Which CDN should you pick to speed up and protect your site in 2026?
For most small business sites, Cloudflare's free plan is enough. Once traffic, video or big downloads grow, the math changes, so we ran it for you.
Your pages crawl for visitors on the other side of the country, a traffic spike takes your server down, and bots hammer your login page every night. A CDN (content delivery network) fixes a big part of that. It keeps copies of your pages and images on servers close to your visitors, and it filters traffic before it ever reaches your server.
The short answer: start with Cloudflare on the free plan. DDoS protection is unmetered and a managed firewall ruleset is already included. Pick Bunny.net if you serve video or large files: $10 per TB in North America and Europe, with a free basic firewall. Amazon CloudFront is the natural choice if you already run on AWS, and its flat-rate Pro plan at $15 a month covers 50 TB. Gcore gives 1 TB free every month, billed in euros after that. Fastly suits engineering teams that want fine control, and KeyCDN suits small sites that want simple prepaid billing.
Every price on this page is worked out at two volumes: 1 TB a month, a busy small business site, and 10 TB, an active store or a site that serves video. That is exactly where free plans start meaning different things.
The ranking is editorial: a sponsored placement is always labeled on its card, and no affiliate link ever changes a score.
Best CDN by use case
The 6 best CDN providers compared
The full ranking. The "monthly cost" column shows what you pay to serve 1 TB, then 10 TB, to visitors in North America and Europe, before any paid security add-on. Gcore is the only provider that lists its prices in euros, so we show them in euros rather than guess an exchange rate.
| Best for | Monthly cost, 1 TB then 10 TB | Free plan | Team size | Visit | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cloudflare | Best free CDN | $0 at 1 TB; $0 at 10 TB (no heavy video) | 4.6/5 | Free, Pro $20/mo billed yearly | ✓ | Any business site, WordPress or store | Visit → |
| 2 | Bunny.net | Best for video and volume | $10 at 1 TB; $100 at 10 TB | 4.4/5 | $0.01/GB in North America and Europe, $1/mo minimum | — | Media, e-learning, stores with video | Visit → |
| 3 | Gcore | Best European pay-as-you-go | €0 at 1 TB; €90 at 10 TB | 4.1/5 | 1 TB free/mo, then €0.01/GB | ✓ | Sites with a European audience | Visit → |
| 4 | Amazon CloudFront | Best if you're on AWS | $0 pay-as-you-go; $15 on Pro at 10 TB | 3.9/5 | Free (1 TB pay-as-you-go), Pro flat rate $15/mo | ✓ | Sites and apps hosted on AWS | Visit → |
| 5 | KeyCDN | Simplest prepaid CDN | $40 at 1 TB; $400 at 10 TB | 3.5/5 | $0.04/GB, $4/mo minimum | — | Small sites that want prepaid billing | Visit → |
| 6 | Fastly | Best for engineering teams | $108 at 1 TB; $1,188 at 10 TB | 3.4/5 | 100 GB free/mo per region, then $0.12/GB | ✓ | Media or e-commerce with an engineering team | Visit → |
Scores rate each vendor's CDN on this page's criteria. They are not the scores of Cloudflare Pages, Bunny Stream or AWS compute published elsewhere in Labs, which cover other products. Prices come from each vendor's official pricing page in 2026.
Is your tool missing from this page? Email us: hello@hackceleration.com
How we compared and scored
The top results for "best CDN" are directories and long lists of 9 to 25 providers. Few show CloudFront's current flat-rate plans, none compares whether the web application firewall is included, paid or quote-only, and none prices a plain 1 TB month.
We read the official pricing grids, terms of service and security pages of each vendor, then went through user feedback on forums and review sites, with a focus on the bad stories: outages, false positives, forced upgrades. Our target reader runs a small business site, a WordPress site or a store serving somewhere between a few hundred GB and 10 TB a month, without a full-time engineer.
