Gcore
Gcore holds place 4 of 12 in our CDN providers ranking. The catalogue describes it as: luxembourg network with a zero-fee plan and one terabyte included.
Sebastiaan SmitsFounderA vendor never writes its own entry here, Gcore included, although paid placement exists; see the disclosure for how links are marked.
Visit Gcore See it in the CDN providers ranking
Key facts about Gcore
| Headquarters | Luxembourg |
|---|---|
| Best for | Teams wanting a zero-fee start with one terabyte included |
| API | Not stated in the pages we read |
| Pricing model | Pay as you go with no monthly fee, published; Enterprise custom |
| Free plan | Paid only, as far as we recorded |
| Deployment | Not stated in the material we reviewed |
What is Gcore?
Gcore is an infrastructure company headquartered in Luxembourg, with offices in Vilnius, Krakow, Belgrade, Nicosia, Tbilisi, Tashkent and Seoul according to its About page. It began as a content delivery and hosting business and now sells a wider catalogue: CDN, DNS, video streaming, edge functions, image optimisation, cloud compute, storage, GPU and AI services, DDoS protection, a web application firewall and colocation.
This page concerns the CDN, which pulls files from your origin server and serves them from points of presence close to visitors. Gcore says the network has more than 210 locations. The CDN plan is pay as you go with no monthly fee and one terabyte of traffic included each month. The company also operates a separate enterprise tier with custom terms for larger deployments and extra security options.
Gcore key features
- Global edge network. Gcore lists 210+ points of presence for the CDN, with additional locations available on demand for enterprise customers. Content is cached at the edge and delivered from the closest location to cut latency.
- Origin shielding and caching. A cache layer sits in front of your origin to reduce its load, and files can be prefetched before the first request or purged before their lifetime ends. Basic origin shielding is included in the pay-as-you-go plan.
- Image optimisation. Images are resized, compressed and converted at the edge while the originals stay unchanged. The pay-as-you-go plan includes 10,000 optimisations a month, and enterprise customers negotiate their own volume.
- Access control and request filtering. Rules decide who may request files, and a web application firewall can block malicious HTTP requests before they reach the origin. The pricing table marks the WAAP as an on-demand add-on, not part of the base plan.
- Per-file delivery rules. Options let you treat file types differently, for example caching images longer than HTML pages. HTTPS can be enabled with the free SSL certificate or a custom certificate.
- Reports and logs. Traffic, response codes and cache performance appear in the Customer Portal, with the same metrics available in Grafana. Request logs from the last three days can be viewed, and logs can be exported to external storage.
- Edge code and dedicated addresses. Custom code can run on requests and responses inside the CDN through the vendor's serverless edge product. Dedicated IP addresses, either reserved by Gcore or from the customer's own range, are also on demand.
Who Gcore suits
- A European online shop with a seasonal peak. Product images and static assets are served from the edge, with automatic image conversion shrinking pages. Pay-as-you-go billing means a quiet month costs little, while a sale month is metered per gigabyte above the included terabyte.
- A game or software publisher shipping large downloads. Gcore names software downloads and gaming assets among its target workloads. Origin shielding and prefetching reduce load on the publisher's servers on release day, and the company runs a separate DDoS service for game servers.
- A media company with video on demand. Gcore's streaming product sits on the same CDN, with encoding, hosting and a built-in web player. The pricing table lists free encoding up to 1080p and 5,000 free AI minutes, with delivery and storage metered per minute.
Getting started with Gcore
The vendor says you create an account, add a CDN resource, connect your origin and point your domain's traffic to Gcore. The sign-up promise on the product page is two minutes and no credit card, and the free monthly allowance applies before payment details are needed.
Step-by-step documentation covers the origin protocol, cache lifetime, HTTPS and access rules, and sales offers guided onboarding for larger deployments. Settings can be changed in the Customer Portal or through an API. Plan-specific limits and the time needed to learn the option set are not quantified on the pages checked.
What we make of Gcore
G-Core Labs S.A. lists a pay-as-you-go CDN column at no monthly fee, with one terabyte of traffic and 10,000 image optimisations included, and metered overage after that.
The plan carries only basic network-layer DDoS protection and email and chat support. The web application firewall, live streaming and a direct link to your origin are marked on-demand, so each is a separate conversation.
The CDN providers list places Gcore 4 of 12: the products next to it are CDN77 above and CacheFly below. From place 4 the established names follow in their ranked order; we publish no numeric score.
By headquarters, 4 of the 12 are established in Europe, as Gcore is in Luxembourg.
Where Gcore wins and where it does not
- G-Core Labs S.A.
- Marked in our records as image optimisation.
- Gcore is tagged Pay as you go in our records.
- Where it fits: Teams wanting a zero-fee start with one terabyte included.
- Marked in our records as 1 TB included.
- The web application firewall and live streaming are on-demand extras.
- Not for: Buyers who need phone support or a firewall in the base plan.
- Phone support is listed only for Enterprise.
Gcore pros and cons in practice
- One terabyte a month at no charge lets a small site run without paying, and overage is a flat EUR 0.01 per GB.
- A Luxembourg parent company gives a European contract partner, relevant for buyers who want an EU supplier.
