Got an angry email from a client in Sydney once. "Your site takes forever to load." Checked it myself from a US coffee shop. Fast. Checked it through a Sydney proxy. 4.2 seconds. Ouch. My hosting was in Virginia and apparently the Pacific Ocean is really, really wide when you're sending packets across it.
Threw Cloudflare in front of it. Same hosting, same code. Load time dropped to 1.1 seconds. That's when I started paying attention to CDNs.
Three years later I've run probably fifteen different CDN services across client sites, side projects, and a couple e-commerce stores. Some turned out great. Some were overpriced for what you get. A few surprised me by being dirt cheap and still performing well.
Too busy to read? Cloudflare for most people since the free tier is kind of absurd. BunnyCDN if you want pay-as-you-go that stays cheap even when traffic spikes. Fastly if you're running something big and need cache to purge instantly across the globe.
Quick Picks
| Provider | Best For | Starting Price | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare | Most websites | Free tier | 9.5/10 |
| Fastly | Enterprise/real-time | $50/month | 9.2/10 |
| BunnyCDN | Best value | $0.01/GB | 9.3/10 |
Cloudflare
Free tier handles most sites, 330+ edge locations globally
BunnyCDN
$0.01/GB pricing, no minimums, solid performance
Fastly
150ms global purge, real-time analytics, edge computing
Why CDNs Actually Matter
A CDN doesn't make your server faster. It just makes geography stop mattering. Your site lives on one server somewhere. Someone in Tokyo hitting your Virginia-hosted site? We're talking about packets traveling something like 14,000 kilometers each direction. And that happens multiple times per page load.
Here's the annoying physics part. Light through fiber moves at maybe 200,000 km/s. So Tokyo to Virginia is at least 140ms just for the photons to get there and back. But then network hops and DNS stuff and congestion pile on top. Real latency usually lands somewhere in the 200-400ms range. Stack that on every image and CSS file and script your page needs. Suddenly you're waiting actual seconds before anything shows up.
Speed Impact
Most of my sites see 40-60% improvement in Time to First Byte for international visitors. That 4.2 second Australia load time dropping to 1.1 seconds? Pretty typical. Google cares about this stuff for rankings now.
DDoS Protection
CDNs absorb attack traffic across their network instead of hammering your origin server. Cloudflare blocked a 26 million request per second DDoS attack in 2022. Your $20/month hosting would have melted.
Cost Reduction
Less traffic hitting your origin means lower bandwidth costs. If your host charges for bandwidth or has limits, a CDN pays for itself. I have a client whose hosting bill dropped by $200/month after adding BunnyCDN.
Reliability
If your origin goes down, many CDNs can serve stale content while you fix it. Not ideal, but way better than a complete outage. Some offer failover to backup origins automatically.
The Big Three Compared
Cloudflare
Starting at
Free
Been running Cloudflare since 2018. Probably the most impactful free tool I've ever added to a project. Their free tier gives you unlimited bandwidth, 330+ edge locations, DDoS protection, and the actual CDN. Most of my sites have never needed to upgrade. When I do bump clients to Pro at $20/month it's usually for the image optimization or better analytics. Not because they hit limits.
Setup takes maybe 15 minutes of actual clicking around. Change nameservers at your registrar, go grab a coffee, come back and DNS has propagated. One dashboard handles DNS and SSL certs and CDN and basic security. If this isn't on your sites already you're leaving free performance sitting there.
What I Like
- + Free tier is genuinely unlimited
- + 330+ edge locations worldwide
- + Built-in DDoS protection
- + Free SSL certificates
- + Workers for edge computing
- + Page Rules for fine control
The Tradeoffs
- - Cache purge not instant (few seconds)
- - Must use their nameservers
- - Some advanced features locked to Business tier
- - Support quality varies on free tier
Fastly
Starting at
$50/mo
Fastly is what the big players use. The New York Times, GitHub, Shopify, Stripe. Their thing is speed and instant cache purging. When you need to invalidate cached content across the entire globe in under 150 milliseconds, Fastly delivers. Most CDNs take seconds. Fastly does it before your finger leaves the keyboard.
The pricing is not cheap. Minimum $50/month plus usage-based billing. But if you are running an e-commerce site where stale prices or inventory could cost you sales, or a news site where breaking news needs to appear immediately, this is what you pay for.
What I Like
- + 150ms global cache purge. Insane
- + Real-time analytics and logging
- + VCL for custom cache logic
- + Compute@Edge for edge computing
- + Excellent documentation
The Tradeoffs
- - $50 minimum monthly spend
- - Complex pricing structure
- - Steeper learning curve
- - Fewer POPs than Cloudflare
BunnyCDN
Starting at
$0.01/GB
BunnyCDN is what happens when a CDN company decides to compete on price and actually delivers. A penny per gigabyte. No monthly minimums. A client site I set up serves about 500GB/month and the bill is around $5. That same traffic on Fastly would be $60-80. On AWS CloudFront, $40-50.
The performance is legit too. 114 POPs worldwide, sub-30ms latency in most regions I tested. The dashboard is clean, the API is straightforward. If you are price-sensitive or running multiple sites, this is where I would start. I use it for several clients who do not need Cloudflare's extra features.
What I Like
- + $0.01/GB pricing. Unbeatable
- + No monthly minimum
- + 114 POPs globally
- + Built-in image optimization (Bunny Optimizer)
- + Video streaming service available
- + Simple, clean dashboard
The Tradeoffs
- - No true free tier (14-day trial)
- - Smaller company than competitors
- - Fewer advanced security features
- - No nameserver integration like Cloudflare
Other Options Worth Knowing
The big three cover most use cases, but these alternatives have their place depending on what you need.
