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#27 • Part 5 • 2025-11-12 • 25 min

The Cloudflare Revolution: How One Company Is Quietly Replacing AWS, Vercel, and Your Entire Stack

They started as 'just a CDN.' Now they're running 20% of the internet and offering what AWS charges $500/month for... at $10/month. Here's how Cloudflare became the most underrated infrastructure company in tech.

cloudflare infrastructure cost-optimization serverless AI

The Cloudflare Revolution: How One Company Is Quietly Replacing AWS, Vercel, and Your Entire Stack

They started as “just a CDN.” Now they’re running 20% of the internet and offering what AWS charges $500/month for… at $10/month.

Date: November 12, 2025 Author: Myron Koch Category: Infrastructure Deep Dive

The Moment I Realized

I was building a chat feature for my blog. Standard stuff: semantic search, AI responses, vector embeddings.

The AWS way:

Total: ~$315/month for a single feature.

The Cloudflare way:

Total: $1.50/month for the same feature.

That’s when I realized: Cloudflare isn’t competing. They’re winning.

How Did We Get Here?

Phase 1: The Invisible Infrastructure (2010-2018)

Cloudflare started as a CDN and DDoS protection service. Most developers thought:

“They’re the free tier CDN that makes my site faster. Cool.”

Behind the scenes, they were building something bigger. They were installing servers in 300+ cities worldwide—more than AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure combined.

They became the pipes. And once you control the pipes, you can offer anything.

Phase 2: The Edge Compute Play (2018-2021)

2018: Cloudflare Workers launch

2020: Workers KV, Durable Objects

2021: Cloudflare Pages

Phase 3: The Full Stack Assault (2022-2023)

This is where it gets wild.

2022 - R2 Storage

Impact: Companies with 1TB/month downloads save $90/month instantly.

2023 - The Database Year

Suddenly, you could build an entire application on Cloudflare:

No AWS. No Vercel. No MongoDB. One stack.

Phase 4: The AI Era (2024-2025)

2024 - Workers AI Goes Production

2025 - AI Search (AutoRAG)

This is where I built the chat feature for $1.50/month.

The Price Comparison Nobody Talks About

Let me show you the real numbers for a typical SaaS application:

Scenario: 10,000 users, 1M requests/month, 100GB storage, 1TB bandwidth

AWS Stack:

EC2 (t3.medium):           $30/month
RDS (PostgreSQL):          $50/month
Lambda (1M requests):      $20/month
S3 (100GB storage):        $2/month
S3 Egress (1TB):           $90/month
CloudFront (CDN):          $30/month
SageMaker (AI inference):  $100/month
---
Total: $322/month

Vercel Stack:

Vercel Pro:                $20/month
Supabase (database):       $25/month
Vercel Functions:          Included
Bandwidth:                 Included (up to 1TB)
OpenAI API (AI):           $100/month
---
Total: $145/month

Cloudflare Stack:

Pages (hosting):           $0 (free tier)
Workers (1M requests):     $5/month
D1 (database):             $5/month
R2 (100GB + 1TB egress):   $1.50/month
Workers AI (inference):    $0 (free tier)
Vectorize (embeddings):    $0 (free tier)
---
Total: $11.50/month

Savings:

Annual savings: $3,726 vs AWS for a single project.

The Services That Changed Everything

1. R2 Storage - The AWS Killer

The Problem with S3:

Amazon pioneered object storage. Then they realized they could charge for downloads.

If you store 100GB of images and serve 1TB/month to users:

That $90 is pure profit. It’s why AWS doesn’t want you to leave.

Cloudflare’s R2:

Real-world impact:

A friend runs a video course platform:

He switched last month. Annual savings: $54,300.

2. Workers AI - The OpenAI Alternative

The OpenAI Tax:

Every AI startup pays:

It adds up fast. A chatbot with 10k users can cost $500-1000/month in API fees.

Workers AI:

Free tier: 10,000 neurons/day (That’s ~100-200 AI requests/day depending on model)

Paid tier: $0.012 per 1,000 neurons (About 50x cheaper than OpenAI for similar quality)

I built semantic search for my blog with:

Cost: $0/month.

On OpenAI + Pinecone: $150-200/month minimum.

3. Vectorize - The Pinecone Replacement

Vector databases are expensive:

Cloudflare Vectorize:

Use case: My blog chat feature

When you’d pay:

The Architecture Pattern

Here’s what a modern Cloudflare app looks like:

Frontend
└─ Cloudflare Pages (Astro/React/Vue/etc)
   └─ Auto-deploys from GitHub
   └─ Global CDN (300+ cities)

Backend
└─ Cloudflare Workers (JavaScript/TypeScript)
   └─ Runs on V8 isolates (faster than containers)
   └─ 0-5ms cold starts (vs Lambda's 100ms+)

Database
└─ D1 (SQLite at edge)
   └─ Or connect to external Postgres (Neon/Supabase)
   └─ Or use KV for key-value data
   └─ Or use Durable Objects for strong consistency

Storage
└─ R2 (S3-compatible)
   └─ Zero egress fees
   └─ Direct uploads from browser

AI/ML
└─ Workers AI + Vectorize
   └─ Text generation (Llama, Mistral)
   └─ Embeddings (BGE, BERT)
   └─ Vector search built-in

Real-Time
└─ Durable Objects
   └─ WebSocket support
   └─ Strong consistency
   └─ Stateful workers

Background Jobs
└─ Cloudflare Queues
   └─ Message queue at edge
   └─ Guaranteed delivery

Total cost for 10k users: ~$10-30/month

Compare to equivalent on AWS: $300-800/month

What Cloudflare Can’t Replace (Yet)

Let’s be honest. The 10% they don’t cover:

1. Long-Running Compute

Workers limit: 10ms CPU per request (30s with Durable Objects)

Can’t do:

Cloudflare’s answer: Cloudflare Containers (beta)

2. Traditional Relational Databases at Scale

D1 is SQLite - great for <10GB, read-heavy workloads

For multi-region writes:

Cloudflare’s roadmap: Multi-region D1 (coming)

3. Specialized AWS Services

Reality: Most startups don’t need these.

