary
- FreeFree
- PlusPrice not published
- Advanced$224 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
Amazon CloudFront
Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network for delivering data, videos, applications, and APIs around the world. It uses more than 750 globally dispersed Points of Presence, with automated network mapping and intelligent routing. CloudFront works with Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, Elastic Load Balancing, and custom HTTP origins; edge behavior can be customized with CloudFront Functions and AWS Lambda@Edge. Listed uses range from websites and dynamic APIs to live and on-demand video, software distribution, game patches, and IoT updates. Security options include HTTPS/TLS, signed URLs and cookies, token authentication, geographic restrictions, and limiting S3 origin access to CloudFront. It integrates with AWS Shield, AWS WAF, and Amazon Route 53 for layered protection, including against DDoS attacks. CloudWatch metrics and logs to S3 or Kinesis Data Streams provide monitoring options. CloudFront has a free plan at free, with 1 million requests and 100GB data transfer. Paid plans start at $15 a month per distribution; Pro, Business, and Premium each list 50TB of transfer.
Cloudinary
Cloudinary is a media platform for managing images and video through APIs, from ingestion and storage to moderation, search, transformation and delivery. It also supports workflow automation and digital asset management through Cloudinary Assets, which uses AI agents to organize, find and moderate assets. Listed media tools include image and video transformations, video transcoding, adaptive streaming, CDN delivery, smart crop, intelligent optimization, AI vision, generative fill and restore, background replacement and image generation.
The Free plan is billed forever at free and includes three users, one account and 25 monthly credits. It also includes an upload widget, API, search and MCP server access. The stated limits are 20 MB per file and 225 GB of bandwidth. Plus is listed at $89 per month (yearly) or $99 per month (monthly); Advanced is $224 per month (yearly) or $249 per month (monthly). Enterprise pricing is custom. Platforms are API, extension and web.