Low-latency content delivery is one of the primary goals of modern cloud architecture, and the simplest way to reduce latency is to cache content closer to users.

For many workloads, such as EC2 instances running web servers or APIs, or RDS and Aurora databases, compute and storage are handled at the AWS Region level. Regions are large geographic clusters of data centers with multiple Availability Zones that support a full catalog of AWS services. Since Regions need to support so much infrastructure, there are sometimes gaps in coverage, and a single Region can be hundreds of miles from end users. That physical distance increases round-trip time and can negatively impact performance.

Edge locations address this by placing caching infrastructure closer to end users around the world. They don’t support general-purpose compute or databases; instead, they serve a narrow set of services like Amazon CloudFront and Amazon Route 53. That specialization keeps them smaller and cheaper to operate, which is why AWS can deploy many more of them than Regions. Today, there are over 750 edge locations worldwide, compared to 39 Regions.

What are AWS Edge Locations

AWS edge locations are smaller infrastructure sites that cache content, terminate TLS connections, and route traffic over the AWS private backbone network. The services that rely on them include Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Route 53, AWS Global Accelerator, Lambda@Edge, and AWS Shield.

When a website or application is configured to use edge-based services, user traffic is directed to a nearby edge location instead of traveling directly to the origin Region. The edge location checks whether it already has a cached copy of the requested object. Cached content is returned immediately, while uncached content is retrieved from the origin such as an S3 bucket, EC2 instance, or other regional service. The response is then stored at the edge so later requests can be served locally, shortening response times and reducing the number of requests that reach the origin.

AWS Edge Locations Pricing

AWS edge locations themselves are not a billable resource. Instead, you pay for the services that use them. The Amazon service most people think of when they’re talking about edge locations is Amazon CloudFront because it delivers cached content directly from edge locations, so we will focus on CloudFront pricing.

CloudFront charges apply for data transferred out from edge locations and the number of HTTP requests handled, with rates that vary by geographic region. There is no charge for data transferred to edge locations from origins. Pricing is tiered with reduced costs as more data is transferred. Requests are counted any time a client asks CloudFront for an object, for example, an image file, a JavaScript file, or an API response.

To give a more concrete sense of the costs, if you are serving 20 TB of data per month to users in North America, data transfer out runs at $0 per TB for the first 1 TB, $0.085 per GB for the next 9 TB, and $0.080 per GB for the next 10 TB. This comes out to about $1,565 per month in data transfer charges. CloudFront request pricing in North America is about $0.0075 per 10,000 HTTP requests, so 100 million requests would cost about $75 per month. Total CloudFront delivery cost would be approximately $1,640 per month.

That’s cheaper than data delivered directly from S3, where data transfer out would run at $0.09 per GB, putting the total around $1,843 per month, plus S3 request charges and without the benefit of caching that reduces origin load and improves latency. Even a simple two-region deployment would roughly double storage costs and introduce additional data replication charges between Regions, which are typically around $0.02 per GB.

The real cost advantage (or disadvantage) depends on the cache hit ratio, the percentage of requests served directly from the edge without going back to the origin.

When AWS Edge Locations Are Cost-Effective

A high cache hit ratio means fewer requests reaching your origin infrastructure, which reduces both compute costs and regional data transfer fees. For content that is frequently accessed and does not change often, such as static assets, images, or video, CloudFront's edge caching can meaningfully cut your overall bill.

The alternative, replicating infrastructure across many Regions to achieve similar latency coverage, would require paying for compute, storage, and data transfer in each Region. That adds up quickly and introduces significant operational overhead.

When Are Edge Locations Not Cost-Effective

Edge locations are less cost-effective when your cache hit ratio is low. Dynamic content that cannot be cached, or content that changes frequently, means more requests passing through to the origin anyway, so you are paying CloudFront fees without getting the latency or cost benefits of caching. Cache invalidation, manually clearing cached content before it expires, also incurs charges after the first 1,000 paths per month at about $0.005 per path, so frequent invalidations can add unexpected cost.

Continuing from the previous example, if most requests bypass the cache, you would still pay about $1,565 per month in CloudFront data transfer charges while continuing to pay for the same S3 storage and request costs at the origin. In this scenario, CloudFront increases total spend instead of reducing it.

Conclusion

AWS edge locations are specialized infrastructure designed to deliver content closer to users, reduce latency, and offload origin workloads. They do not replace Regions or run general-purpose services; instead, they provide support for services like CloudFront and Route 53.

The financial impact of using edge locations depends largely on cache hit ratio and traffic patterns. For workloads with highly cacheable, frequently accessed content, edge locations can lower both data transfer and compute costs while improving user experience. For dynamic or frequently changing content, the benefits are more limited, and CloudFront fees can add to your total spend.