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Amazon CloudFront FAQs


Q. What is Amazon CloudFront?
Amazon CloudFront is a web service that gives businesses and software developers an easy and cost effective way to distribute popular content with low latency and high data transfer speeds. Like all AWS Infrastructure Services, Amazon CloudFront is a self-service, pay-per-use offering, requiring no long term commitments or minimum fees. With CloudFront, your files are delivered to end-users using a global network of edge locations. Amazon CloudFront works seamlessly with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), which durably stores the original, definitive versions of your files.
Q. What can I do with Amazon CloudFront?
Amazon CloudFront provides a simple API that lets you:
  • Distribute content stored in Amazon S3 with low latency and high data transfer rates by serving requests using a network of edge locations around the world.
  • Get started without negotiating contracts and minimum commitments.
Q. How do I get started with Amazon CloudFront?
Click the “Sign up for Amazon CloudFront” button the Amazon CloudFront detail page. You must place objects in Amazon S3 as the origin server; if you’re already using Amazon S3, you can immediately register your buckets to the Amazon CloudFront service. If you’re not yet using Amazon S3 or if you don’t yet have an AWS account, you’ll simply be also asked to sign up for these.
Q. How do I use Amazon CloudFront?

To use Amazon CloudFront, you:

  • Store your objects in an Amazon S3 bucket. This bucket will serve as the “origin server” – the definitive version of your content that will be distributed through Amazon CloudFront.
  • Register your Amazon S3 origin server with Amazon CloudFront through a simple API call. This call will return a CloudFront.net domain name that you can use to distribute content from that bucket via the CloudFront service. For instance, registering the Amazon S3 bucket “bucketname.s3.amazonaws.com” might return “E123456.cloudfront.net.”
  • Include the cloudfront.net domain name in the appropriate spots in your web application or website. Each request made using the cloudfront.net domain name is routed to the edge location best suited to deliver the content with the highest performance. The edge location will attempt to serve the request with a local copy of the file. If a local copy is not available, CloudFront will get a copy from Amazon S3. This copy is then available at that edge location for future requests.
Q. How does Amazon CloudFront provide higher performance?
Amazon CloudFront employs a network of edge locations that cache copies of popular files close to users on the internet. Amazon CloudFront ensures that end-user requests are served by the closest edge location. As a result, requests travel shorter distances to request objects, improving performance.
Q. How does Amazon CloudFront lower my costs to distribute content over the Internet?
Like other AWS services, Amazon CloudFront has no minimum commitments and charges you only for what you use. Compared to hosting files yourself, Amazon CloudFront spares you from the expense and complexity of operating a network of cache servers in multiple sites across the internet and eliminates the need to over-provision capacity in order to serve potential spikes in traffic.
Q. How is Amazon CloudFront different from Amazon S3?
Amazon CloudFront uses Amazon S3 as its origin store to hold the definitive, original versions of your content. Amazon CloudFront is a good choice for distribution of frequently accessed content that benefits from edge delivery—like popular website images, videos, media files or software downloads. Amazon S3 will continue to be the solution of choice for delivering content where individual objects are only accessed infrequently, as you will save the costs of copying less popular objects from Amazon S3 to the edge locations used by CloudFront.
Q. How is Amazon CloudFront different from traditional content delivery solutions?
Amazon CloudFront lets you quickly obtain the benefits of high performance content delivery without negotiated contracts or high prices. Amazon CloudFront gives all developers access to inexpensive, pay-as-you-go pricing – with a self-service model. Developers also benefit from tight integration with other Amazon Web Services. The solution is simple to use with Amazon S3 as an origin server, giving developers a powerful combination of durable storage and high performance delivery.

Q. What is the price of Amazon CloudFront?

Amazon CloudFront charges are based on actual usage of the service in three areas: the origin server (Amazon S3), Data Transfer and Requests.

  • Origin Server

Amazon CloudFront uses Amazon S3 as the origin server to store the original, definitive versions of your files. You will be charged separately at regular rates for Amazon S3 usage, including “origin fetches” – data transferred from Amazon S3 to edge locations used by Amazon CloudFront. These charges will appear on your Amazon S3 bill.

