Updated October 18, 2026 · DeployCue Editorial Team
Top CDN compared
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| # | Provider | Score | Features | Key facts | Actions |
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| 1 |  BytePlusTop pick Model: pay-per-use | 8.7/10 |
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| 2 |  SberCloud Up to 20,000 bonus rubles on registration: 20,000 RUB | 9.8/10 |
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| 3 | Akamai | 9.5/10 |
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| 4 | Alibaba Cloud SAS 2vCPU 1GiB promotional annual price: $9.9/year | 9.5/10 |
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| 5 |  Amazon Web Services AWS Business Support free trial: AWS Business Support at no cost for up to 60 days | 9.5/10 |
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| 6 |  Google Cloud Google Cloud Free Trial: $300 credit for 90 days | 9.5/10 |
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| 7 |  Amazon Web Services AWS Free Tier credits for new customers: $100 immediately, up to $100 more, up to $200 total | 9.4/10 |
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| 7 |  Cloud.ru (Sber Cloud) Up to 20,000 bonus rubles on registration: 4,000 RUB for individuals, 20,000 RUB for legal entities and sole proprietors | 9.4/10 |
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| 8 |  RackCorp | 9.4/10 |
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| 9 |  Timeweb Cloud Model: Pay-as-you-go per token, prepaid balance in RUB, 1 RUB/month base cost Free virtual server test on request: Bonuses credited to the account to create and test a server before payment | 9.4/10 |
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| 10 |  UCloud $5 account credit: USD 5 | 9.4/10 |
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| 11 |  Cloudflare Inc. | 9.3/10 |
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| 12 |  DigitalOcean New-user free credit: USD 5 for 90 days | 9.3/10 |
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About Top CDN compared
CDN buyers weigh fewer things than most cloud shoppers, and the trade-off running through this list is reach against cost per gigabyte. The ranking covers 98 providers, ordered on cost, offer and trust, with transfer rates, edge footprints, free tiers, support channels and legal entities in view. Entry pricing is kept apart from anything that follows it, because a cheap opening month says little about terms agreed at renewal. The spread is wide. The median entry price in this category is €4.38, the lower quartile is €3.51, the upper quartile is €6.95, the cheapest entry is €3.07 and the priciest is €20.90. Transfer pricing is tighter: the median sits at €0.04 and the highest reading is €0.13. Edge footprints decide who leads, with 324 locations at the median and 4,200 at the top. Buyers should match a network to their audience geography first and price second.
How we picked
Every entry is scored on three weighted signals, and the weights are fixed before the list is ordered. Cost carries 40%, what the plan includes carries 40%, and trust carries 20%. Price and offer therefore move an entry further than reputation, which suits a category where traffic bills change quickly and plans are easy to swap. Facts come from what each provider publishes: product and pricing pages, contact and support pages, legal agreements, and company register or encyclopaedia entries for founding date, headquarters and contracting entity. Site-wide figures are rounded, so a stat can read slightly differently from a provider's own invoice, while ranking figures come from the same set. Partner entries are placed ahead of scored entries. Partners that serve your country are listed first in this ranking, then the rest by score. Each brand appears once, and every member note names the fact that drove the position.
How we rankOur top picks
2. SberCloud: best for top-pickSberCloud opens this ranking on access and contact breadth rather than published transfer rates. It runs a free tier, is headquartered in RU, and reaches buyers through email, phone and chat, a mix that includes chat and phone alongside a help centre and community. Contracts run through a Russian limited liability company, which matters for teams that want a named counterparty on paper before traffic moves. For a CDN buyer, a free starting allowance combined with several ways to reach a person is unusual in a list where many entries offer documentation alone. UCloud, ranked directly after, has a longer operating history in HK but answers through email and help centre, so escalation is thinner when an edge misbehaves.
- Price per GB per month: RUB 814.68
- Egress price per GB: RUB 1.15
- Free egress: 10 TB of outgoing traffic per month
Pros
- Outgoing traffic includes 10 TB of outgoing traffic per month each month, so routine transfers cost nothing before RUB 1.15 per GB applies.
- A free tier plus bonus credits for individuals, legal entities and sole proprietors keeps early testing cheap.
- Evolution compute starts at RUB 23.75 with 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 30 GB NVMe, billed hourly.
- GPU capacity covers B300, H100, A100, V100 and A40 from RUB 240 an hour, billed per minute.
Cons
- Kubernetes has no free control plane, so every cluster adds RUB 2.98 on top of the node price.
- Infrastructure sits in RU across 9 locations, so there is no reach outside that market.
- Storage covers object only, so block and file tiers are not part of the same plan.
4. Alibaba Cloud
Alibaba Cloud sits in this ranking on a wide published network, 3,200 edge locations, paired with a transfer rate of $0.04 and a free tier. The legal counterparty is Alibaba Cloud (Singapore) Private Limited, and the company has traded since 2009, which reads well in procurement checks. Support through email, chat and help centre covers email, chat, a help centre and community, and there is no web application firewall in the base offer. Akamai Cloud (Linode), the member after it, approaches from a different direction: founded in 2003, based in US, contracting as Linode, LLC. Buyers needing many regions lean towards Alibaba Cloud's reach; buyers preferring a simpler supplier relationship weigh Linode's scale.
