Cloudflare is one of the premier content delivery networks (CDNs) in the world. It provides a gamut of cloud-based solutions for website owners and network administrators. This includes distributed DNS service, reverse proxies, automatic caching, and SSL offloading.
However, the service can face certain outages at times, affecting platforms like Discord, Medium, etc. If you have faced such an issue, you are probably looking for CDN services similar to Cloudflare. If that’s the case, here are 13 Cloudflare alternatives you can try.
1. Fastly
If you are looking for a reliable alternative to Cloudflare in terms of performance and security, I would strongly recommend Fastly. It does not offer a free tier like Cloudflare, but there is a free trial where you can test up to $50 of traffic for free. After that, you can choose to pay based on your bandwidth or move to Essential and higher plans.
Talking about the capabilities, Fastly has a global network capacity of 215Tbps and serves more than 1.4 trillion requests daily. Its WAF (Web Application Firewall) is one of the best in the industry and rivals Cloudflare’s WAF protection. In fact, according to Fastly, its WAF protection is so good that 90% of its customers use WAF in full blocking mode without having to worry about blocking users.
In addition to WAF, you also have API protection, DDoS mitigation, Bot protection, security against advanced threats like account takeover (ATO), etc. Fastly’s CDN service is also good and offers a fully-configurable CDN network with support for flexible load balancing. To sum up, if you are looking for the best Cloudflare alternative that brings a top-notch CDN and high-grade security, I think Fastly is one of the best solutions out there.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Incredible network capacity | Slightly expensive |
| Protection against DDoS, bots, account takeover | |
| Configurable CDN |
Check out Fastly (Free trial, contact sales for pricing)
2. Akamai
One of the oldest CDNs around, Akamai, is a reliable alternative to Cloudflare and can stack up against Cloudflare in every department. Its Intelligent Edge Platform is one of the best in the industry and that’s why most popular websites pick Akamai over other competitors. Just like Cloudflare’s Zero-trust network access, Akamai brings Zero trust segmentation technology to stop ransomware from taking hostage of your website or critical assets on the cloud. Its threat intelligence firewall can detect breaches with superb reputation-based analysis and dynamic deception technology.
If you want protection from DDoS attacks, you can pick Akamai’s 6th-gen Prolexic security solution, which is basically its WAF and API protection plan. It can mitigate DDoS attacks at scale – that too in an efficient manner. You can also take a look at Kona Site Defender, which provides automated web application and API protection with top-tier intelligent security. Overall, Akamai is a tried-and-tested CDN service provider having ironclad security and you can’t go wrong with it.
Pros Cons Lots of products to choose from Proactive bot detection, but leads to false positives Zero trust segmentation Prolexic security for DDoS protection More than 300 servers worldwide
Check out Akamai (Free trial, Price available on request)
3. Amazon CloudFront (AWS)
If you want a service like Cloudflare that combines the CDN service and security under a balanced plan, Amazon’s CloudFront is a great pick for web admins. It’s one of the best CDNs around when it comes to low-latency content delivery. Backed by Amazon’s powerful AWS infrastructure, CloudFront uses more than 410 Points of Presence (PoP) to reduce latency and deliver data with help of intelligent routing and network mapping.
In addition, you get AWS Shield Standard to protect your web service against DDoS attacks. Mind you, the company does not charge you extra for enhancing security which is pretty good.
If you are worried about moving your website to AWS, be assured, you just need to customize the code at the AWS CDN and everything will be ready. To conclude, Amazon CloudFront has a massive infrastructure behind its back and can handle traffic surges more efficiently than other CDN providers. If it fills your bill, you can pick Amazon CloudFront in place of Cloudflare.
Pros Cons Great for AWS customers As the network scales, the cost increases significantly Built on massive AWS infrastructure AWS Shield to protect against DDoS
Check out Amazon CloudFront (Free up to 1TB of data, Pricing for premium tiers depends on region and volume)
4. Indusface
Indusface is another reliable alternative to Cloudflare, having one of the best WAF protection solutions. With Indusface AppTrana, you can secure web apps and protect APIs using its risk-based mitigation policies. It can perform automated API detection to discover OWASP Top 10 API threats and protect against API-specific DDoS, bot, and spam attacks. The best thing about Indusface is that it can also find undocumented APIs, so network administrators are aware of all the shadow APIs.
