Increase the proportion of requests that are served directly from the CloudFront caches (cache hit ratio) - Amazon CloudFront
Specify how long CloudFront caches your objectsUse Origin ShieldCaching based on query string parametersCaching based on cookie valuesCaching based on request headersRemove Accept-Encoding header when compression is not neededServe media content over HTTP

Increase the proportion of requests that are served directly from the CloudFront caches (cache hit ratio)

You can improve performance by increasing the proportion of your viewer requests that are served directly from the CloudFront cache instead of going to your origin servers for content. This is known as improving the cache hit ratio.

The following sections explain how to improve your cache hit ratio.

Specify how long CloudFront caches your objects

To increase your cache hit ratio, you can configure your origin to add a Cache-Control max-age directive to your objects, and specify the longest practical value for max-age. The shorter the cache duration, the more frequently CloudFront sends requests to your origin to determine if an object has changed and to get the latest version. You can supplement max-age with the stale-while-revalidate and stale-if-error directives to further improve cache hit ratio under certain conditions. For more information, see Manage how long content stays in the cache (expiration).

Use Origin Shield

CloudFront Origin Shield can help improve the cache hit ratio of your CloudFront distribution, because it provides an additional layer of caching in front of your origin. When you use Origin Shield, all requests from all of CloudFront’s caching layers to your origin come from a single location. CloudFront can retrieve each object using a single origin request from Origin Shield, and all other layers of the CloudFront cache (edge locations and regional edge caches) can retrieve the object from Origin Shield.

For more information, see Using Amazon CloudFront Origin Shield.

Caching based on query string parameters

If you configure CloudFront to cache based on query string parameters, you can improve caching if you do the following:

  • Configure CloudFront to forward only the query string parameters for which your origin will return unique objects.

  • Use the same case (uppercase or lowercase) for all instances of the same parameter. For example, if one request contains parameter1=A and another contains parameter1=a, CloudFront forwards separate requests to your origin when a request contains parameter1=A and when a request contains parameter1=a. CloudFront then separately caches the corresponding objects returned by your origin separately even if the objects are identical. If you use just A or a, CloudFront forwards fewer requests to your origin.

  • List parameters in the same order. As with differences in case, if one request for an object contains the query string parameter1=a&parameter2=b and another request for the same object contains parameter2=b&parameter1=a, CloudFront forwards both requests to your origin and separately caches the corresponding objects even if they're identical. If you always use the same order for parameters, CloudFront forwards fewer requests to your origin.

For more information, see Cache content based on query string parameters. If you want to review the query strings that CloudFront forwards to your origin, see the values in the cs-uri-query column of your CloudFront log files. For more information, see Standard logging (access logs).

Caching based on cookie values

If you configure CloudFront to cache based on cookie values, you can improve caching if you do the following:

  • Configure CloudFront to forward only specified cookies instead of forwarding all cookies. For the cookies that you configure CloudFront to forward to your origin, CloudFront forwards every combination of cookie name and value. It then separately caches the objects that your origin returns, even if they're all identical.

    For example, suppose that viewers include two cookies in every request, that each cookie has three possible values, and that all combinations of cookie values are possible. CloudFront forwards up to six different requests to your origin for each object. If your origin returns different versions of an object based on only one of the cookies, then CloudFront is forwarding more requests to your origin than necessary and is needlessly caching multiple identical versions of the object.

  • Create separate cache behaviors for static and dynamic content, and configure CloudFront to forward cookies to your origin only for dynamic content.

    For example, suppose you have just one cache behavior for your distribution and that you're using the distribution both for dynamic content, such as .js files, and for .css files that rarely change. CloudFront caches separate versions of your .css files based on cookie values, so each CloudFront edge location forwards a request to your origin for every new cookie value or combination of cookie values.

    If you create a cache behavior for which the path pattern is *.css and for which CloudFront doesn't cache based on cookie values, then CloudFront forwards requests for .css files to your origin for only the first request that an edge location receives for a given .css file and for the first request after a .css file expires.

  • If possible, create separate cache behaviors for dynamic content when cookie values are unique for each user (such as a user ID), and dynamic content that varies based on a smaller number of unique values.

For more information, see Cache content based on cookies. If you want to review the cookies that CloudFront forwards to your origin, see the values in the cs(Cookie) column of your CloudFront log files. For more information, see Standard logging (access logs).

Caching based on request headers

If you configure CloudFront to cache based on request headers, you can improve caching if you do the following:

  • Configure CloudFront to forward and cache based on only specified headers instead of forwarding and caching based on all headers. For the headers that you specify, CloudFront forwards every combination of header name and value. It then separately caches the objects that your origin returns even if they're all identical.

    Note

    CloudFront always forwards to your origin the headers specified in the following topics:

    When you configure CloudFront to cache based on request headers, you don't change the headers that CloudFront forwards, only whether CloudFront caches objects based on the header values.

  • Try to avoid caching based on request headers that have large numbers of unique values.

    For example, if you want to serve different sizes of an image based on the user's device, then don't configure CloudFront to cache based on the User-Agent header, which has an enormous number of possible values. Instead, configure CloudFront to cache based on the CloudFront device-type headers CloudFront-Is-Desktop-Viewer, CloudFront-Is-Mobile-Viewer, CloudFront-Is-SmartTV-Viewer, and CloudFront-Is-Tablet-Viewer. In addition, if you're returning the same version of the image for tablets and desktops, then forward only the CloudFront-Is-Tablet-Viewer header, not the CloudFront-Is-Desktop-Viewer header.

For more information, see Cache content based on request headers.

Remove Accept-Encoding header when compression is not needed

If compression is not enabled—because the origin doesn’t support it, CloudFront doesn’t support it, or the content is not compressible—you can increase the cache hit ratio by associating a cache behavior in your distribution to an origin that sets the Custom Origin Header as follows:

  • Header name: Accept-Encoding

  • Header value: (Keep blank)

When you use this configuration, CloudFront removes the Accept-Encoding header from the cache key and doesn’t include the header in origin requests. This configuration applies to all content that CloudFront serves with the distribution from that origin.

Serve media content over HTTP

For information about optimizing video on demand (VOD) and streaming video content, see Video on demand and live streaming video with CloudFront.