Global Accelerator vs CloudFront: Choosing Correctly

CloudFront and Global Accelerator are both 'global edge' services but solve different problems and are frequently confused. CloudFront is a content delivery network: it caches HTTP/S content at edge locations close to users, meaning repeat requests for the same content can be served entirely from the edge without ever reaching your origin — ideal for static assets, cacheable API responses, and video streaming. Global Accelerator does not cache anything; it exists purely to optimize the network path between a user and your actual compute endpoints, and to provide static IPs for fast, DNS-independent failover — it works for HTTP/S too, but its real differentiator is supporting arbitrary TCP/UDP traffic (gaming, VoIP, IoT protocols) that CloudFront fundamentally cannot serve since CloudFront is HTTP/S-only. A practical decision rule: if the traffic is cacheable HTTP/S content, default to CloudFront; if the traffic is dynamic/non-cacheable HTTP/S needing fast IP-stable failover, or is a non-HTTP protocol entirely, Global Accelerator is the right (and sometimes only) tool.