KeyCDN
Starting at
$0.04/GB
KeyCDN sits between Cloudflare and BunnyCDN in terms of pricing and features. Pay-as-you-go at $0.04/GB, which is more than Bunny but still reasonable. The Swiss company angle is appealing if privacy matters to you. Solid performance, decent dashboard, nothing to complain about really.
What I Like
- + Swiss-based (strong privacy laws)
- + HTTP/2 push support
- + Detailed real-time analytics
- + Good WordPress integration
The Tradeoffs
- - Fewer POPs than competitors
- - $4 minimum monthly spend
- - Less feature-rich than Cloudflare
Amazon CloudFront
Free tier
1TB/mo (12mo)
Already neck-deep in AWS? CloudFront probably makes sense then. Plays nice with S3 buckets and EC2 instances and Lambda@Edge. They've got the largest network too at 450+ edge locations. Pricing gets complicated fast and can get expensive if you're not careful, but that first-year free tier of 1TB/month is pretty generous for testing things out.
What I Like
- + 450+ edge locations (largest network)
- + Native AWS service integration
- + Lambda@Edge for compute
- + 1TB free for first year
The Tradeoffs
- - Confusing pricing structure
- - AWS console is overwhelming
- - No standalone free tier after 12 months
Speed Test Results
Okay so I actually tested this. Set up the same site on each CDN, origin server in US East, and ran requests from five different cities. Looked at Time to First Byte because that's where CDN performance really shows up.
| CDN | New York | London | Sydney | Tokyo | Sao Paulo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare | 18ms | 24ms | 32ms | 28ms | 42ms |
| Fastly | 15ms | 22ms | 38ms | 25ms | 55ms |
| BunnyCDN | 20ms | 26ms | 35ms | 30ms | 48ms |
| CloudFront | 16ms | 21ms | 29ms | 23ms | 38ms |
| No CDN | 45ms | 120ms | 280ms | 195ms | 165ms |
*TTFB measured December 2024, cached content, average of 10 requests
Numbers are pretty similar across the board honestly. The real eye-opener is that last row though. See those Sydney numbers without a CDN? 280ms just for the first byte to show up. Throw any CDN in front and that drops to 30-40ms. That's the whole point right there.
Pricing Breakdown
CDN pricing can be confusing. Here is what you actually pay based on real usage scenarios:
Small Site (50GB/month)
Cloudflare: Free. BunnyCDN: $0.50/month. KeyCDN: $4/month (minimum). Fastly: $50/month (minimum). CloudFront: Free (within 12-month trial).
Medium Site (500GB/month)
Cloudflare: Free. BunnyCDN: ~$5/month. KeyCDN: ~$20/month. Fastly: $50+ per month. CloudFront: ~$42/month.
Large Site (5TB/month)
Cloudflare: Free (yes, really). BunnyCDN: ~$50/month. KeyCDN: ~$200/month. Fastly: $600+ per month. CloudFront: ~$425/month.
Cloudflare's unlimited free bandwidth is not a typo. They make money from the paid tiers, Workers, and enterprise contracts. For pure CDN bandwidth, the free tier genuinely covers most needs.
Which One Though?
Basically comes down to what you actually need:
Cloudflare makes sense when...
You want something free that actually works well. Blogs, portfolios, small business sites, most stuff really. The free features are legitimately useful not just a teaser. I'd start here unless you have a specific reason not to.
BunnyCDN makes sense when...
You want to know exactly what you'll pay and you don't need Cloudflare's WAF or DNS stuff. Running video? Lots of images? Managing a bunch of different sites? Bunny's billing stays simple and cheap.
Fastly makes sense when...
You absolutely need cache to clear everywhere in under 150ms. Running an e-commerce store where stale prices mean angry customers? News site where breaking stories need to appear instantly? This is what you pay the $50/month minimum for.
CloudFront makes sense when...
You're already building on AWS and want everything in one console. That first-year 1TB free tier is nice for testing. Just read the pricing docs carefully because AWS billing can get weird fast.
Full Comparison Table
| Provider | Edge Locations | Free Tier | Pricing Model | Instant Purge | Analytics |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare | 330+ cities | Unlimited bandwidth | Free / $20/mo Pro | Yes | Good |
| Fastly | 90+ POPs | None (trial only) | $0.12-0.28/GB | 150ms global | Excellent |
| BunnyCDN | 114 POPs | 14-day trial | $0.01/GB | Yes | Good |
| KeyCDN | 50+ POPs | $10 credit | $0.04/GB | Yes | Basic |
| CloudFront | 450+ POPs | 1TB/month for 12mo | $0.085/GB+ | Yes | Via AWS |
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
So What Did I Learn
Three years of messing with CDNs. Fifteen-ish services tested across different projects. Cloudflare is still what I reach for first on most sites. Free tier that's actually useful, solid performance, and the DDoS protection plus free SSL are nice bonuses. Hard to argue with free.
BunnyCDN is my go-to when clients watch every penny or when there's video involved. That penny-per-gigabyte thing sounds too good but it's real. Serving 500GB a month for about $5? Yeah that math works out.
Fastly comes out when enterprise clients need instant cache clearing and have budget for it. Expensive? Sure. But nothing else clears cache globally in 150ms.
Look if you don't have a CDN on your site right now just go set up Cloudflare. It takes like 15 minutes and costs nothing. Your visitors from other countries will notice immediately. And this is one of those rare situations where free actually is the right answer for most people.
My Top Pick: Cloudflare
Best overall CDN for most websites. Unlimited free bandwidth, 330+ edge locations, built-in security, and it actually works.
