CDN comparison
Edge vs Cloudflare
Cloudflare and Edge both charge nothing for bandwidth. The differences are in what you pay for instead, who runs the network, and how easy it is to leave.
Both: $0 egress
Cloudflare Enterprise$ ???Contact sales
Edge Enterprise$499/mo, fromOn the pricing page
leave Edgechange one CNAME
keep your DNS provideryes
The short version
Where each one wins
Where Cloudflare is stronger
- A generous free plan that doesn't meter requests
- A huge platform beyond CDN: Workers, WAF, Zero Trust and more
- Edge compute with Workers, available today
- A very large, well-known network with a big community
Where Edge is different
- Enterprise pricing published from $499/month, no sales call needed
- Every feature on every plan, including the free tier
- A decentralised network with no single operator
- Standard DNS and APIs, so leaving is a CNAME change
Feature by feature
Edge and Cloudflare, side by side
| Cloudflare | ||
|---|---|---|
| Egress | Free | Free |
| Edge locations | 988 | 300+ cities |
| Free tier | 500k requests, all features | Free plan, features by tier |
| Instant purge | ||
| DDoS protection | Included | Included |
| HTTP/3 | ||
| Real-time analytics | ||
| Free SSL | ||
| Password protection | Included | Paid add-on |
| Enterprise pricing | Published | Quote required |
| Decentralised | ||
| Vendor lock-in | None | Moderate |
Competitor details from their public pricing and product pages. Tell us if something's changed.
When to choose Edge
Edge is the better fit when…
You want to know enterprise costs upfront
Edge's volume pricing, SLA and account management are on the pricing page. Budget without waiting for a quote.You'd rather not move your DNS
Edge works with a CNAME at any DNS provider. Your nameservers stay where they are.You value resilience
Edge runs on independent operators rather than a single company's data centres, so there's no single point of failure.
Switching
Moving from Cloudflare without downtime
- 01
Create a deployment
Point Edge at the origin Cloudflare proxies to today. Recreate page rules as Edge rules. - 02
Test on a subdomain
Serve a staging hostname through Edge and compare behaviour with your proxied site. - 03
Switch the record
Turn off the proxy for the hostname and CNAME it to Edge. You can keep Cloudflare DNS if you like.
FAQ
Edge vs Cloudflare, answered
Isn't Cloudflare free?
Its free plan is, and for many small sites it's excellent. Paid features and enterprise terms are tiered or quoted. Edge's free tier includes every feature up to 500k requests, then charges $0.25 per million with bandwidth still free.
Do I have to move my nameservers to Edge?
No. A CNAME at any DNS provider is enough. For root domains, use CNAME flattening or ALIAS records.
What about Workers?
Edge compute is coming soon. If your site depends on Workers today, Cloudflare remains the better fit for that logic.
How many more locations does Edge have?
Edge serves from 988 locations; Cloudflare lists 300+ cities. That's roughly three times as many, though location counts and city counts aren't measured the same way.
Zero egress, published pricing, no lock-in
Put a hostname on Edge with a single CNAME and compare it with Cloudflare on your own traffic.
Free tier: 3 deployments and 500k requests a month, hard-capped. Bandwidth is always $0.