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Comment by lappet | Hacker News Reader

+1. Although the dev experience is convoluted on AWS, you end up learning more and I think it is quite cheap as well. I have a tutorial as well on how to deploy a static website using CloudFront, S3 and Route53 : https://raviramanujam.com/post/blog/meta.html

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Do you know what the cost difference is between CloudFront and S3 in terms of serving big files like video files?

For convenience and other reasons, I use S3 to publish some videos for a small group (~30) I teach. Wondering if serving that thru CloudFront would be cheaper.

This is especially important to me now as I'm doing this while everyone here is under voluntary self-isolation so I'm relying on video more.

Not that S3 was ever that expensive for me but if CloudFront is cheaper...

Sorry, I don't know the answer to that specific question. I do want to point out that CloudFront is just a CDN, you would use it in conjunction with something like S3.

Thanks. Yeah, I have S3. Just wondering if CF would save costs in this simple scenario.

S3 transfer to CF is free I think so might be worth my giving it a try.

CloudFront will likely help you save costs if there is a benefit to caching the content. For example, if all of those 30 download the same file, from a similar geographic area around the same time, you should see some cost reduction.

Otherwise, it might not be worth the cost of the distribution!

Thanks. Yeah, same files and geographic area.

I'm paying for either S3 or CloudFront for distribution regardless, and either way their transfer out to internet pricing looks similar:

https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/pricing/

https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/

Transferring from S3 to CloudFront looks free, so I might give it a try. Already have S3, just have to set up CLoudFront.

I hope I didn't miss something on pricing... really can't afford bill shock!

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