People look for a Cloudflare alternative when a CDN purchase turns out to be a DNS decision, or when the jump from the $20 Pro plan to the $200 Business plan arrives before the traffic does. Most move to a delivery network billed per gigabyte, to a flat monthly plan from a cloud provider, or to a regional operator with a published rate.
Sebastiaan SmitsFounderShort answer: The first three alternatives to Cloudflare in our CDN providers ranking are Bunny CDN, KeyCDN and Gcore. Places 1 to 3 go to challengers, vendors outside the best-known brands in a category, wherever the category has them; the established names follow from place 4 in their ranked order. Choose Bunny CDN if you want a small published per-gigabyte rate and no DNS migration. All 11 alternatives below are ranked products from Best CDN Providers in 2026, and each says where it differs from Cloudflare.
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Cloudflare's documentation says a primary (full) DNS setup is the only one available on Free or Pro, and that it makes Cloudflare your authoritative DNS provider. A CNAME (partial) setup, which leaves DNS where it is, is limited to Business or Enterprise. A team that only wants caching in front of an existing DNS host therefore has to buy the $200 plan or hand over its zone.
The plans page lists Free at $0, Pro at $20 a month billed annually ($25 monthly) and Business at $200 annually ($250 monthly), with Contract quoted. The 100% uptime SLA is listed from Business upward. Between a hobby site and a business with a guarantee there is a tenfold step, and nothing priced by usage sits in between.
Cloudflare's service-specific terms let it disable or limit CDN use if you serve video or a disproportionate share of pictures, audio or other large files without its paid media services. Its cache documentation sets a 512 MB cacheable file limit on Free, Pro and Business, and 5 GB by default on Enterprise. A download or video business reads those two lines before signing.
| Alternative | Headquarters | Free option | Pricing | Key difference | Switch if | Our rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bunny CDN | Slovenia | No free tier | Pay as you go by region, published; 14-day trial | Per-gigabyte CDN with a one-dollar minimum and no request fees | you want a small published per-gigabyte rate and no DNS migration | #1 |
| KeyCDN | Switzerland | No free tier | Pay as you go by region with a minimum payment, published; 14-day trial | Swiss pay-per-gigabyte CDN with unlimited requests and three zones | you want request-free billing from a company that says it does not resell another network | #2 |
| Gcore | Luxembourg | No free tier | Pay as you go with no monthly fee, published; Enterprise custom | Luxembourg network with a zero-fee plan and one terabyte included | you want a zero-fee start with a terabyte included and are happy to add security separately | #4 |
| CDN77 | United Kingdom | No free tier | Flat Growth plan published; Enterprise quoted per organisation; trial | Flat 250 TB plan from a company run out of London and Prague | you ship hundreds of terabytes a month and prefer one flat figure | #3 |
| Fastly | United States | Yes | Free, Growth and Enterprise tiers; usage rates published | Programmable edge CDN with metered regions and a starter allowance | your engineers want to program caching and can accept metered bills | #7 |
| Amazon CloudFront | United States | No free tier | Flat-rate plans and pay-as-you-go rates, published | AWS CDN with flat monthly plans or metered usage | your origin already runs on AWS and you want a Cloudflare-style bundle at a flat price | #10 |
| CacheFly | United States | No free tier | Developer account plus Business and Enterprise bundles, published | Private CDN sold in monthly traffic bundles | you want traffic bundles with phone support and a sales-free starting tier | #5 |
| imgix | United States | No free tier | Credit bundles per month, published; 30-day trial | Image and video processing CDN billed in credits | images are the heavy part of your traffic and you want resizing from URL parameters | #6 |
| Azure Front Door | United States | No free tier | Base fee per tier plus metered transfer and requests, published | Microsoft CDN and load balancer with an hourly base fee | your workloads run in Azure and you want the CDN and firewall on the same invoice | #11 |
| Google Cloud CDN | United States | No free tier | Metered egress, cache fill and lookups, published | Google edge cache attached to a cloud load balancer | your backends sit on Google Cloud behind its load balancer | #12 |
| Akamai | United States | No free tier | Quoted per organisation; trial on request | Many separate delivery products, priced after a sales conversation | you run a large property and want a negotiated contract with one of the oldest networks | #9 |
Slovenia · Pay as you go by region, published; 14-day trial
A Slovenian operator that bills per gigabyte by region, with a one-dollar monthly minimum and no request fees. The Standard Network has 119 points of presence, the cheaper Volume Network only 10. It is a delivery network, so DNS, firewall rules and bot tooling are not part of the bargain.
