Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare comparison

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Amazon Route 53

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

Cloudflare and Amazon Route 53 compete in the DNS management and security solutions category. Cloudflare has the upper hand due to its comprehensive suite of security and performance features.

Features: Cloudflare offers robust CDN caching, aggressive DDoS mitigation, and efficient DNS management. It includes automatic security features and flexible SSL options, contributing to faster load times and reduced server load. Amazon Route 53 focuses on DNS management with seamless AWS integration, featuring DNS failover, latency-based routing, and health checks.

Room for Improvement: Cloudflare could enhance its analytics and threat insights, address CDN speed issues, and improve support responsiveness. Non-www redirection setup could also be simplified. Amazon Route 53 should work on simplifying its pricing model, improve configuration processes, and expand security features, including DNS firewalls.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cloudflare is reportedly simpler in deployment and favored for intuitive configuration, though its technical support receives mixed reviews. Amazon Route 53 is cost-effective with good AWS integration, but its pricing complexity can be a concern. Users consistently praise Route 53's customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Cloudflare offers pricing tiers from free to enterprise-level, providing significant ROI by reducing operational costs and enhancing security. Amazon Route 53's pay-per-use model is scalable and cost-effective during low traffic but can become expensive with heavy usage. It offers a competitive ROI primarily for AWS-centric infrastructure, with reliable DNS service and reasonable pricing considering its performance and reliability benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon Route 53 vs. Cloudflare Report (Updated: December 2025).

Amazon Route 53 vs. Cloudflare

December 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

ROI

Sentiment score

3.6

Amazon Route 53 offers significant ROI through downtime prevention, cost and time savings, security improvements, and enhanced integration.

Sentiment score

6.5

Cloudflare users experienced increased performance, security, and cost-effectiveness, leading to improved loyalty and revenue despite difficult ROI calculations.

The main factors are time-saving and security, even if the cost is slightly higher.

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon Route 53 report

Technical Owner at Harman International

For the small project I was working on, using the basic tier provided a huge improvement at zero cost.

Wellington Malagutti

Security Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

In terms of return on investment with Cloudflare, it costs my time to set them up, but basically once they're set up, it's done.

Herb Angle

Owner at Hga consulting

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

6.0

Amazon Route 53 support is highly rated, effective with premium accounts; basic plans face potential delays in response times.

Sentiment score

7.0

Cloudflare's customer service is quick, but technical support feedback is mixed, with improvement needed in responsiveness and detailed assistance.

Amazon services are very stable, and there are few problems.

Thiago Canuto Lemos

Cloud Specialist at TCL Tech

Amazon's customer support is very good with a quick response time.

Dhanasekaran V.

AWS Cloud Architect at WHY Global Services

They provide a normal developer level of support, and within twenty-four hours for non-critical issues, which is acceptable for us.

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon Route 53 report

Technical Owner at Harman International

Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model.

reviewer1245303

Senior Consultant CDN at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to call them.

Herb Angle

Owner at Hga consulting

I have primarily worked not with the tool's customer support but with the product's sales engineers and technical sales engineers, who seem to know their stuff.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

8.1

Amazon Route 53 is praised for scalability, seamless integration, quick deployment, and effective auto-scaling despite higher costs.

Sentiment score

8.1

Users praise Cloudflare for seamless scalability, effective traffic management, easy upgrades, and robust global infrastructure without disruptions.

We haven't faced any scalability issues, thanks to its integration with AWS services.

Ananda Kevin Refaldo Sariputra

AWS and DevOps Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

The scalability is maintained by AKS, and Route 53's scalability part is primarily involved with load balancing.

Software Engineer - Backend at InfinID • FullTime

Amazon Route 53 is scalable as I use automation with YML files to handle scalability needs, and it works well.

Yaseer Arafat

.Net Developer at Freelance

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It is a SaaS tool, but the fact that they have workloads deployed across the world proves that it is a highly scalable tool.

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch

Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

The tool offers very good performance, even during high-traffic periods.

Engineer at SITMEXICO

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

Prajith Chowthee

Independent Consultant at Unaikui

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

8.2

Amazon Route 53 is praised for its stability, boasting 99.99% uptime, reliable performance, and effective scalability and security features.

Sentiment score

7.6

Cloudflare is highly rated for stability and uptime, with few past issues, especially on higher-tier plans.

We use auto-scaling groups to manage load.

AWS and DevOps Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

The solution is stable.

Ananda Kevin Refaldo Sariputra

Technical Owner at Harman International

I have not experienced any outages or downtime.

Software Engineer - Backend at InfinID • FullTime

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon Route 53 report

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

Prajith Chowthee

Independent Consultant at Unaikui

The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch

Engineer at SITMEXICO

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

Room For Improvement

Amazon Route 53 needs better concurrency, integration, security, user interfaces, pricing transparency, and enhanced routing policies for improved user experience.

Enhancements needed in Cloudflare: analytics, CDN latency, API integration, user support, DNS, pricing, documentation, server coverage, WAF, and cache.

There could be improvements in the configuration process, particularly in the options provided during setup, such as subdomain configurations and certificate management.

AWS and DevOps Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

They need to ensure that the threats reported on are actual threats.

reviewer2649084

Architect at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

There is room for improvement in restricting access through one website from S3 buckets.

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Technical Owner at Harman International

Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.

Bilal Mujahid

Managed Services Manager at Adapture Technology Group

Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements.

Darryl Wethington

Senior Cloud Solution Architect at Integrated Technology Solution Group (ITSG)

There are some performance considerations when it comes to dynamic content that involves fetching data from databases or using APIs.

Animesh.Kumar

Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

Setup Cost

Amazon Route 53 offers scalable, usage-based pricing; enterprises find it reasonable, yet some users seek clearer cost estimation.

