What are the key differences between Azure Front Door and Traffic Manager?

Azure Front Door

Layer: Application layer (Layer 7)

Best for: HTTP/HTTPS traffic routing, performance optimization, and security

Key Features:

• Smart routing: Uses latency-based routing and health probes to direct traffic to the fastest and healthiest backend.

• SSL termination and HTTPS support

• Web Application Firewall (WAF) integration

• URL-based routing and path-based rules

• Caching and content acceleration via edge POPs

• Custom domains and SSL management

Use Cases:

• Global web applications needing fast, secure delivery

• Apps requiring SSL offloading, WAF, or edge caching

• Multi-region web apps hosted on Azure App Service or Kubernetes

Azure Traffic Manager

Layer: DNS layer (Layer 4)

Best for: DNS-based routing across regions and endpoints

Key Features:

• DNS-based load balancing

• Routing methods: Priority, Weighted, Performance, Geographic, Multivalue, Subnet

• Endpoint monitoring and failover

• Supports any endpoint type (Azure or external)

Use Cases:

• Distributing traffic across Azure regions or hybrid environments

• Routing users to the nearest datacenter based on DNS resolution

• Failover between primary and secondary endpoints

Summury:

Feature	Azure Front Door	Azure Traffic Manager
Routing Layer	Application (Layer 7)	DNS (Layer 4)
Protocol Support	HTTP/HTTPS only	Any protocol
Routing Methods	Latency, path-based	Priority, Weighted, Geo, etc.
Health Probes	HTTP-based	DNS-based
SSL Termination	Yes	No
WAF Integration	Yes	No
Caching/CDN	Yes	No
Endpoint Types	Azure only	Azure + external