- The CDN shares a console with DNS, streaming, edge compute and security, so extra services are an add-on, not a second vendor.
- Image optimisation is part of the base plan, which saves a separate image service for typical web shops.
- WAAP, live streaming, private origin links and dedicated IPs are on demand, so a full security setup costs more than the headline plan suggests.
- Only basic L3/L4 DDoS protection and email and chat support come with pay as you go, with phone support reserved for enterprise.
- Certifications and log hosting region are not stated on the pages checked, so a security questionnaire needs separate documents.
- Request logs are viewable for three days only, so longer analysis requires exporting them to your own storage.
Paying for Gcore
In the catalogue: Pay as you go with no monthly fee, published; Enterprise custom.
The pricing page lists the CDN pay-as-you-go plan at EUR 0 per month, with 1 TB of traffic included each month. Traffic above that costs EUR 0.01 per GB, and requests above 1 billion cost EUR 0.75 per million. It includes basic origin shielding, 10,000 image optimisations a month, basic L3/L4 DDoS protection and 24/7 email and chat support. WAAP, live streaming, a direct private connection to the origin and BYOIP or dedicated IPs are on demand. Enterprise is custom priced, adds phone support and custom SSL. Prices exclude VAT, and the product page says discounts of up to 50 percent apply at scale.
We took this from gcore.com, the vendor’s own site, when we reviewed Best CDN Providers in 2026; that review is dated 5 November 2026.
Gcore: data and security
The company is based in Luxembourg and its master services agreement refers to the EU General Data Protection Regulation. The CDN pages do not name certifications, a hosting region for logs or a data export policy. Basic L3/L4 DDoS protection is included in the plan, and a WAAP and bot management are separate products. Security certifications are not stated on the product and pricing pages checked.
Integrations and ecosystem
Integrations the vendor names (12):
- Gcore DNS
- Gcore Video Streaming
- FastEdge serverless
- Gcore Object Storage (S3-compatible)
- Image optimisation
- WAAP
- DDoS Protection
- Grafana
- Log export to external storage
- Customer Portal API
- Origin groups
- CMS and ecommerce connectors (names not listed)
Gcore fact sheet
| Product | Gcore |
|---|---|
| Vendor website | gcore.com |
| Headquarters | Luxembourg (Europe) |
| Primary guide | Best CDN Providers in 2026 |
| Price visibility | A price or free offer is shown |
| Head-to-head pages | No comparison written |
| Rank there | #4 of 12 |
| Gaps in our records | user counts and financial results |
| Alternatives page | None yet |
| Catalogue tags | 1 TB included, Pay as you go, Image optimisation |
Also ranked in
| Guide | Position |
|---|---|
| Best CDN Providers in 2026 | #4 of 12 |
What to look at instead of Gcore
3 products in this guide come closest to Gcore on tags, pricing and region.
- Bunny CDN (#1 of 12): A good match for: Websites and download sites serving mostly Europe and North America on a small budget. (Slovenia)
- Amazon CloudFront (#10 of 12): AWS CDN with flat monthly plans or metered usage.
- Google Cloud CDN (#12 of 12): Not for: buyers who want a CDN without a load balancer. Google edge cache attached to a cloud load balancer.
Gcore FAQ
8 answersWhere is Gcore based?
Gcore contracts from Luxembourg, so it sits in Europe in our grouping. Country here means the contracting company, which can differ from where servers run.
Who should choose Gcore?
Teams wanting a zero-fee start with one terabyte included. It does not fit as well for buyers who need phone support or a firewall in the base plan.
How does Gcore rank for CDN providers?
Position 4 of 12 is where Gcore sits among CDN providers.
Is Gcore free, or what does it charge?
The pricing entry for Gcore reads: Pay as you go with no monthly fee, published; Enterprise custom. On free access, we found no free tier.
What else should I look at besides Gcore?
Start with Bunny CDN, Amazon CloudFront and Google Cloud CDN. All of them are reviewed in the same ranking.
Is Gcore CDN free?
There is a pay-as-you-go plan at EUR 0 per month with 1 TB of traffic a month included. Beyond that, traffic costs EUR 0.01 per GB. The vendor says no credit card is needed until you exceed the free allowance. Prices exclude VAT.
Does the CDN include a web application firewall?
The pricing table marks WAAP as on demand for the pay-as-you-go plan. The base plan includes basic network-layer DDoS protection, and the docs describe rules that can block malicious HTTP requests. Ask sales for the add-on price.
How fast can I get started?
The vendor promises sign-up in about two minutes without a credit card. You then add a CDN resource, set your origin and point your domain to Gcore. Larger deployments can get guided onboarding from sales.
Gcore: sources
Read from the vendor’s own pages on 5 November 2026.
- gcore.com/cdn: product description, 210+ locations, FAQ, free allowance
- gcore.com/pricing/edge-network: CDN plan table, overage rates, add-ons
- gcore.com/docs/cdn: CDN resource options, caching, logs, reports
- gcore.com/about: headquarters and offices
- gcore.com/legal: GDPR reference in the master services agreement
How we rank
We rank on what separates products after the demo: time to useful, the real price, the exit and who the product is for. The result for Gcore: #4, out of 12 ranked. Read the editorial process for the method and where paid visibility fits in.