CDN, DNS and edge security
CDNs deliver content near visitors; DNS connects your domain to your site.
Use for: Global content delivery, large files, domain routing and traffic protection.
Akamai's enterprise CDN and web acceleration product, sold by quote with a 100% availability SLA, paired with Edge DNS and Akamai's security products.
AWS's CDN with 750+ PoPs, sold either pay-as-you-go or as flat-rate plans from $0 to $1,000 that bundle WAF, DDoS protection, Route 53 DNS and no overage charges.
AWS's authoritative DNS at $0.50 per zone plus $0.40 per million queries, with latency, geo, weighted and failover routing and free queries to AWS alias targets.
Azure's anycast DNS hosting for public and private zones at $0.50 per zone per month, managed with the same credentials, billing and support as other Azure services.
Microsoft's CDN and global HTTP load balancer, $35/mo base on Standard or $330/mo on Premium with WAF, bot protection and Private Link included.
Slovenian pay-as-you-go CDN from $0.01/GB in Europe and North America, with a $1 monthly minimum, free DNS for up to 500 zones and an optional WAF.
Long-running CDN (23+ years) for media, podcasts, games and downloads, with a free 100 GB developer tier and committed plans from $300/mo for 10 TB.
European CDN built for video and large traffic volumes, with 200 PoPs, a $990/mo Growth plan for 250 TB and hands-on engineering support.
Reverse-proxy CDN with free DNS, unmetered DDoS protection and a WAF on a 330-city network, billed per plan rather than per gigabyte.
Managed DNS provider since 2010 with a free one-zone plan and anycast Premium plans from $2.95/mo that include failover checks, DNSSEC and secondary DNS.
Free, open-source DNS hosting run by a Berlin non-profit, with DNSSEC signing always on, a REST API, Terraform provider and global anycast.
The former DNS Made Easy, now sold by DigiCert: anycast managed DNS with a 100% uptime SLA and geo traffic routing, from $300 a year, plus enterprise UltraDNS.
Developer-focused DNS host and registrar with no base fee on Solo, $0.50 per zone per month, a full API, CLI, Terraform provider and ALIAS records.
Canadian managed DNS provider and registrar with anycast plans from $20 a year, including DNSSEC, GeoDNS, failover, dynamic DNS and bundled mailboxes.
Usage-billed programmable CDN known for instant purge, real-time logs and Wasm edge compute, with a free monthly allowance of 100 GB and 1M requests.
French registrar with 750+ extensions, LiveDNS anycast DNS with automatic DNSSEC and a full API, but a .com renewal near $38.
Luxembourg-based CDN on 210+ PoPs with a pay-as-you-go plan: first 1 TB free each month, then €0.01/GB, plus managed DNS and a separate WAF.
Google's CDN for content behind Cloud Load Balancing, billed per GiB from $0.08 in North America and Europe, with Cloud Armor for WAF and DDoS protection.
Google Cloud's managed DNS at about $0.20 per zone and $0.40 per million queries, with public, private and forwarding zones plus health-checked routing policies.
Free DNS hosting from German host Hetzner, now part of Hetzner Console and the Cloud API, with Terraform, cert-manager and external-dns integrations.
Free forward and reverse DNS hosting from backbone network operator Hurricane Electric, with IPv6, ALIAS and CAA records, dynamic DNS and slave zones.
IBM's managed authoritative DNS with filter-chain traffic steering, health checks and multi-CDN routing, from $99/mo with a 100% SLA.
Thales's enterprise cloud WAF with managed day-zero rules, L3-L7 DDoS protection, bot defence and a built-in CDN, sold by quote or through cloud marketplaces.
German registrar with over 2,200 extensions, trustee services for restricted ccTLDs, anycast DNS with automated DNSSEC, and a Terraform provider.
Free public CDN for files from npm and GitHub, running since 2012 on a multi-CDN setup (Cloudflare, Fastly, Bunny, Gcore) with 540+ points of presence.
Swiss pay-as-you-go CDN from $0.04/GB in North America and Europe, with no request fees, a $4 monthly minimum and every feature available on every account.