  • Data Transfer

United States Edge Locations
$0.170 per GB – first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.120 per GB – next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.100 per GB – next 100 TB / month data transfer out
$0.090 per GB – next 100 TB / month data transfer out
$0.080 per GB – next 250 TB / month data transfer out
$0.070 per GB – next 250 TB / month data transfer out
$0.060 per GB – next 250 TB / month data transfer out
$0.050 per GB – data transfer out / month over 1,000 TB

European Edge Locations
$0.170 per GB – first 10TB / month data transfer out
$0.120 per GB – next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.100 per GB – next 100 TB / month data transfer out
$0.090 per GB – next 100 TB / month data transfer out
$0.080 per GB – next 250 TB / month data transfer out
$0.070 per GB – next 250 TB / month data transfer out
$0.060 per GB – next 250 TB / month data transfer out
$0.050 per GB – data transfer out / month over 1,000 TB

Hong Kong Edge Locations
$0.210 per GB – first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.160 per GB – next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.140 per GB – next 100 TB / month data transfer out
$0.130 per GB – next 100 TB / month data transfer out
$0.120 per GB – next 250 TB / month data transfer out
$0.110 per GB – next 250 TB / month data transfer out
$0.100 per GB – next 250 TB / month data transfer out
$0.090 per GB – data transfer out / month over 1,000 TB

Japan Edge Locations
$0.221 per GB – first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.168 per GB – next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.147 per GB – next 100 TB / month data transfer out
$0.137 per GB – next 100 TB / month data transfer out
$0.126 per GB – next 250 TB / month data transfer out
$0.116 per GB – next 250 TB / month data transfer out
$0.105 per GB – next 250 TB / month data transfer out
$0.095 per GB – data transfer out / month over 1,000 TB

  • Requests

United States Edge Locations
$0.010 per 10,000 GET requests

European Edge Locations
$0.012 per 10,000 GET requests

Hong-Kong Edge Locations
$0.012 per 10,000 GET requests

Japan Edge Locations
$0.013 per 10,000 GET requests

Usage tiers for data transfer are measured separately for each geographic region. The prices above are exclusive of applicable taxes, fees, or similar governmental charges, if any exist, except as otherwise noted.

Q. Where are the edge locations used by Amazon CloudFront?
Amazon CloudFront uses 14 edge locations in major markets worldwide. Eight are in the United States (Ashburn, VA; Dallas/Fort Worth, TX; Los Angeles, CA; Miami, FL; Newark, NJ; Palo Alto, CA; Seattle, WA; St. Louis, MO). Four are in Europe (Amsterdam; Dublin; Frankfurt; London). Two are in Asia (Hong Kong, Tokyo).
Q. What types of content does Amazon CloudFront support?
Amazon CloudFront supports all files that can be served over HTTP. This includes any popular content, such as website images, audio, video, media files or software downloads.
Q. Does Amazon CloudFront support access controls for paid or private content?
Not in the initial release, but we intend to add these in later versions of the service. These features are currently available in Amazon S3.
Q. Does Amazon CloudFront support CNAMEs?
Yes. You can add up to ten CNAMEs to each of your distributions.
Q. Does Amazon CloudFront include reporting or monitoring functionality?
Yes. Amazon CloudFront lets you access the statistics that relate your billing. We intend to add additional reporting and monitoring capabilities, including access to detailed usage logs, in later versions of the service. Detailed usage logs are currently available in Amazon S3.
Q. How do I to remove an item from edge locations?
Simply delete the object from your Amazon S3 bucket. As content in the edge locations reaches the expiration period defined in each object’s HTTP header, it will be removed. In the event that offensive or potentially harmful material needs to be removed before the specified expiration time, you can contact AWS who will work to remove it in a timely fashion.
Q. Does CloudFront support streaming protocols? (like RTMP)
Not in the initial release, but we intend to add these in later versions of the service. Many AWS customers already use Amazon EC2 to stream content live or on-demand.
Q. Can I use CloudFront if I expect usage peaks higher than 1,000 Mbps or 1,000 RPS?
Yes. Complete our request for higher limits here, and we will add more capacity to your account within two business days.
Q: Is there a limit to the number of distributions my Amazon CloudFront account may deliver?
Each Amazon CloudFront account is limited to a maximum of 100 distributions.
Q: What tools and libraries work with Amazon CloudFront?
There are a variety of tools for managing your Amazon CloudFront distribution and libraries for various programming languages available in our resource center.
Q: Can I get access to request logs for content delivered through Amazon CloudFront?
Yes. When you create or modify a CloudFront distribution, you can enable access logging. When enabled, this feature will automatically write detailed log information in a W3C extended format into an Amazon S3 bucket that you specify.
Q: Can I use the AWS Management Console with Amazon CloudFront?
Yes. You can use the AWS Management Console to configure and manage Amazon CloudFront though a simple, point-and-click web interface. The AWS Management Console supports all of Amazon CloudFront’s features, letting you get Amazon CloudFront’s low latency delivery without writing any code or installing any software. Access to the AWS Management Console is provided free of charge at https://console.aws.amazon.com

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