Apart from that, AppTrana identifies vulnerabilities in APIs via dynamic API scanning, which is further augmented by humans to ensure 100% protection. And like Cloudflare, Indusface can block massive DDoS attacks of up to 2.3 Tbps and can stop up to 700K requests per second to ensure your website and API do not slow down. Indusface also brings an automated DAST scanner to remove false positive results through manual verification and get support from security experts 24×7.
Not to mention, Indusface has launched MAS (Mobile Application Vulnerability) detection for pen-testing on multiple platforms, including Android, iOS, and Windows. You can also obtain powerful SSL certificates such as Standard, EV, UCC, and Wildcard for your apps using this service. Finally, Indusface is the only vendor to get Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice aware in 2022 and includes clients like Flipkart, TCS, Edelweiss, etc. To sum up, Indusface is an all-around CDN with top-notch WAF protection and you can surely consider it in place of Cloudflare.
Pros Cons API-specific risk detection and mitigation UI/UX can be improved Automated positive and negative security policy Protection from DDoS, vulnerabilities Mitigate OWASP Top threats MAS for pen-testing on mobile apps Strong support from the team
Check out Indusface (Free trial, Price available on request)
5. Imperva
Imperva is another alternative to Cloudflare that offers powerful network security and CDN services. In fact, in terms of protection, I think Imperva is quite comparable to Cloudflare. Beginning with WAF, you can protect your application and APIs against DDoS attacks, Bot, and supply chain attacks. It also has low, near-zero false positives so you can run WAF entirely in blocking mode. For client-side protection, Imperva looks for suspicious JavaScript code, detects exploits, and prevents attacks such as digital skimming, formjacking, and Magecart.
Not to mention, Imperva has also been recognized as the leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant 8 times, so that is great. Besides that, Imperva resolves DNS queries efficiently and provides on-premise data security. Its CDN offers pretty good performance with support for content caching, load balancing, failover, and more. If you want top-grade security like Cloudflare, Imperva is another great option to pick in 2023.
Pros Cons Top-notch security and WAF CDN service can be improved Load balancing and content caching Prevents DDoS and advanced threats
Check out Imperva (Free trial, Price available on request)
6. Azure CDN
In case you don’t pay much attention to Microsoft enterprise services, you should know that the company is doing a solid job at CDN with its Azure service. Much like Cloudflare, Microsoft’s Azure also offers a scalable CDN network with support for media streaming and WAF protection. It can identify new and advanced threats using machine learning, behavioral analytics, and application-based intelligence. In fact, Microsoft is one of the largest corporations that actively invest in cybersecurity, so it has a huge number of security researchers who work on finding vulnerabilities and patching them.
With Azure DDoS protection, you can defend your website against the most sophisticated attacks by malicious actors. Its Adaptive threat intelligence quickly discovers and mitigates large-scale DDoS attacks before it slows down your website. You also get Azure Gateway Load Balancer, WAF protection against Layer 7 attacks, telemetry logging, and more. All in all, Azure CDN is a great alternative to Cloudflare, and you should definitely give it a shot.
Pros Cons Great for large organizations Might be expensive for small companies Defend against DDoS, Layer 7 attacks Large team of cybersecurity experts
Check out Azure CDN (Free trial, Price available on request)
7. StackPath
Earlier known as MaxCDN, StackPath is one of the popular CND services similar to Cloudflare. It offers edge computing on the cloud with 60% less latency than the competition, and the CDN service provides an 80% cache hit ratio. For protection, StackPath offers bot and spam protection and DDoS mitigation against Layer-7 attacks. Its threat intelligence is one of a kind, and that’s why companies like Valve (Steam developer), PBS, Bootstrap, etc. use Stackpath’s service.