Switch from Cloudflare if you want a small published per-gigabyte rate and no DNS migration.
Switzerland · Pay as you go by region with a minimum payment, published; 14-day trial
A Swiss service billed per gigabyte in tiers that fall with volume, with unlimited requests and three zones included. There is a $4 monthly minimum usage and a $49 minimum payment. Asia and Oceania cost double the North America and Europe rate. It caches and delivers, and does not replace Cloudflare's security suite.
Switch from Cloudflare if you want request-free billing from a company that says it does not resell another network.
Luxembourg · Pay as you go with no monthly fee, published; Enterprise custom
Luxembourg-based, with a pay-as-you-go column at EUR 0 a month that includes 1 TB of traffic, then EUR 0.01 per gigabyte. It lists 210+ points of presence. The firewall (WAAP) is marked on-demand rather than included, so the security side is a separate conversation, unlike a Cloudflare plan.
Switch from Cloudflare if you want a zero-fee start with a terabyte included and are happy to add security separately.
United Kingdom · Flat Growth plan published; Enterprise quoted per organisation; trial
Run by DataCamp Limited of London and Prague. The published Growth plan is $990 a month for up to 250 TB with every point of presence and $3.96 per TB beyond that. Nothing smaller is listed. Cloudflare's $0 to $200 range has no counterpart here; this is for a large, steady load.
Switch from Cloudflare if you ship hundreds of terabytes a month and prefer one flat figure.
United States · Free, Growth and Enterprise tiers; usage rates published
An American edge platform whose Full Site Delivery gives 100 GB and 1 million requests free, then bills bandwidth per region and requests per 10,000. Europe costs $0.12 per gigabyte on the first tier. Caching is controlled by configuration code, which is more work than Cloudflare's dashboard rules for a plain site.
Switch from Cloudflare if your engineers want to program caching and can accept metered bills.
United States · Flat-rate plans and pay-as-you-go rates, published
Offers flat monthly plans with no overage charges (Free $0, Pro $15, Business $200, Premium $1,000) that bundle DNS, WAF, DDoS protection and a TLS certificate, much like Cloudflare's bundle, plus metered pay-as-you-go. The uptime SLA and custom caching rules begin at Business. It is tied to an AWS account.
Switch from Cloudflare if your origin already runs on AWS and you want a Cloudflare-style bundle at a flat price.
United States · Developer account plus Business and Enterprise bundles, published
An Illinois company with a $0 Developer account (up to 100 GB a month, then $0.05 per gigabyte) and Business bundles from $300 for 10 TB. HTTP/3 and IPv6 are marked No on Developer. Terms allow fee rises of up to eight percent a year on 30 days' notice.
Switch from Cloudflare if you want traffic bundles with phone support and a sales-free starting tier.
United States · Credit bundles per month, published; 30-day trial
Not a general CDN: its pricing covers image and video processing and delivery, billed in credits from $25 a month for 100 credits. Storage, delivery and transformations draw credits differently. It replaces only the picture part of a Cloudflare setup, and leaves DNS, HTML caching and the firewall to someone else.
Switch from Cloudflare if images are the heavy part of your traffic and you want resizing from URL parameters.