Akamai is not ranked: it publishes no pricing grid and signs custom contracts, often for twelve months. Sucuri isn't either: its pricing page could not be read and third-party figures contradict each other. It is mostly a WordPress firewall anyway.
Value for money carries the most weight, because the same traffic costs anywhere from $0 to over $1,000 a month depending on the provider. Security comes next, since a CDN is also your first shield.
- Network and speedNumber and spread of points of presence, caching, image optimization.20%
- Included securityDDoS, web application firewall (WAF) and bot filtering: included, paid or quote-only.25%
- Value for moneyCost at 1 TB and 10 TB a month, with requests, minimums and fine print.30%
- Ease of setupSignup without a card, setup without a developer, a bill you can read.15%
- SupportChannels on the plan a small business actually buys, and response speed.10%
No affiliate link changes a score or a rank.
Cloudflare
Cloudflare is the only CDN here whose free plan shows no bandwidth cap. It caches your pages and images, handles SSL and absorbs DDoS attacks with unmetered protection on every plan. It also applies a managed firewall ruleset (the WAF blocks known intrusion attempts) at no cost. At 1 TB or 10 TB a month, you pay $0.
Pro, at $20 a month billed yearly ($25 monthly), does not buy you more DDoS protection. It buys a broader managed firewall ruleset, lossless image optimization and ticket support. Business, at $200 a month billed yearly, adds chat. 24/7 phone support is Enterprise only.
The catch is in the terms. If your site serves video or a disproportionate share of large files without Cloudflare's paid products (Stream, Images, R2), Cloudflare can restrict or redirect that traffic. No threshold is published. One Business customer reported being told to move to Enterprise within 24 hours; the context is disputed, but the risk of a forced upgrade is real when traffic explodes.
Then there's dependency. In 2025, an oversized configuration file in Cloudflare's bot management took X, ChatGPT and Spotify offline for hours. It was not an attack. And the firewall can block real visitors: on Pro, tuning false positives is your job.
Tip: Pro's main draw is the full firewall ruleset. If all you want is lighter images, a compression plugin on your CMS may do the job for less.
- No bandwidth cap shown on the free plan
- Unmetered DDoS protection on every plan
- Managed firewall rules on the free plan
- ✓$0 for most small business sites
- ✓The most security you get without paying
- ✓Flat Pro price, no usage billing
- ✗Heavy video and large files restricted without paid products
- ✗Community support only on free
- ✗A Cloudflare outage takes your site down
The best starting point for nearly every small business site. If you serve video or big downloads, Bunny.net costs a few dollars and spares you the large-file clause.
Bunny.net
Bunny.net is based in Slovenia, and its pricing fits in one line: $0.01 per GB served in North America and Europe on its standard network of 119 points of presence. 1 TB costs $10 a month, 10 TB costs $100. For very large volumes, the Volume network (10 points of presence) drops to $0.005 per GB up to 500 TB. Past 100 TB a month on the standard network, the price list sends you to sales. The minimum is $1 a month, and the 14-day trial needs no card.
DDoS protection is included, and the Bunny Shield firewall has a free basic tier with rules against common attacks and simple bot filtering. Paid tiers cost $9.50 and $99 a month. Add Shield at $9.50 and your CDN runs $19.50 a month for 1 TB, or $234 a year, about the same as Cloudflare Pro.
The key difference from Cloudflare: Bunny usually runs on a subdomain that serves your images and files (a "pull zone" that fetches each file from your host the first time). Your origin server stays visible, and its IP is not hidden. For video, though, it's the right tool, with no clause against large files.
User reviews are excellent, especially for support, with issues fixed in minutes. Complaints focus on deleting an account, which users describe as painful, and on incidents that are mostly regional (Singapore, Los Angeles), with configuration updates that sometimes take a long time to propagate.
Tip: if most of your traffic comes from Asia or South America, redo the math. Outside North America and Europe, a GB costs three to six times as much.