One of the major differences between StackPath and other competitors is that StackPath server locations are available in major internet exchanges (so far 35 locations around the world) for providing faster performance even in dense areas. Simply put, if you want a no-frills CDN service like Cloudflare, go for StackPath without any second thought.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Strong bot and spam detection | Available only in popular markets |
| DDoS mitigation and can defend against Layer 7 attacks | |
| Servers in major internet exchanges |
Check out StackPath (Contact sales for pricing)
8. Google Cloud CDN
One of the biggest internet giants, Google, also offers a solid CDN service under its Google Cloud Platform service. With incredible reach and reliable infrastructure, you get the most out of Google Cloud CDN. It offers something called Anycast IP architecture that has caches peered with nearly every ISP out there, and you get a single global IP address for easy management.
Google Cloud CDN also supports modern protocols like HTTP/2 and QUIC to enhance performance on smartphones and deliver content far and wide, even in remote areas. You can also use dynamic compression to bring down the data size by 60%, so that is great.
And to offer a seamless experience with zero downtime, Google uses Cloud Load Balancing for routing the network. As for security, well, it uses Google Cloud Armor, its web-based application firewall (WAF) to defend against volumetric and protocol-based DDoS attacks. Not to mention, you can further configure Armor and enhance the security to protect against Layer 7 attacks. In totality, Google Cloud CDN is a great CDN service and a promising alternative to Cloudflare.
Pros Cons Optimized and data-saving delivery of content Support system is not very good Powerful Google Cloud Armor to defend against DDoS attacks Supports Load Balancing
Check out Google Cloud CDN (Free trial, Contact sales for pricing)
9. Sucuri
Sucuri is our next Cloudflare alternative that offers protection from malicious traffic and code injections. Earlier, it used to only provide website firewalls and security, but now, Sucuri also bundles a CDN service. The service offers a Website Application Firewall (WAF) and load balancing service in the form of CloudProxy. Sucuri also blocks DDoS attacks, SQL injections, and XSS JavaScript hacks, while allowing its customers to use custom SSL certificates with some of their higher-priced plans.
Sucuri also offers website monitoring, malware scanning, DDoS protection, and malware removal services. Unlike Cloudflare, Sucuri does not offer a free plan, but its basic paid tier is significantly cheaper than Cloudflare’s Pro plan and includes full website monitoring, CDN, website application firewall, DDoS protection, reputation monitoring, malware removal, and more. To conclude, if you want an affordable alternative to Cloudflare, Sucuri is a very good choice.
Pros Cons Affordable Cloudflare alternative Support is not good Malware removal and DDoS protection Supports custom SSL certificates
Check out Sucuri (Pricing starts at $9.99/month)
10. CDN77
If you want a cheaper and cost-effective alternative to Cloudflare, let me introduce you to CDN77. With a 90+ Tbps global network with PoPs strategically deployed all around the world, it has got you fully covered when it comes to handling large volume traffic and unexpected spikes. In terms of efficiency, it can match Cloudflare’s ability to handle huge traffic. Built-on advanced routing systems, CDN77 optimizes network routing daily eith the help of the latest data from real-time packet inspection as well as AI-based aberration detection technology.
Even on the DDoS protection and security front, CDN77 is considered up to the task due largely to the automatic detection and blocking mechanism. It comes with a proprietary DDoS solution based on DPDK, which helps it monitor traffic, keep a track of attacks and block them quickly. The service claims it can effectively block DDoS attacks in under 10 seconds. The reliable content protection coupled with a host of access management features including TLS 1.3, secure token, GEO/IP blocking, and hotlink protection makes it competent. But what gives it an edge over many rivals is the seamless integration with your business via a robust API.
CDN77 is trusted by companies like ESL (the organizer of top-tier CS:GO tournaments), Udemy, Banijay, ESA, and more. Everything considered CDN77 can stake the claim of being one of the best cost-effective Cloudflare alternatives in the market right now.
