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Best CDN Providers of 2023
The best CDN providers (Content Delivery Network) work to accelerate almost any website by storing its files in servers around the world. Whether your visitors come from Europe, North America, Asia or anywhere else, content is automatically served from a location close to them, for the fastest speeds and the shortest possible load times.
Although CDNs are often targeted at huge corporations, they often work for personal and small business sites, too. The simplest CDNs can be configured in minutes, even by newbies, and in some cases they might not cost you anything at all.
Separating the quality providers from the also-rans can be a challenge, but we’ve done the groundwork for you, comparing the best CDNs on everything from ease of setup and performance, to configurability, management tools and value.
Whatever your website, from a simple blog to a business-critical site for an international corporation, we've got you covered. And if you find something interesting, keep in mind that you can explore many of these CDN for free, no payment details required.
1. CLOUDFLARE
A feature-packed CDN with one of the best free plans around 
REASONS TO BUY
+Capable free plan
+Lots of features
+Protects your website from all kinds of attacks
+Simple flat rate pricing
REASONS TO AVOID
-Convoluted user interface
-Relatively expensive
Cloudflare is a hugely popular American content delivery service that combines novice-friendly ease of use with expert-level features and functionality. It’s no wonder that Cloudflare protects about 20% of all websites, including major corporations such as Broadcom, L’Oreal, DHL and Shopify.
Setup is quick and easy. Simply update your DNS nameservers to use Cloudflare, and the service kicks in automatically, caching content and serving it to visitors from their nearest location.
But there's also much, much more. Web filtering can block bots, limit content spam, keep you safe from hackers or detect and mitigate DDoS attacks. Smart image optimizations can reduce image file sizes by up to 35%, further improving speeds.
There's wide support for standards like IPv6, HTTP/2 and SPDY, clever page rules to help you manipulate traffic, and a REST API allows developers to take full control of what the service is doing.
Cloudflare's free plan allows you to see what the service can do, without making any commitments, and it is a permanent option rather than some time limited trial. It's very usable, with unlimited bandwidth and no annoying restrictions to try and force you to upgrade. Just realize that support is limited to self help and a community forum, and the bot protections are more basic.
Upgrading to the Pro plan gets you the image optimization rules, extra configurability, and improved support in the form of trouble tickets. Pricing is simple at a flat $20 (£16) a month, with no complex per-region usage fees. A Business plan comes with a 100% uptime SLA, which the Enterprise offers maximum speeds and every bot and threat-blocking technology Cloudflare has to offer.
2. FASTLY
A highly configurable heavyweight CDN 
REASONS TO BUY
+Consistently fast around the world
+Highly configurable
REASONS TO AVOID
-Can be tricky to set up
Fastly is the CDN of choice for big-name organizations from the likes of Epic Games and Spotify to Reddit, Stripe and New York Times, and it's easy to see why. The service lives up to its name by consistently delivering great performance results, and currently ranks sixth in CDNPerf's rankings for worldwide speeds (and it's #1 in Oceania.)
But this isn't just about raw network speeds. Fastly is ultra-configurable, and if you know what you're doing then you can fine-tune your set with clever video caching, and custom manipulation of HTTP headers to customize precisely how content is served. It takes some time to set this up, especially if you're a CDN novice, but make that effort and you'll see even faster results for even more of your visitors.
Fastly isn't as generous as Cloudflare when it comes to pricing; there's no free tier, and the company has a minimum charge of $50 (£37) a month, whatever your website happens to use.
Estimating your final costs can be a challenge, too, as Fastly charges depend on the bandwidth you use in each region (prices range from $0.12 per GB in North America to $0.28 in Africa.) There are some welcome extras, though, including free TLS/SSL for the first two mains, and overall Fastly is fair value for the features you get.
3. KEYCDN
A great value CDN with low traffic prices and free SSL.
REASONS TO BUY
+Very low prices
+Easy setup
+14 day free trial
REASONS TO AVOID
-Performance isn’t the best.
KeyCDN is an easy-to-use budget CDN that is an attractive choice for first-time users.
Getting started couldn't be much simpler. Sign up with your email address and you can get started with a free 14 day trial, no payment details required. A well-designed web dashboard enables creating your first zone with the minimum of clicks, and there are guides to help you integrate the service with WordPress, PrestaShop, Magento and other apps.
More experienced users will appreciate features like Image Processing. This can resize, crop, sharpen, blur, overlay and otherwise tweak pictures to suit your needs, potentially reducing traffic by allowing your site to replace many images with just one.
A standout feature of KeyCDN is its low prices. Let's Encrypt SSL certificates come for free, while bandwidth charges start at $0.04 (£0.032) per GB- a third the price you'll pay with some of the high-end competition. There's a minimum $49 payment required up-front, but KeyCDN's tiny minimum monthly fee of only $4 a month means that could go a very long way.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, these low prices don't get you leading-edge performance, but you're still getting plenty of power here for your money.
4. STACKPATH
A user-friendly CDN with some advanced security features.
REASONS TO BUY
+Easy to set up
+Powerful security features
+Low starter prices
REASONS TO AVOID
-Expensive image optimization
-Below average number of edge locations.
StackPath's CDN has a relatively small network of 73 locations worldwide, mostly focused in North America and Europe with only a few elsewhere. But every one of those locations is optimized for speed, the company explains, and an impressive customer list including the likes of Valve and CloudLinux OS suggests it really can deliver.
SSL handling is a strong point. If you're new to the CDN business, StackPath gives you shared SSL for free, so you can get started right away with no extra effort or cost. But (unlike most CDNs) StackPath also allows you to use your own private SSL certificate for free, serving this from its own locations to maximize initial load times.
There's plenty more to like here, from smart image optimization, GZIP compression, effective anti-DDoS technology and a capable Web Application Firewall. And yet, StackPath is still very usable by even the greenest of CDN newbies. A straightforward web console helps manage your projects, and there's plenty of online help if you get stuck.
Pricing starts very simply, too, at a flat $27.50 a month for 1TB of traffic from anywhere (no complicated per-continent charging.) This is for a relatively basic service (24/7 costs extra, for instance), but it does give you an easy and cheap way to test StackPath, and find out if it's the right CDN for you.
5. AKAMAI
A powerful CDN greatly suited for Professional.
REASONS TO BUY
+Impressive coverage
+Powerful video and image optimization
REASONS TO AVOID
-Not beginner-friendly
-Opaque pricing.
Veteran CDN provider Akamai claims to have 'the world’s most distributed platform for cloud computing, security, and content delivery', and with more than 4,200 locations spread across 130 countries, it probably has a point.
Factor in leading-edge features such as video and image optimization, and it's no surprise that Akamai counts some of the biggest corporations around amongst its customer list: Adobe, Airbnb, Coca-Cola, Honda, Marriott, PayPal, WarnerMedia, the Washington Post, and many more.
This focus on power and functionality could be a problem for newbies. Akamai assumes its users have some background knowledge and experience of CDNs and networking, and although there's plenty of documentation to help you figure it out, this is still more complex to use than some of the competition.
Performance isn't always leading edge (as we write, Akamai is ranked 12th on CDNPerf's worldwide speed charts.) But it does excel in some areas, especially media services, allowing the likes of NBC Sports Network to deliver broadcast quality video on its live streams.
Pricing is a bit tricky, as there are no standard plans, and you must contact the sales team directly to get a quote. But it's easy to do this via live chat, email or phone, and the website indicates that you sample Akamai's abilities with a free trial.