For 90% of web applications, Cloudflare has you covered.

The Competitive Landscape

Cloudflare vs AWS

AWS Strengths:

AWS Weaknesses:

Cloudflare Strengths:

Cloudflare Weaknesses:

Verdict: New projects should default to Cloudflare. Only use AWS if you need specialized services.

Cloudflare vs Vercel

Vercel Strengths:

Vercel Weaknesses:

Cloudflare Strengths:

Cloudflare Weaknesses:

Verdict: Vercel for Next.js apps with VC funding. Cloudflare for everything else (and bootstrapped startups).

Cloudflare vs Netlify

Netlify is dying. They lost to Vercel in the frontend platform wars, and Cloudflare offers more features for free.

Why This Matters

For Developers

You can build faster and cheaper.

Example: My blog

Before Cloudflare, this would require:

Savings: $2,280/year on a side project.

For Startups

Your runway just got longer.

Typical startup infrastructure:

You just saved $3,000-5,000.

That’s:

Better unit economics = more likely to reach profitability.

For the Industry

AWS’s monopoly is breaking.

For years, AWS was the default. “Nobody ever got fired for choosing AWS.”

Now:

The next generation of companies won’t be built on AWS.

The Secret Weapon: Profitability

Cloudflare’s unfair advantage is their business model.

AWS:

Vercel:

Cloudflare:

Real cost to run your Worker:

This is why they’re winning. They already paid for the infrastructure. Everything else is incremental.

The Timeline: How Fast Is This Happening?

2018-2020: The Skepticism Era

2021-2022: The Realization

2023-2024: The Migration Wave

2025-2026: The Tipping Point ← WE ARE HERE

2027+: The New Default

This is happening fast. Faster than most realize.

Real-World Examples

Example 1: My Blog

Stack:

Features:

Cost: $0/month

AWS equivalent: $300-500/month

Example 2: SaaS Application (Hypothetical)

Requirements:

Cloudflare Stack:

Pages (frontend)              $0
Workers (API)                 $5
D1 (database)                 $5
R2 (file storage)             $5
Workers AI (chat)             $0
Vectorize (embeddings)        $0
Queues (background jobs)      $5
---
Total: $20/month

AWS Stack:

EC2 (backend)                 $30
RDS (database)                $50
S3 + egress (files)           $100
Lambda (APIs)                 $20
OpenAI API (chat)             $80
Pinecone (embeddings)         $70
SQS (queues)                  $5
CloudFront (CDN)              $30
---
Total: $385/month

Savings: $365/month = $4,380/year

Example 3: Video Course Platform

Requirements:

AWS (S3 + CloudFront):

Storage: 5TB × $0.023         $115/month
Egress: 50TB × $0.09          $4,500/month
---
Total: $4,615/month

Cloudflare (R2 + CDN):

Storage: 5TB × $0.015         $75/month
Egress: 50TB × $0             $0/month
---
Total: $75/month

Savings: $4,540/month = $54,480/year

This is real. Companies are making this switch right now.

How to Get Started

Step 1: Sign Up

Step 2: Deploy Something Simple

Step 3: Add a Feature

Step 4: Build Your Project

Total time: 1-2 hours to learn basics

The Future

What’s Coming (My Predictions)

2025-2026:

  1. Postgres at Edge

    • D1 is SQLite, but Postgres is coming
    • Multi-region writes
    • RDS replacement complete

  2. More AI Models

    • GPT-4 class models
    • Video generation
    • Voice synthesis

  3. Real-Time Everything

    • Better WebSocket support
    • Built-in presence/sync
    • Firebase replacement

  4. Developer Tooling

    • Visual deployment tools
    • Better local dev experience
    • Cloudflare Studio (GUI)

Within 3 years:

The Bottom Line

Cloudflare isn’t just cheaper. It’s better.

The shift is happening now.

Every new startup that chooses Cloudflare is one less AWS customer. Every developer that learns Workers is one less Lambda expert. Every dollar saved is one more month of runway.

This isn’t about cloud wars. It’s about fundamentally better infrastructure.

AWS won by being first. Google/Azure tried to compete on features.

Cloudflare is winning by being everywhere, cheaper, and better.

My Take

I didn’t set out to write a love letter to Cloudflare. I just wanted to build a chat feature for my blog.

But when I realized I could build something that would cost $300/month elsewhere for $1.50/month, I had to dig deeper.

The more I looked, the more I found:

This is the infrastructure revolution I didn’t know I was waiting for.

AWS made cloud accessible. Vercel made deployment beautiful.

Cloudflare is making everything affordable.

And affordable means:

That’s worth writing about.

Resources

Getting Started

Cost Calculators

Migration Guides

Community

Part 4 of the Journey: Advanced Topics - Deep Dives & Case Studies Previous: The 8-Chain Testnet Ecosystem | Next: TBD

Infrastructure & Architecture:

Cost & Optimization:

AI & Modern Development:

Written while building in public. Cost to host this blog post, AI search, and global CDN: $0/month.

November 12, 2025