- $0.01 per GB in North America and Europe
- Free basic firewall
- European provider, trial without a card
- ✓Low, predictable bill
- ✓No clause against video
- ✓Very fast support according to users
- ✗No free plan ($1 minimum)
- ✗Doesn't hide your origin server
- ✗Higher rates outside North America and Europe
The best paid CDN on price, and the right call as soon as video is involved. For a small site with no video, Cloudflare's free plan is still hard to beat.
Gcore
Gcore is headquartered in Luxembourg and is the only provider here that lists its prices in euros. Its pay-as-you-go CDN starts with no subscription and no credit card: the first TB each month is free, then each GB costs €0.01 up to 500 TB. At 1 TB you pay €0; at 10 TB, 9,000 billable GB come to €90 a month. The network has more than 210 points of presence.
The weak spot is security. The web application firewall, advanced DDoS protection and bot management are separate products, and their prices were not readable on the page we checked. If you want a CDN and a firewall in one plan, Cloudflare or Bunny.net are simpler.
It's also the provider where we found the fewest reviews from small businesses, which is why its support score stays cautious. Its real rival is Cloudflare's free plan: both start at zero, but Gcore's 1 TB is written into the price list, while Cloudflare shows no cap and reserves the right to limit video.
Tip: for a site that mostly serves images and files to European visitors, Gcore is a free CDN under 1 TB without ever handing over a card. Set a reminder for when you get close to that TB.
- 1 TB free every month
- No subscription, no card
- 210+ points of presence
- ✓Guaranteed free tier up to 1 TB
- ✓Clear volume pricing
- ✓European provider
- ✗Security sold separately
- ✗Prices in euros only
- ✗Few small business reviews
A solid free tier for European traffic. If security matters as much as speed, Cloudflare or Bunny.net with Shield cover you without an extra product.
Amazon CloudFront
Amazon CloudFront gives you two ways to pay. Flat-rate plans per distribution have no overage charges: Free covers 100 GB and 1 million requests a month with 5 firewall rules, Pro at $15 covers 10 million requests and 50 TB with 25 rules, and Business at $200 goes up to 125 million requests. Classic pay-as-you-go gives you 1 TB and 10 million requests free every month, then $0.085 per GB in the US and Europe.
At 1 TB, pay-as-you-go costs you $0 in data transfer. At 10 TB, it would cost $765 a month, while the $15 Pro plan covers that volume. The limit that matters on flat-rate plans is requests: every image, script and stylesheet counts as one. A site built from lots of small files hits 10 million requests long before 50 TB.
The firewall is included in the flat-rate plans, with more rules as you move up. That's a real edge over Fastly or Akamai, where it's quote-only. The downside is the AWS console: you create a distribution, pick an origin and set caching behavior yourself. For a small business without a developer, Cloudflare or Bunny.net are faster to set up.
Tip: before picking a plan, check your monthly request count in your hosting analytics, not just your GB. Requests decide your tier.
- Flat-rate plans with no overages
- Firewall rules included in every plan
- 1 TB free every month on pay-as-you-go
- ✓Capped bill on flat-rate plans
- ✓Built into the rest of AWS
- ✓Generous free tier on pay-as-you-go
- ✗Request caps hit fast on small-file sites
- ✗Technical setup
- ✗$765 at 10 TB on pay-as-you-go
The right pick if your site already lives on AWS, ideally on a flat-rate plan. Off AWS, Cloudflare does the same job with fewer settings.
KeyCDN
KeyCDN is a Swiss provider with a very simple model: you buy credit and pay per GB. The rate is $0.04 per GB in North America and Europe for the first 10 TB, then it drops in steps down to $0.01. The minimum is $4 a month, and your first payment is $49 of credit.
At 1 TB, the bill comes to $40 a month; at 10 TB, $400. That's four times Bunny.net, and there's no web application firewall. DDoS protection is listed among the features, with no detail. For a site worried about intrusions, it's not enough on its own.
