Best CDN & Edge Software Pricing 2026

A CDN (Content Delivery Network) distributes your website's content across servers worldwide, so users load pages from the nearest location. This reduces latency, improves page load times, and handles traffic spikes. Modern CDNs like Cloudflare and Fastly also offer edge computing, DDoS protection, and web application firewalls (WAF).

CDN pricing ranges from free to usage-based enterprise pricing. Cloudflare offers a generous free tier with unlimited bandwidth. Bunny CDN starts at $0.01/GB (about $1/month for small sites). AWS CloudFront charges $0.085/GB for the first 10 TB. Fastly and Akamai are enterprise-focused with custom pricing typically starting at $500-$2,000+/month.

Cloudflare is better for most use cases—it offers a free tier with unlimited bandwidth, built-in DDoS protection, WAF, and Workers (edge compute). CloudFront ($0.085/GB) integrates deeply with AWS services and is preferable if your infrastructure is already on AWS. Cloudflare is simpler and cheaper; CloudFront is better for AWS-native architectures.

Hidden costs include: origin shield/pull charges, real-time log streaming fees, premium WAF rules, DDoS mitigation beyond included tiers, dedicated SSL certificates, geographic restrictions on pricing (Asia/Oceania is 2-4x more expensive), overage charges beyond committed bandwidth, and professional services for configuration and optimization.

Cloudflare's free tier is genuinely excellent for most websites—it includes unlimited CDN bandwidth, basic DDoS protection, shared SSL, and 3 page rules. It's sufficient for blogs, small businesses, and even medium-traffic sites. You only need paid plans ($20-$200/month) for advanced WAF rules, image optimization, Argo smart routing, or priority support.

Edge computing runs code at CDN edge locations worldwide, closer to users. Cloudflare Workers, Fastly Compute@Edge, and CloudFront Functions let you execute serverless code at the edge for authentication, A/B testing, personalization, and API routing. This reduces latency from ~100ms (centralized) to ~10ms (edge) for dynamic content.

Bunny CDN is the cheapest for video with its Stream service at $0.01/GB delivery and $5/month for 1TB storage. Cloudflare Stream costs $1/1,000 minutes stored + $5/1,000 minutes delivered. AWS CloudFront is $0.085/GB. For high-volume video (100TB+/month), Akamai and custom CDN contracts offer the best per-GB rates through volume commitments.

If your website has any international traffic, a CDN is strongly recommended. Even for domestic-only sites, CDNs improve performance, provide DDoS protection, and reduce origin server load. Since Cloudflare offers a free tier with unlimited bandwidth, there's no reason not to use a CDN. The performance and security benefits are immediate and measurable.

A hosting provider stores and serves your website from one location (origin server). A CDN caches your content across dozens or hundreds of global locations. CDNs don't replace hosting—they sit in front of your origin server to accelerate delivery. Some providers like Cloudflare Pages and Fastly Compute blur this line by offering full-stack edge hosting.

Akamai is the largest CDN (serving ~30% of global web traffic) with the broadest network and deepest enterprise features for media, gaming, and financial services. Fastly excels at real-time configurability, instant cache purging (<150ms), and developer experience with its VCL/Compute platform. Akamai for scale and coverage; Fastly for developer agility and real-time content.