- Entry price: $4
- Entry plan: 2 vCPU, 0.5 GiB RAM, 20 GiB ESSD system disk
- Bandwidth allowance: 200 Mbit/s maximum bandwidth
Pros
- The entry server costs $4 and carries 2 vCPU, 0.5 GiB RAM, 20 GiB ESSD system disk, a clear spec for a modest monthly outlay.
- 31 locations cover Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas, far more than the 4 typical count here.
- Billing runs on monthly and reserved terms, and monthly is the pattern shared by 90.8% of the brands compared.
- Free credits sit alongside a free tier, so a project can run across products before any charge begins.
- DDoS protection comes with the compute plans, and object storage is S3-compatible with a free quota for internet egress.
Cons
- Support runs on email, chat and help centre only, and phone support is not among that list.
- Reserved commitments are the least common billing pattern, shared by 15.6% of the brands compared.
- The entry plan is small, with 200 Mbit/s maximum bandwidth, so transfer-heavy workloads need a larger plan.
6. Google CloudGoogle Cloud sits in this ranking because it publishes the clearest numbers a CDN buyer can plan against, and it also offers a free tier. Transfer runs at $0.02 to $0.20 across 202 edge locations, with the contract signed as Google LLC out of US. Two trade-offs come with that transparency: support is self-service through help centre and community, and there is no web application firewall in the base offer. UCloud CDN, ranked next, is the specialist comparison. It is a dedicated delivery product rather than a general cloud suite, covering 1,200 locations at a flat CNY 0.20, but it answers through help centre. Buyers who want edge scale lean specialist; buyers who want one supplier stay here.
- Control plane price: $0.10
- Free control plane: Yes
- HA control plane price: $0.10
Pros
- The control plane is free, and the paid tier sits at $0.10, close to the site median of €0.06.
- Scale headroom is large: clusters run to 65,000 nodes, well past what most managed offerings in the ranking allow.
- A free tier and $300 in free credits in credits cover early experiments before any spend.
- Egress includes 100 a month for North America transfers, which cuts the $0.12 per-GB rate for small-scale traffic.
- Footprint is wide, with 40 locations and 46 regions, so workloads can sit close to users.
Cons
- The control plane is free only inside the allowance, so sustained clusters bill at $0.10 for the standard tier and $0.10 for the highly available one.
- Egress is charged at $0.12 per GB once the free allowance is used, and traffic to Australia and China is excluded from it.
- Support runs on help centre and community only, so paid and phone channels are not part of the standard offering.
What to look for
- Entry price
- The opening number is what most buyers compare first. In this category the median entry price is €4.38, the lower quartile is €3.51 and the upper quartile is €6.95. Treat it as a starting figure and agree renewal terms separately.
- Cost per gigabyte
- A transfer rate decides the bill once traffic grows. The median here is €0.04, with €0.03 at the lower end and €0.13 at the top. Ask whether the rate changes by region or by volume tier.
- Edge footprint
- Coverage decides latency for your audience. The median provider here runs 324 edge locations, the lower quartile is 91.25 and the upper quartile is 2,525. Match the map to where viewers are rather than to the largest number on offer.
- Requests and egress
- Small-object and cache-miss traffic can outweigh transfer costs. The median request rate here is €0.18, median egress is €0.03 and the top egress reading is €0.11. Both lines belong in the model.
- Free tier and trial cost
- A free allowance decides how cheaply you can test delivery. 85.1% of the providers in this ranking offer one, against 14.9% that do not. Check the ceiling on requests or bandwidth and the rate that applies once it is passed.
- Included protection and support
- Edge coverage does not stop application attacks. A web application firewall is included at 68.2% of providers in this category, and a help centre is the most common support channel, 89.9%. Add phone and chat where incidents need a person rather than a ticket.
Frequently asked questions
How are the providers in this ranking ordered?+
Each entry is scored on cost, offer and trust, and the weights are fixed in advance. Cost and offer each carry more weight than trust, so a lower rate or a wider plan moves a provider further than its reputation. Partner listings would sit ahead of scored entries. Partners that serve your country are listed first in this ranking, then the rest by score.
What does a CDN cost at entry compared with renewal?+
Entry price means the opening figure a provider lists, and it is kept apart from later terms. The median entry price in this category is €4.38, with the lower quartile at €3.51. Renewal terms follow the contract you sign, so model the opening bill from entry pricing and later bills from the rate you agree.
Which providers here publish the widest edge networks?+
Coverage is the clearest separator in this ranking. Alibaba Cloud lists 3,200 edge locations, the widest network any member publishes, with ChinaCache on 1,500, EdgeNext on 1,500 and UCloud CDN on 1,200. Google Cloud lists 202, while Melbicom covers 39. Match the map to your audience.
Do any of these CDNs include a web application firewall?+
Not as listed. Google Cloud and Alibaba Cloud both publish a web application firewall outside the base delivery offer, so plan for it as a separate line if application-level attacks matter. Across the wider category, 68.2% of providers include one, which makes it a normal question to ask before signature.
How much support comes with a CDN plan?+
Channels vary more than buyers expect. A help centre is the most common route, 89.9%, with email close behind and phone or chat less frequent. Individual members differ sharply here: some answer by email and phone, others run on documentation alone. Confirm the escalation path before an incident, since a stalled edge is decided in minutes.
Can a CDN be tried before paying?+
Often, yes. 85.1% of the providers in this ranking offer a free tier, so a small site can be moved across and watched under real traffic before a bill starts. The remainder charge from the first request. Free allowances usually cap requests or bandwidth, so check the ceiling and the rate that replaces it.