To Overlay or Not to Overlay?

Native (e.g., AWS Global Accelerator)

• Integration: Seamless. Works with ALB/EC2 natively.
• Traffic: Enters AWS backbone immediately.
• Cost: Expensive ($0.025/GB + hourly fees).

Overlay (Cloudflare)

• Security: Superior WAF and DDoS protection at the edge.
• Cost: Flat rate (often cheaper for high bandwidth).
• Performance: Comparable, sometimes faster due to Argo Smart Routing.
• Vendor Lock-in: Reduces lock-in. You can switch backends from AWS to GCP without changing the frontend IP.