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. But, due to frequent outages of recent, the service is experiencing numerous issues, affecting platforms like Discord, Medium, etc. Thus, many users are not satisfied and are looking for CDN services similar to Cloudflare. So, if you’re looking for a CDN service, here are 12 Cloudflare alternatives you can try.

In this article, we have curated a list of the top 12 Cloudflare alternatives you can use in 2022. We have examined security, their CDN service, and pricing details while compiling the list. On that note, let’s go ahead and find a suitable service like Cloudflare available at a reasonable plan.

Best Cloudflare Alternatives You Can Use (2022)

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.

Are you looking for a CDN service like Cloudflare with iron-clad security and top-notch performance? Well, Indusface AppTrana ranks among the best alternatives to Cloudflare. AppTrana provides dynamic application security scanning (DAST), Manual pen-testing, web application firewall, DDOS protection, & CDN in a single platform. Indusface has also been the sole recipient of the Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice award in all seven sections of the Voice of Customer WAAP 2022 report. AppTrana offers a pay-as-you-go model with a base offering starting at $99/month. They also provide a freemium offering where customers can enable comprehensive site security for free. 

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.

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.

Check out Akamai (Free trial, Price available on request)

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.

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 2022.

ProsConsTop-notch security and WAFCDN service can be improvedLoad balancing and content cachingPrevents DDoS and advanced threats

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.

ProsConsGreat for large organizationsMight be expensive for small companiesDefend against DDoS, Layer 7 attacksLarge team of cybersecurity experts

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.

ProsConsStrong bot and spam detectionAvailable only in popular marketsDDoS mitigation and can defend against Layer 7 attacksServers in major internet exchanges

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.

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.

ProsConsOptimized and data-saving delivery of contentSupport system is not very goodPowerful Google Cloud Armor to defend against DDoS attacksSupports Load Balancing

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.

ProsConsAffordable Cloudflare alternativeSupport is not goodMalware removal and DDoS protectionSupports custom SSL certificates

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.

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.

ProsConsSupports whole site accelerationSupport is weakFull and granular control over cache (both DNS cache and client cache)Offers DDoS protection, continuous risk detection

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.

ProsConsStatic and dynamic content cachingSupport is poorEasy-to-use management dashboardGreat CMS for small businesses

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.

  • What is the best CDN service?

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.

Like cloud storage services, CDN services are also a dime-a-dozen right now, and choosing between them can often pose a bit of a problem. With big names like Microsoft also jumping into the fray with its Azure CDN services, the space is only getting more competitive, and while we’ve already seen some amount of consolidation in the industry in recent times, it will be interesting to see whether an imminent shakeup is around the corner.