Small, developer-oriented DNS host with anycast on 22 PoPs, DNSSEC, unlimited queries and Git-based zone management with Lua scripting, from free to $29 a year.
German, BSI-certified provider of WAF, DDoS protection, bot management and CDN for critical infrastructure, with optional data processing only in Germany.
Large retail registrar with frequent first-year discounts, free lifetime WHOIS privacy and free DNS with DNSSEC, but a .com renewal well above cost.
US registrar that sells .com at the same price every year and bundles WHOIS privacy, SSL, Cloudflare-powered DNS and email forwarding for free.
WordPress-focused CDN from the LiteSpeed ecosystem that caches dynamic pages, with a free unlimited-bandwidth plan on 6 PoPs and a $0.02/GB global plan.
Cloud WAF and anycast CDN for websites from $9.99/mo, with virtual patching and DDoS mitigation, plus platform plans that add unlimited malware cleanups.
| Tool | Pricing | Free plan | Bandwidth | PoPs | WAF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Akamai Ion akamai.com | Paid | No | By quote | Not stated on pages read | Separate Akamai security products |
| Amazon CloudFront aws.amazon.com · EU | Freemium | Yes: 100 GB/1M requests plan, or 1 TB PAYG free | Flat plans no overage; PAYG from $0.085/GB | 750+ | AWS WAF included: 5 to 75 rules by plan |
| Amazon Route 53 aws.amazon.com · EU | Paid | No (DNS is free inside CloudFront flat-rate plans) | n/a (DNS: $0.40 per million queries) | Not stated on pages read | No (Resolver DNS Firewall for outbound queries) |
| Azure DNS azure.microsoft.com · EU | Paid | No | n/a (billed per query) | Not stated on pages read | No (DNS security policy for VNets) |
| Azure Front Door azure.microsoft.com · EU | Paid | No | $0.083/GB NA/EU first 10 TB, plus base fee | Not stated on pages read | Included in Premium ($330/mo) |
| Bunny CDN bunny.net · EU | Paid | No; 14-day trial, $1/mo minimum | $0.01/GB EU/NA; $0.005/GB Volume network | 119 (Standard), 10 (Volume) | Bunny Shield: free Basic, Advanced $9.50/mo |
| CacheFly cachefly.com | Freemium | Yes: 100 GB/month, 1 domain | $0.05/GB PAYG; $0.03/GB on Business | 65+ (Business), 80 (Enterprise) | Enterprise plan only |
| CDN77 cdn77.com · EU | Paid | No; free trial by arrangement | 250 TB for $990/mo; $3.96/TB overage | 200 PoPs in 130 countries | Not stated; DDoS protection included |
| Cloudflare cloudflare.com · EU | Freemium | Yes: DNS, CDN, SSL, DDoS, basic WAF rules | Not metered on Free, Pro, Business plans | 330+ cities | Free managed ruleset; full WAF from Pro |
| ClouDNS cloudns.net · EU | Freemium | Yes: 1 zone, 50 records, 500K queries | n/a (5M-500M queries by plan) | 65 anycast data centres (Premium) | No (DDoS-protected DNS add-on) |
| deSEC desec.io · OSS · EU | Free | Yes, fully free (non-profit) | n/a (DNS only) | Global anycast; count not stated | No |
| DigiCert DNS (DNS Made Easy) dnsmadeeasy.com | Paid | No | n/a (10M queries, then $5 per 1M) | Anycast; count not stated | No (DDoS-protected DNS on UltraDNS) |
| DNSimple dnsimple.com | Paid | No base fee on Solo; zones $0.50/mo each | n/a (50k queries/zone included on Solo) | Anycast; count not stated | No (multi-layered DNS DDoS defence) |
| easyDNS easydns.com | Paid | Unicast DNS free with domain registration | n/a (1M-10M queries/month by plan) | 3 to 4 anycast clouds; 15-26 nameservers/POP | No |
| Fastly fastly.com | Freemium | 100 GB and 1M requests per month | $0.12/GB NA/EU; $0.19-$0.28 elsewhere | Not stated; fewer, larger POPs (622 Tbps) | Next-Gen WAF (priced separately) |
