Same Terabyte, $0 to $205: Cloudflare vs Azure for a Solo Developer

In my last post, I detailed how Azure trapped a custom domain, web app, and an entire resource group in a state I couldn't delete. This led me to move the project to Cloudflare Workers. A few people asked whether it was just a bad day or if one platform was a better deal. So, I examined both price lists and calculated the cost of the same project on each platform.

The answer surprised me—it's not about who offers the bigger free tier, but what each platform charges for. All prices are public list prices in US dollars, checked in September 2026, for US regions (Azure East US / Zone 1).

In the first round of comparison—static hosting and bandwidth—the most crucial factor for an indie project is a static or mostly static site with few assets and traffic. Cloudflare Workers serve static assets for free and unlimited requests, with no bandwidth charge. CDN, DNS, TLS, and unmetered DDoS protection are included with the free plan.

Azure offers several ways to serve a static site, each billing bandwidth differently. Static Web Apps (Free plan) have 100 GB of bandwidth per subscription, costing $0.20 per GB afterward. Azure Blob Storage static website (no CDN) has a $35 monthly base fee plus $0.17 per GB for the first 10 TB, plus request fees.

The monthly traffic for the same site at three levels—100 GB, 1 TB, and 10 TB—costs from $0 to about $205 a month on Cloudflare Workers, Azure SWA Standard, and Azure Blob (direct). Azure Front Door Standard costs around $1,735 for 10 TB. Cloudflare's generosity is for ordinary web pages and assets. If you want to serve a video library, it steers you toward its paid media products. Winner: Cloudflare, by a mile.

In the second round—serverless compute—the difference in billing philosophy is clear. Cloudflare Workers offer 100,000 requests per day for free, while Azure Functions start at $5/month. Cloudflare bills for CPU time—paying only for the actual computation, while Azure bills for memory × wall-clock time. For typical indie APIs—mostly glue code waiting on other tasks—Cloudflare's billing model is advantageous.

However, for heavy, long-running jobs requiring gigabytes of memory, Azure is better suited. The cold start times and always-ready instances add to Azure's costs, making Cloudflare a winner for light, I/O-bound APIs. Azure is better for heavy workloads.

Round three compares object storage. Cloudflare R2 and Azure Blob (Hot, LRS) storage cost roughly the same. R2 is designed for zero egress fees, while Azure's egress costs after 100 GB make Cloudflare the winner.

In round four, databases favor Azure. Cloudflare's D1 offers SQLite at the edge, limited to 5M rows read and 100K rows written per day. Azure Cosmos DB provides a lifetime free tier with 1,000 RU/s and 25 GB, and extensive managed database solutions. If your project requires a database with a website attached, Azure has a more robust toolset.

Round five pits Azure against Cloudflare for heavy-duty services—VMs, containers with real memory, GPUs, batch jobs, private networking, and enterprise-grade certifications. Azure dominates this arena, making it the winner.

Round six addresses the scenario when something breaks. Azure's Basic plan is included for everyone but lacks technical support. Paid plans begin at $29/month, with 24/7 technical support starting at $100. Cloudflare's free tier includes basic support, but paid plans start at $5/month for 24/7 support. Thus, in situations requiring immediate technical assistance, Azure has the edge.

Overall, Cloudflare emerges victorious in most scenarios, particularly for static sites and I/O-bound applications. Azure, on the other hand, is the go-to platform for heavy workloads and enterprise solutions.