A philatelist's guide to the content delivery landscape. Each stamp represents a platform at its 2021 valuation — denominated by our editorial score. Peruse, compare, and add your favorite to the collection.
| Attribute | Cloudflare | Akamai | Fastly | CloudFront | StackPath |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free Tier | Yes (generous) | No | Trial only | 50GB/12mo | Trial |
| Global PoPs | 200+ | ~300K servers | ~60 | 225+ | 45+ |
| Edge Compute | Workers | EdgeWorkers | Compute@Edge | Lambda@Edge | Serverless |
| Cache Purge | ~30s | ~5s | ~150ms | ~15min | ~seconds |
| DDoS Protection | Free unmetered | Prolexic | Included | Shield Std | Included |
| WAF | Pro+ plans | Kona WAF | Signal Sciences | AWS WAF ($) | Included |
| DNS Service | 1.1.1.1 (fastest) | Edge DNS | No | Route 53 | No |
| Pricing Model | Free / tiered | Custom contract | Pay-as-you-go | Pay-as-you-go | Flat + PAYG |
| Best For | Most sites | Enterprise | Developers | AWS teams | SMBs |
The free tier remains the best entry point in the entire CDN market. CDN, DDoS, DNS, SSL — all at zero cost.
The original CDN carrying ~30% of web traffic. Enterprise SLAs and Prolexic DDoS are unmatched. Premium price for premium uptime.
150ms global purge. Compute@Edge with Wasm. The engineer's CDN for teams that demand instant precision at the edge.
Inseparable from the AWS ecosystem. Lambda@Edge and Shield make it frictionless if your infrastructure already lives on Amazon.
Edge computing + CDN + WAF in a straightforward package aimed at SMBs. Competitive flat-rate pricing with no enterprise complexity.