Pros Cons Cheaper alternative to Cloudflare Initial onboarding is a bit difficult AI-based DDoS detection, block under 10 seconds Offers robust API for integration
Check out CDN77 (14-day free trial, 6TB traffic plan is available for $199/month)
11. Tata Communications CDN
Though it’s not as popular as Cloudflare, Azure, or Amazon CloudFront, Tata Communications CDN is definitely worth considering if you are in the market for a service like Cloudflare. The Tata CDN offers an intuitive customer portal that allows real-time visibility and control over the CDN. The service further boasts fast page load times, making the user experience of your services easier, and lowering the bounce rate. Tata CDN is distributed over 30 Super Nodes, runs on a Tier-I ISP, and uses Hyper-Neural peering as well, for reliable and fast content delivery.
Tata offers both a website acceleration CDN service as well as a CDN for security. The acceleration CDN service supports dynamic site acceleration, and the high throughput architecture ensures fast file transfer. On the other hand, Tata’s CDN for Security offers scalable DDoS protection for your website, continuous risk detection, and security against attacks such as DNS Flood, Amplification, Protocol/Hijacking, Cache Poisoning, and more.
Pros Cons Supports whole site acceleration Support is weak Full and granular control over cache (both DNS cache and client cache) Offers DDoS protection, continuous risk detection
Check out Tata Communications CDN (Contact sales for pricing)
12. Netlify
Another Cloudflare alternative you should definitely check out is Netlify. The feature-rich service is quite well-priced and brings a plethora of supported features. You get a simple, and easy-to-understand dashboard for the management of your CDN, along with reports, logs, and more. What’s more, the service supports static and dynamic content caching, making your website perform much faster. Also, if you need it, you get the ability to purge the cache whenever you want to.
Though not really a CDN network, Netlify is distributed the way a CDN would be, and it’s quite useful for anyone looking to deploy their web applications with ease.
Pros Cons Static and dynamic content caching Support is poor Easy-to-use management dashboard Great CMS for small businesses
Check out Netlify (Free tier available, paid plans start at $19 per month per member)
13. Medianova
Whether you are looking for reliable content delivery or video delivery CDN services, Medianova is right there at the top. Medianova is one of the best CloudFlare alternatives, especially when it comes to the customer support aspect of it. Additionally, the CDN service is also known for the kind of reliability that it brings to the table. The kind of speed and seamlessly that Medianova has to offer is very hard to match. They have indeed set the bar pretty high with their CDN’s caching strategies, ultra-fast video-content encoding, HLS compatibility, and more.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Excellent speeds | Control Panel missing some features |
| Great support | User panels can be simplified |
| Smooth, even during peak traffic hours |
Check out Medianova (14-day Free Trial after which paid plans start at $49/month)
Best Cloudflare Alternatives for Different Use-cases
If you are just looking to find the best CDN like Cloudflare for a specific use case, here’s a breakdown of what Cloudflare competitor is best suited for different needs.
- Best Free Cloudflare Alternative: Amazon CloudFront
- Best Cloudflare Competitor for DDoS Protection: Akamai
- Most Reliable CDN like Cloudflare: Fastly
- Best for Real-time CDN Changes: Fastly
- Best for Protection Against Zero-Day Vulnerabilities and Attacks: Microsoft Azure
- Most Suited for High Bandwidth Content: Microsoft Azure
- Best for Recovering Hacked Website: Sucuri
- Easy to Use CDN Service: Fastly
- Smooth and fast CDN Service: Medianova
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
There are a lot of powerful, feature-rich CDN services out there. Whether you opt for Fastly, Akamai, Amazon CloudFront, Azure, or Imperva, they are all good CDN providers.
Akamai is the oldest CDN service out there, and it’s recognized as the Global CDN. Cloudflare, on the other hand, focuses on providing performance with security.
If you want to find the best DNS servers in 2023, head over to our article. And for remote access, you can follow our article on the best LogMeIn alternatives. Finally, if you know about some other CDN services like Cloudflare that you think should have been included in the list, let us know in the comment section below.
