AWS Elastic Load Balancing vs Cloudflare Load Balancing

AWS Elastic Load Balancing9.3Visit Cloudflare Load Balancing9.0Visit

Higher score AWS Elastic Load Balancing #1 in Load Balancing Software 9.3/10 Paid ✓ 5 of 5 features Visit AWS ELB

vs

Cloudflare Load Balancing #4 in Load Balancing Software 9.0/10 Paid ✓ 5 of 5 features Visit Cloudflare

• AWS Elastic Load Balancing fits best

  AWS-native production workloads

• Cloudflare Load Balancing fits best

  Affordable global traffic steering

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Side by side

Feature	AWS Elastic Load Balancing 9.3/10 Visit ↗	Cloudflare Load Balancing 9.0/10 Visit ↗
At a glance
Editor score	9.3	9.0
Ranking	#1 in Load Balancing Software	#4 in Load Balancing Software
Best for	AWS-native production workloads	Affordable global traffic steering
Pricing model	Paid	Paid
Starting price	—	$5/mo
Free plan	—	—
Free trial	—	—
Deployment	Cloud	Cloud
Platforms	Web	Web
Support	Docs	Docs
Integrations	12 integrations	5 integrations
Built for	Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise	Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise
Features AWS Elastic Load Balancing 5/5 · Cloudflare Load Balancing 5/5
Managed service	✓	✓
Layer 7 routing	✓	✓
Layer 4 routing	✓	✓
Global traffic management	✓	✓
TLS termination	✓	✓
Specs
Backend limit	Not checked yet	20 backends
Our review
Pros	Supports Layer 4, Layer 7, and gateway load balancing Automatic scaling, health checks, and Availability Zone high availability Deep integrations across AWS compute, networking, and observability services	$5/month Basic plan includes routing, monitoring, analytics, and failover Supports latency-, geographic-, proximity-, and custom-rule steering Connects with Spectrum, Tunnel, Argo Smart Routing, PagerDuty, and WAF
Cons	Usage-based pricing varies by AWS Region and traffic dimensions The AWS Free Tier is limited to eligible new AWS customers Classic Load Balancer is intended for legacy workloads	Usage-based DNS query charges may apply Additional allocation charges may apply Layer 4 load balancing requires Cloudflare Spectrum
Our verdict	AWS Elastic Load Balancing is a managed cloud service that distributes incoming traffic across registered targets in one or more Availability Zones. It is designed for AWS-native web applications, APIs, container workloads, network… Read the review →	Cloudflare Load Balancing is a managed cloud service for distributing application traffic across healthy endpoints, servers, data centers, and cloud environments. It suits organizations running multi-region or multi-cloud applications that… Read the review →

Strengths and trade-offs

• AWS Elastic Load Balancing — where it wins

  • Supports Layer 4, Layer 7, and gateway load balancing
  • Automatic scaling, health checks, and Availability Zone high availability
  • Deep integrations across AWS compute, networking, and observability services

  Where it doesn't

  • Usage-based pricing varies by AWS Region and traffic dimensions
  • The AWS Free Tier is limited to eligible new AWS customers
  • Classic Load Balancer is intended for legacy workloads

• Cloudflare Load Balancing — where it wins

  • $5/month Basic plan includes routing, monitoring, analytics, and failover
  • Supports latency-, geographic-, proximity-, and custom-rule steering
  • Connects with Spectrum, Tunnel, Argo Smart Routing, PagerDuty, and WAF

  Where it doesn't

  • Usage-based DNS query charges may apply
  • Additional allocation charges may apply
  • Layer 4 load balancing requires Cloudflare Spectrum

• AWS Elastic Load Balancing9.3/10 · Paid

  Broad Layer 4 and Layer 7 load balancing for AWS production environments.

  Visit AWS ELBFull verdict →
• Cloudflare Load Balancing9.0/10 · Paid

  Affordable global traffic steering with health-based routing, analytics, and failover.

  Visit CloudflareFull verdict →