Its appeal is simplicity. Prepaid credit rules out surprise bills, the dashboard gets to the point, and like Bunny it plugs in on a subdomain that serves your images and files.
Tip: the $49 credit covers a year of $4 minimums. If your traffic stays under that minimum, that's a fixed yearly budget you know in advance.
- Prepaid credit, no surprises
- Swiss provider
- Volume discounts beyond 10 TB
- ✓Bill under control
- ✓Quick setup
- ✓Public, readable pricing
- ✗No web application firewall
- ✗Four times Bunny.net per GB
- ✗No free plan
An honest, simple CDN, but rarely the best deal. Bunny.net does the same for less, with a free basic firewall.
Fastly
Fastly is the CDN for engineering teams that want to control everything, with fine-grained cache rules and deep configuration. For a small business, it's also the most expensive option here. The price list gives 100 GB and 1 million requests free each month in every region; beyond that, each GB costs $0.12 in North America and Europe, and every 10,000 requests cost $0.01.
For traffic served in one region: at 1 TB, 900 billable GB come to $108 a month, before requests. At 10 TB, 9,900 GB come to $1,188 a month. That's more than ten times Bunny.net for the same volume. The Deliver Basic package, at $1,500 a month, is for companies that want a fixed amount.
Security is the second weak point for a small team. DDoS protection is billed per request after 500,000 free requests, at $1 per 10,000. The Next-Gen WAF and Bot Management are quote-only. You know what your traffic costs, but not what your shield costs until you talk to sales.
Tip: the price list counts the free 100 GB region by region. A small site whose traffic splits between North America and Europe gets both.
- Fine-grained cache control
- 100 GB free per region
- Fixed packages for larger accounts
- ✓Full control for an engineering team
- ✓Free allowance per region
- ✓Public usage pricing
- ✗$0.12 per GB, the priciest here
- ✗WAF and bot management by quote
- ✗Usage bill hard to predict
A great tool for an engineering team, rarely the right math for a small business. At the same volume, Bunny.net or Cloudflare cost a fraction.
What your CDN really costs, and what it protects
First, who does what: your host stores the site, DNS tells browsers where to find it, and the CDN serves copies close to your visitors. Then three questions matter more than a points-of-presence count: what you pay for your real traffic, what "free" covers at each provider, and whether the firewall is in the price or sold separately.
CDN cost per TB, at 1 and 10 TB
"Free" means something different everywhere
Firewall: included or extra
- Pull your monthly GB from your host's analytics, using your busiest month.
- Pull your request count too: it's the cap that matters on CloudFront.
- Check how much of your traffic comes from outside North America and Europe, where a GB costs more.
- Check whether you serve video or large downloads before staying on Cloudflare free.
- Decide whether you want the firewall in the same plan or can manage a separate product.
- Keep access to your DNS at your registrar so you can bypass the CDN during an outage.
Six settings to plug in your CDN without breaking your site
A badly configured CDN can serve a stale page, block your customers or slow down a server that was already fast. These settings avoid all three.
Measure your site before you plug anything in
BeforeRun a speed test from two cities, one near your server and one far away, and keep the results. A server that's already fast for nearby visitors can be slightly slowed by a CDN's filtering layer. Without a baseline, you won't notice.
- Test locations
- At least 2 cities
Choose between a full proxy and a subdomain
ArchitectureCloudflare sits in front of your whole site: you switch your nameservers and your host's IP is hidden. Bunny.net and KeyCDN usually serve your images and files from a subdomain, which is a single setting in WordPress but leaves your server exposed. For security, a full proxy is stronger.
- Hides your server
- Full proxy only
Never cache the cart or customer account pages
E-commerceOn a store, exclude cart, checkout and account pages from the cache. Otherwise one customer can end up seeing another's page. Cache images, scripts and stylesheets freely, since they rarely change.