| Gandi gandi.net · EU | Paid | ||||
| Gcore CDN gcore.com · EU | Freemium | Yes: 1 TB/month on PAYG | €0.01/GB to 500 TB; €0.005/GB above 2 PB | 210+ | Separate Gcore WAF product |
| Google Cloud CDN cloud.google.com · EU | Paid | No (new accounts get $300 credit) | $0.08/GiB NA/EU first 10 TiB; to $0.20 China | Not stated for Cloud CDN; Media CDN 3,000+ | Cloud Armor integration (billed separately) |
| Google Cloud DNS cloud.google.com · EU | Paid | No (Google states there is no free tier) | n/a (queries $0.40 per million) | Not stated on pages read | No (DNS Armor threat detection for VPCs) |
| Hetzner DNS hetzner.com · EU | Free | Yes, free; 25 zones by default | n/a (DNS only) | Not stated on pages read | No |
| Hurricane Electric Free DNS dns.he.net | Free | Yes, fully free | n/a (DNS only) | Geographically diverse servers; count not stated | No |
| IBM NS1 Connect ibm.com | Paid | No; 30-day free trial | n/a (30-80M queries on Essentials) | 26 anycast PoPs on six continents | No (DNS DDoS spike protection on Standard) |
| Imperva Cloud WAF imperva.com | Paid | No | By quote; AWS Marketplace plan billed per GB | Not stated on pages read | Yes, managed PCI-certified cloud WAF |
| INWX inwx.com · EU | Paid | ||||
| jsDelivr jsdelivr.com · OSS | Free | Yes, free for open-source files | Free; 5,000+ TB served per month | 540+ (multi-CDN) | No |
| KeyCDN keycdn.com · EU | Paid | No; $4/mo minimum usage | $0.04/GB NA/EU; $0.08 Asia; $0.10 Africa/LatAm | 60+ data centres, 40+ countries | No WAF; DDoS protection and bad-bot blocking |
| LuaDNS luadns.com | Freemium | Yes: 3 domains, 30 records | n/a (unlimited queries on all plans) | 22 anycast PoPs | No |
| Myra Security myrasecurity.com · EU | Paid | No | By quote | Not stated on pages read | Yes, WAF with optional managed service |
| Namecheap namecheap.com | Paid | ||||
| Porkbun porkbun.com | Paid | ||||
| QUIC.cloud quic.cloud | Freemium | Yes: unlimited bandwidth on 6 PoPs | $0.02/GB NA/EU; $0.08 Asia, LatAm, Africa | 78+ (Standard), 6 (Free) | WordPress WAF rules, CAPTCHA, L7 DDoS (Standard) |
| Sucuri Website Firewall sucuri.net | Paid | No; 30-day money-back guarantee | Not metered on the pages read | Anycast network; count not stated | Yes, cloud WAF with virtual patching |
No tools match these filters.
How to choose a CDN
- For a typical website, a free CDN plan with DNS and TLS covers most needs. Pay when you need a WAF with custom rules, image optimisation or large media delivery.
- For heavy bandwidth, compare the per-GB price in the regions your visitors are in; some providers charge more for Asia, South America and Africa.
- Standalone DNS providers are worth it for multi-provider redundancy or advanced traffic steering.
Questions
Is a free CDN good enough?
For most small and medium sites, yes: free plans typically include caching, TLS and basic DDoS protection. The table lists what each free plan includes.
Pricing changes
-
.com price to rise to about $11.81
Porkbun · source ↗
-
Price increase on 226 Identity Digital extensions
Namecheap · source ↗
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Bunny DNS drops query fees and becomes free
Bunny CDN · source ↗
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CloudFront adds flat-rate plans with no overages
Amazon CloudFront · source ↗
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Fastly moves self-serve accounts to a new free tier and usage pricing
Fastly · source ↗