Amazon CloudFront vs Giant Swarm Comparison
Compare Amazon CloudFront vs Giant Swarm features, pricing, and more.
Last updated: November 2026
Amazon CloudFront
7.9/10
Amazon CloudFront is the AWS content delivery network. It caches and serves websites, APIs and media from more than 750 edge locations, and includes DDoS protection, WAF and edge compute.
Giant Swarm
6.9/10
Giant Swarm runs a Kubernetes platform-engineering stack inside the customer's own AWS, Azure or on-premises environment, aimed at enterprise platform teams that want 24/7 operations without building the platform in-house.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | A Amazon CloudFront | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 7.9/10 | 6.9/10 |
| Integration | 9/10 | 7/10 |
| Support | 6/10 | 9/10 |
| Cost | 6/10 | 3/10 |
| Customization | 9/10 | 7/10 |
| Security | 9/10 | 8/10 |
| Reliability | 9/10 | 8/10 |
| Ease of Use | 5/10 | 5/10 |
| Analytics | 7/10 | 6/10 |
| Scalability | 10/10 | 8/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | Yes | No |
| Cheapest paid plan | $15/mo Pro (flat-rate) | Contact for pricing |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | Free Free (flat-rate) | Contact for pricing |
| Features | ||
| API and CLI | ||
| Free SSL Certificates | ||
| Multiple Regions | ||
| Content Delivery Network | Not listed | |
| DDoS Protection | Not listed | |
| Dedicated Servers | Not listed | |
| Git Deployments | Not listed | |
| Managed Kubernetes | Not listed | |
| Managed WordPress | ||
| Serverless Functions | Not listed | |
| Shared Hosting | ||
| Uptime SLA | Not listed | |
Amazon CloudFront vs Giant Swarm cost by team size
| Team size | Amazon CloudFront | Giant Swarm |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | FreeFree (flat-rate) | Contact for pricing |
| 5 users | FreeFree (flat-rate) | Contact for pricing |
| 10 users | FreeFree (flat-rate) | Contact for pricing |
| 25 users | FreeFree (flat-rate) | Contact for pricing |
| 50 users | FreeFree (flat-rate) | Contact for pricing |
The plan that fits each team size, billed monthly, before add-ons and usage charges. Each cost opens that tool's pricing calculator for the team size.
Which One Should You Choose?
AWhy choose Amazon CloudFront
- Has a free plan (Giant Swarm does not)
- Higher Cost score (6/10 vs 3/10)
- Higher Integration score (9/10 vs 7/10)
- Better fit for startups (7/10 vs 3/10)
Why choose Giant Swarm
- Higher Support score (9/10 vs 6/10)
Pros & Cons
AAmazon CloudFront
Pros
- The network is very large, with more than 750 PoPs plus over 1,140 PoPs embedded inside ISP networks.
- Data transfer from AWS origins such as S3 and EC2 to CloudFront costs nothing, which lowers costs for workloads hosted on AWS.
- Flat-rate plans start at $15 a month with no overage charges, which makes bills predictable.
- It has strong compliance coverage, including PCI-DSS Level 1, HIPAA, SOC, ISO and FedRAMP Moderate.
- Two tiers of edge compute are available: CloudFront Functions at $0.10 per million invocations and Lambda@Edge for heavier code.
Cons
- G2 and Capterra reviewers report complex configuration and a steep learning curve for people new to AWS.
- Capterra-network reviewers rate customer support poorly, around 3.4 out of 5.
- Flat-rate plans lack some features, such as real-time logs, dedicated IP SSL and continuous deployment, and going over the allowance reduces performance.
- Dedicated IP SSL at $600 a month and Anycast Static IPs at $3,000 a month are expensive extras.
- Users on AWS re:Post and GitHub report cache invalidations that occasionally hang for hours or time out during deploys.
Giant Swarm
Pros
- Reviewers rate its hands-on, round-the-clock Kubernetes support highly, and the vendor cites a mean time to acknowledge under 2 minutes.
- Built on open-source parts (Cluster API, Flux, Cilium, Kyverno, Grafana LGTM) and runs in the customer's own accounts, which reduces lock-in.
- One management cluster controls workload clusters across AWS, Azure and on-premises sites.
- ISO 27001 certified, with ready-made Pod Security Standards and CIS benchmark policies.
Cons
- No public pricing, and reviewers repeatedly complain about cost transparency.
- Reviewers call the opinionated stack hard to learn and heavy for smaller teams.
- Leaning on vendor experts can make migrating away slower.
- Public evidence for SOC 2 and a detailed SLA matrix is limited, and there are few reviews.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
Amazon CloudFront scores higher on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria: 7.9/10 against 6.9/10 for Giant Swarm. The largest gap is in Cost: 6/10 for Amazon CloudFront and 3/10 for Giant Swarm.
Amazon CloudFront has a free plan; Giant Swarm does not list one.
Amazon CloudFront is the better fit for startups: we rate it 7/10 for them, against 3/10 for Giant Swarm.