- Exclude
- Cart, checkout, account
Run the firewall in log-only mode for a week
SecurityFalse positives are the most common firewall complaint: real customers blocked at checkout or on the contact form. Start by logging without blocking, look at what would have been stopped, then turn on blocking rule by rule.
- Log-only period
- 7 days
Plan for an outage
DependencyCloudflare's global outage in 2025 took thousands of sites offline for hours. Know where the switch that turns off the proxy lives, keep access to your DNS, and make sure your host can handle traffic without a CDN for half a day.
- Keep
- Backup DNS access
Set a billing alert on day one
BudgetOn Fastly, CloudFront pay-as-you-go or Gcore past the free TB, the bill follows your traffic, your requests and your regions. A scraper crawling your site can push it up overnight. Set a spending alert, or pick a flat plan such as CloudFront Pro or Cloudflare Pro.
- Alert threshold
- Your monthly budget
Your CDN is picked, now the rest
A CDN sits in front of your hosting. These pages cover what sits behind it.
The server behind your CDN.
You run a small business siteBest web hosting for small businessPlans built for small teams.
Your site runs on WordPressBest managed WordPress hostingSome already include a CDN.
Your app lives in the cloudBest public cloudAWS, Akamai and others, server side.
You still need a domainBest domain registrarWhere your backup DNS lives.
Your site is staticNetlify alternativesStatic hosting with a CDN built in.
Best CDN · FAQ
What is the best free CDN?
Cloudflare, for most sites. Its free plan shows no bandwidth cap, includes unmetered DDoS protection and managed firewall rules. If you'd rather have a free tier written into the price list, Gcore gives 1 TB a month and CloudFront pay-as-you-go also gives 1 TB, both with no monthly fee.Is Cloudflare's free plan enough for a business site?
Yes, in most cases. It covers caching, SSL, DDoS protection and a managed firewall ruleset. It stops being enough when you serve lots of video or large files, which its terms let Cloudflare restrict, or when you need support beyond the community forum.How much does a CDN cost per TB?
From $0 to about $120 per TB in North America and Europe. Bunny.net charges $10 per TB, KeyCDN $40 and CloudFront $85 after its free TB, while Fastly charges $120 per TB after 100 GB free. Cloudflare and CloudFront's flat Pro plan don't bill per TB at all.Does a CDN protect against DDoS attacks and hacking?
Against DDoS, yes: Cloudflare, Bunny.net and CloudFront include it. Against hacking, partly. A web application firewall blocks known attacks like form injections, but it won't patch a vulnerable plugin or replace your backups. Think of it as a locked front door, not insurance.Do I need a paid WAF?
Not to start. Cloudflare and Bunny.net offer free managed rules, and CloudFront's free flat-rate plan includes 5 rules. The full ruleset earns its price once you take payments or run customer accounts. Budget time to tune false positives, which sometimes block real customers.What happens to my site if Cloudflare goes down?
It goes down too, unless you turn off the proxy so your domain points straight at your host. That requires keeping DNS access and a host that can handle traffic alone. Find that setting before you need it, not during the outage.Can I serve video on Cloudflare's free plan?
Not at volume. Cloudflare's terms let it restrict sites that mainly serve video or large files without its paid products (Stream, Images, R2). For video, Bunny.net is the simpler choice: it charges the same per GB whether the file is an image or a video.What is the best CDN for WordPress?
Cloudflare's free plan in most cases: it sits in front of the whole site and hides your server. If you serve lots of images or video, Bunny.net or KeyCDN plug in on a subdomain from your caching plugin with a single setting. Always exclude the admin, cart and account pages from the cache.Does a CDN help SEO?
Indirectly, through speed. A CDN shortens load times for visitors far from your server. If all your visitors are close to a fast server, its filtering layer can actually add a little delay. Measure before and after, and stay on a free plan until the gain shows up.