Cloudflare offers scalable pricing, from free to enterprise plans, providing significant value especially for mid-sized companies.

Route 53 is more expensive.

Thiago Canuto Lemos

Cloud Specialist at TCL Tech

The pricing of Route 53 is slightly higher compared to other services, however, it is justified by its high availability and reliability.

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon Route 53 report

AWS and DevOps Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

I find it to be cheap.

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch

Engineer at SITMEXICO

I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.

Animesh.Kumar

Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions

The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Valuable Features

Amazon Route 53 simplifies DNS management with scalability, integration, and reliability, enhancing internet exposure for applications with robust security.

Cloudflare enhances performance and security with CDN caching, DDoS protection, and an easy-to-use dashboard, benefiting many users.

I find Amazon Route 53 valuable for its ability to manage DNS records and efficiently route traffic with features like failover routing and geolocation routing.

Yaseer Arafat

.Net Developer at Freelance

They do not alert on non-actionable items, making their alerts reliable and focused on concerns that matter.

reviewer2649084

Architect at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

Amazon Route 53 is beneficial for managing traffic and domain names, offering features like latency-based routing and multi-deployment options.

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon Route 53 report

AWS and DevOps Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security.

Darryl Wethington

Senior Cloud Solution Architect at Integrated Technology Solution Group (ITSG)

Techniques like minification and image compression reduce the size of assets, leading to better performance and faster user load times.

Animesh.Kumar

Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions

The solution has been able to compare it to the market, and I think the product has taken great strides in automating quite a bit of things, and they use a lot of AI.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Route 53

Ranking in Managed DNS

2nd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Cloudflare

Ranking in Managed DNS

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (12th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Managed DNS category, the mindshare of Amazon Route 53 is 10.1%, up from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare is 31.5%, down from 35.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Managed DNS Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cloudflare	31.5%
Amazon Route 53	10.1%
Other	58.4%

Managed DNS

Featured Reviews

Nishith_Vyas

Technical Lead - Cloud at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Security and monitoring features enhance website protection and DNS management effortlessly

For Amazon Route 53, improvements I see include the need for a DNS firewall and a domain-based SSL checker security feature. DNS security is the most important part for me. I feel that whenever you host any kind of website, the first and most important thing is to protect it with a valid SSL. The secure socket layer is essential for the HTTPS green lock in the browser. If I forget to deploy SSL on a website and if my domain hosting is under Amazon Route 53, there should be a mechanism that Amazon Route 53 protects the insecure website using SSL, a thing that the end user does not know whether the SSL certificate comes from the domain, meaning from Amazon Route 53 or from the website.

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Herb Angle

Owner at Hga consulting

Has helped manage client domains with streamlined access control and threat visibility

I don't know what areas could be improved with Cloudflare WAF; Cloudflare is constantly improving and adding features to their feature set. They're doing a good job, and as far as DNS and support for any domains that I create or my clients create, it's mandatory for me to make sure that they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider. The Cloudflare load balancing capability hasn't really helped in enhancing my website's uptime and resiliency because we don't really get that much traffic; it's mostly remote users, and web hosting is done by a web hosting service. It doesn't pay to try to host your own website.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

University

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	25

Questions from the Community

Azure DNS or Amazon Route 53?

Azure DNS is a hosting service of DNS domains. It has excellent operating time and performance, resulting in fast resolution. We like the ability to view everything in the Azure portal - this makes...

What do you like most about Amazon Route 53?

The most valuable features of the solution are the DNS, routing, and traffic features.

What needs improvement with Amazon Route 53?

I do not see any areas for improvement with Amazon Route 53 at the moment.

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GRE tunnels. We have decreased site load times on Mobile 3G from 8 to 1,6 seconds ...

Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?

Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service that offers great redundancy and advanced security with built-in unmetered and ...

What do you like most about Cloudflare?

Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.

Azure DNS vs Amazon Route 53

Comparisons

Compared 83% of the time

IBM NS1 Connect vs Amazon Route 53

Compared 3% of the time

Google Cloud DNS vs Amazon Route 53

Compared 2% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs Amazon Route 53

Compared 1% of the time

Akamai Edge DNS vs Amazon Route 53

Compared 1% of the time

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Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Myra Security DDoS Protection vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Fastly vs Cloudflare

Compared 1% of the time

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Product Reports

Download Amazon Route 53 product report

Amazon Route 53

January 2026

Download Cloudflare product report

January 2026

Also Known As

Route 53

Cloudflare DNS

Overview

Amazon Route 53 is a highly available and scalable cloud Domain Name System (DNS) web service. It is designed to give developers and businesses an extremely reliable and cost effective way to route end users to Internet applications by translating names like www.example.com into the numeric IP addresses like 192.0.2.1 that computers use to connect to each other. Amazon Route 53 is fully compliant with IPv6 as well.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.

Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.

What are Cloudflare's key features?

CDN Caching: Enhances website speed through content delivery network caching.
Web Application Firewall: Protects websites from online threats.
DDoS Mitigation: Shields against distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DNS Management: Offers easy-to-use and flexible domain management.
SSL Certificates: Ensures secure connections between users and servers.
Analytics: Provides insights with robust analytics tools.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Enhanced Security: Strengthening web security with DDoS and firewall protection.
Speed Improvement: Faster content delivery with CDN caching.
Operational Simplicity: Simplifies website optimization through a user-friendly interface.
Scalable Solutions: Scales with global reach, lowering latency for improved performance.
Cost Efficiency: Offers layers of valuable functionality with pricing options.

Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.

Sample Customers

Hess, Expedia, Kelloggs, Philips, HyperTrack

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.