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Cloudflare vs Microsoft Azure

In this page:

What's good
Price comparison
What services do they offer
Company details
Alternatives to consider

What's good about...

Cloudflare

Consolidates many edge services under one platform: DNS, Load Balancing, caching, image optimization, serverless functions
Massive edge network that can handle large DDoS attacks
Very generous free tier, affordable paid plans

Microsoft Azure

Integrations with the rest of Microsoft's products
Extensive range of managed services, from serverless to databases to queues to AI
Generous free tier, and compute savings plans available
60+ datacenter locations around the world

Price comparison

How do Cloudflare's prices compare against Microsoft Azure?

Example configuration	Cloudflare	Microsoft Azure
VM Small	--	$7.49 / mo 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM (B1s)
VM Medium	--	$137.52 / mo 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM (A4v2)
VM Large	--	$288.00 / mo 8 vCPU, 16 GB RAM (A8v2)
Block Storage	--	$9.60 / mo 128 GiB
Object Storage	$19.86 / mo 1 TB	$21.50 / mo 1 TB
Load Balancer	--	$23.25 / mo Standard
Managed PostgreSQL	--	$131.89 / mo 2 vCPU, 4 GiB RAM, 50 GB storage (Gen 5)
Managed Redis®*	--	$39.60 / mo 1 vCPU, 1 GiB RAM (Basic C1)
Serverless 25M Executions	$82.50 / mo 25M invocations, 150 ms duration	$29.80 / mo 25M invocations, 512 MB RAM, 150 ms duration
Free egress allowance	--	100 GB / mo
1 TB of egress beyond allowance	Free for most services	$78.30

Azure offers GPUs in the following configurations:

Name	GPUs	Total GPU Memory	vCPUs	RAM	Price per hour
NC4as T4 v3	1x T4	16GB	4	28GB	$0.53
NC8as T4 v3	1x T4	16GB	8	56GB	$0.75
NC6	1x K80	12GB	6	56GB	$0.90
NV6	1x M60	8GB	6	56GB	$1.14
NV12s v3	1x M60	8GB	12	112GB	$1.14
NC16as T4 v3	1x T4	16GB	16	110GB	$1.20
NC12	2x K80	24GB	12	112GB	$1.80
NC6s v2	1x P100	16GB	6	112GB	$2.07
ND6s	1x P40	24GB	6	112GB	$2.07
NV12	2x M60	16GB	12	112GB	$2.28
NV24s v3	2x M60	16GB	24	224GB	$2.28
NC6s v3	1x V100	16GB	6	112GB	$3.06
NC24	4x K80	48GB	24	224GB	$3.60
NC24r	4x K80	48GB	24	224GB	$3.96
NC12s v2	2x P100	32GB	12	224GB	$4.14
ND12s	2x P40	48GB	12	224GB	$4.14
NC64as T4 v3	4x T4	64GB	64	440GB	$4.35
NV48s v3	4x M60	32GB	48	448GB	$4.56
NV24	4x M60	32GB	24	224GB	$4.56
NC12s v3	2x V100	32GB	12	224GB	$6.12
ND24s	4x P40	96GB	24	448GB	$8.28
NC24s v2	4x P100	64GB	24	448GB	$8.28
ND24rs	4x P40	96GB	24	448GB	$9.11
NC24rs v2	4x P100	64GB	24	448GB	$9.11
NC24s v3	4x V100	64GB	24	448GB	$12.24
NC24rs v3	4x V100	64GB	24	448GB	$13.46
ND40rs v2	8x V100	256GB	40	672GB	$22.03
ND96asr A100 v4	8x A100	320GB	96	900GB	$27.20

Note: Our pricing examples are based on several assumptions. Your actual costs may differ. Always check the cloud provider's website for the most up-to-date pricing.

Which services do they offer?

Here are some of the managed services that Cloudflare and Microsoft Azure offer:

Service	Cloudflare	Microsoft Azure
Block Storage	--
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Container Registry	--
GPU-powered Servers	--
Load Balancer
Managed Containers	--
Managed Kubernetes	--
Managed MySQL	--
Managed PostgreSQL	--
Managed Redis®*	--
Object Storage
Serverless Cron Jobs
Serverless Functions
Static Sites
Virtual Private Server (VPS)	--

Company details

	Cloudflare	Microsoft Azure
Website	cloudflare.com	azure.microsoft.com
Headquarters	United States of America 🇺🇸	United States of America 🇺🇸
Founded	2009	2008
Data Center Locations	285	66
Example Customers	Polestar, Carrefour, DHL, Hemnet, Shopify	General Motors, NHS, Fujitsu, NBA

	Cloudflare
Website	cloudflare.com
Headquarters	United States of America 🇺🇸
Founded	2009
Data Center Locations	285
Example Customers	Polestar, Carrefour, DHL, Hemnet, Shopify

	Microsoft Azure
Website	azure.microsoft.com
Headquarters	United States of America 🇺🇸
Founded	2008
Data Center Locations	66
Example Customers	General Motors, NHS, Fujitsu, NBA