Azure CDN Standard from Microsoft (classic) is being retired on 30 September 2027. The replacement is Azure Front Door Standard or Premium. For most organisations the migration is straightforward, but the pricing model is different enough that it's worth understanding before you move.
What CDN classic actually was
Azure CDN classic was a global content delivery network: edge caching, custom domains, managed certificates, HTTP rules engine, basic WAF. The pricing model charged primarily for bandwidth and request volume. Low-traffic or dormant profiles cost very little.
It sat between a pure CDN product and a full application delivery layer. Many organisations used it for static asset delivery, certificate management on custom domains, or as a simple reverse proxy in front of Azure Storage or App Service.
What Azure Front Door Standard and Premium are
Azure Front Door Standard consolidates CDN, global load balancing, WAF, and SSL offload into a single product. Premium adds private link origins, managed rule sets for WAF, and Bot Manager.
For the majority of CDN classic use cases, Standard is sufficient. The gap between Standard and Premium matters for organisations that need private origin connectivity or advanced WAF managed rules.
The pricing difference
CDN classic charged per GB transferred and per request, with no standing monthly cost for a profile. A dormant or low-traffic profile cost effectively nothing.
Azure Front Door Standard has a base cost per profile regardless of traffic, plus routing rules and data transfer. A profile that cost near £0/month on CDN classic runs around £30/month on AFD Standard at minimum.
For organisations with multiple classic profiles, especially dormant ones from old projects, this is the number that catches people out. The managed certificate auto-migration in April 2026 brought this billing change forward for many profiles before they'd planned for it.
Which tier you need
Standard covers the CDN classic feature set and adds:
- Web Application Firewall (custom rules)
- Global load balancing with health probes
- Route rules and caching policies
Premium adds:
- Private Link to origin (App Service, Storage, Internal Load Balancer)
- WAF managed rule sets (OWASP, bot protection)
- Security analytics
If your current CDN classic setup doesn't use private endpoints and you don't need managed WAF rule sets, Standard is the right landing tier. Most CDN classic migrations land on Standard.
What to do before September 2027
New CDN classic resources can't be created as of August 2025. Existing profiles can stay in place until the retirement deadline, but:
- Managed certificates on classic SKUs expired 14 April 2026 and can't be renewed. If you're still on classic with managed certs, HTTPS is already broken or you've been auto-migrated.
- The longer you wait, the more complex the migration becomes as dependencies accumulate.
For active profiles, the migration tooling in the portal handles most of the configuration translation. For dormant profiles, deletion is the simplest path.
If you're not sure which of your Azure CDN profiles are active and which are candidates for cleanup or migration, our free cost assessment includes a review of your CDN and Front Door configuration.