United States · Base fee per tier plus metered transfer and requests, published
Microsoft's service has an hourly-billed base fee of $35 a month (Standard) or $330 (Premium) before transfer and request charges. The firewall and Private Link come with Premium only. A quiet site still pays the base fee, which Cloudflare's $0 plan never charges.
Switch from Cloudflare if your workloads run in Azure and you want the CDN and firewall on the same invoice.
United States · Metered egress, cache fill and lookups, published
Not stand-alone: Google's documentation puts it behind an Application Load Balancer. The bill adds cache data transfer out (Europe $0.08 per GiB at the first tier), cache fill and lookups, plus load balancer charges on a miss. Cloudflare's flat plans are far easier to forecast.
Switch from Cloudflare if your backends sit on Google Cloud behind its load balancer.
United States · Quoted per organisation; trial on request
An enterprise delivery network sold as separate products, with Ion for sites and apps. Its Ion page shows no price, and a trial begins with a form and a call from an Akamai team member. It suits a procurement process, not a credit-card signup like Cloudflare Free.
Switch from Cloudflare if you run a large property and want a negotiated contract with one of the oldest networks.
Cloudflare is still the right choice when you want the CDN, DNS, a certificate and DDoS protection from one account at a known monthly price. The plans page lists those items on every plan including the $0 one, and the other providers on this list sell most of them separately or not at all. It also fits a site of ordinary pages and images, where the 512 MB cache limit and the video clause never matter, and a team happy to let Cloudflare run its DNS. Stay unless your files are large, your DNS must stay put without paying for Business, or your finance team wants a rate per gigabyte.
If you run Cloudflare on a Free or Pro plan, it is your authoritative DNS, so every record lives there. Before pointing a hostname at another network, export or recreate the records at a new DNS host, lower the TTL, and change the nameservers at your registrar. Only then switch the hostnames to the new provider's delivery address. Skipping the order leaves a gap in which neither side answers.
Cloudflare's plans are flat; most replacements meter. Take one month of real traffic and run it through the per-gigabyte tables: Bunny CDN at $0.01 for Europe and North America, KeyCDN at $0.04 for its first 10 TB, Fastly at $0.12 above the first 100 GB. Add what Cloudflare gave you for the plan price, such as the firewall, DNS and certificate, and see which of those you must now buy elsewhere.
Page rules, cache rules and firewall settings do not travel between providers, so list them first and test each on a staging hostname. Keep the Cloudflare zone active but unused for a few weeks. If the new provider disappoints, flipping the nameservers back is faster than starting again.
Only on Business or Enterprise. The documentation says a CNAME (partial) setup is available on those plans, while Free and Pro support the primary setup only, in which Cloudflare is your authoritative DNS.
The plans page lists Pro at $20 a month billed annually or $25 billed monthly, and Business at $200 annually or $250 monthly. Contract pricing is custom and billed annually.
Bunny CDN states a one-dollar monthly minimum with all features included, and Gcore lists a EUR 0 pay-as-you-go column with 1 TB included.
KeyCDN has a $4 minimum usage but also a $49 minimum payment, so read its pricing page before assuming it is the cheapest.
Its service-specific terms say Cloudflare may disable or limit CDN use if you serve video or a disproportionate share of large files without paid services such as Stream or Images. Check the terms against your content before relying on the Free plan.
Amazon CloudFront sells flat plans from $0 to $1,000 a month with no overage charges, CDN77 lists $990 a month for up to 250 TB, and CacheFly sells bundles from $300 for 10 TB with overage billed per gigabyte.
It is a direct competitor in delivery, and we describe it as the vendor does: the Ion page shows no price and offers a trial through a form. We have not verified any Akamai figure beyond that.
Founder of The Knowledge Engineers and of 2 Steps Ahead, an AI search visibility agency. Editorially responsible for every page on this site; research and drafting are AI-assisted.
Written, edited and fact-checked by Sebastiaan Smits. Last reviewed 20 October 2026. How we review.
