September 2026 Edition, published · The permanent record of that edition, superseded since. The current standing is on the category page →
Index › IT › Network and edge › CDN · September 2026 Edition

Content delivery networks

Asked as “CDN”, and as “content delivery network”, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. 46 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing · first-choice share
80%
Clear leader
80Cloudflare15Bunny.net02Fastly02others

80% of first choices, clear leader.

By buyer segment

The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment; they sit side by side and are never added together.

The standing

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all twelve models, for a mid-market B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01Cloudflare80%9%64endorsed leader
02Bunny.net15%5%43accepted challenger
03Fastly2%18%49accepted challenger
Show the five products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
08Akamai0%40%42criticized challenger
04Amazon CloudFront0%18%51accepted challenger
06KeyCDN0%6%16accepted challenger
05Google Cloud CDN Lab in the set0%5%19accepted challenger
07CDN770%0%11accepted challenger
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its product page.

Google Cloud CDN is made by Google, whose model Gemini 3.5 Flash is in the set. On the four share prompts that model made it the first choice zero times of 4; the other eleven models zero times of 44. Lab treatment is defined on the method page; the row is marked, not excluded.

One product takes 80% of first choices here, so the chart would put seven markers in one corner and one at the far edge. The two measurements it plots are columns in the standing above: share, and the negative label rate. One product carries a negative rate above 25% in this category.

What they warned about

Ten of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Llama 4 Maverick and Kimi K2 changed. A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
Akamai
40%
17 of 42 labels negative · 8 of 12 models · 3 hard negative
“Avoid jumping straight to Akamai or other enterprise-tier CDNs unless you have truly global enterprise needs” DeepSeek V4 Flash, paraphrase prompt
Amazon CloudFront
18%
9 of 51 labels negative · 8 of 12 models
“All major CDNs studied (including Cloudflare, Microsoft Azure, Amazon, and Fastly) have been found to have back-end TLS connections vulnerable” Claude Haiku 4.5, negative prompt
cdnjs
100%
6 of 6 labels negative · 6 of 12 models · 4 hard negative
“Public CDNs like Google Hosted Libraries, CDNjs, and jsDelivr, as they can pose security, privacy, and stability risks.” Llama 4 Maverick, negative prompt
Cloudflare
9%
6 of 64 labels negative · 6 of 12 models · 1 hard negative
“Cloudflare's CDN, as it may slow down your website, and pointing your DNS to Cloudflare can make timely recovery unlikely in case of an outage.” Llama 4 Maverick, negative prompt

What they cite

Twelve of the twelve models returned a source list in this edition: four return the pages they cited and eight the search results they consulted.

Sites the answers cite

61 of 72 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 757 links across 217 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

vendor site · BlazingCDN46 answers · 106 citations · 11 models
vendor site · Fastly27 answers · 34 citations · 12 models
21 answers · 21 citations · 11 models
vendor site · LinkedIn15 answers · 15 citations · 8 models
14 answers · 20 citations · 7 models
13 answers · 13 citations · 8 models
vendor site · EdgeNext12 answers · 13 citations · 7 models
12 answers · 13 citations · 6 models
10 answers · 10 citations · 5 models
9 answers · 17 citations · 6 models
vendor site · Cloudflare9 answers · 11 citations · 5 models
9 answers · 9 citations · 6 models

Pages the answers cite

The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.

Search against answers

Each company's standing in the answers beside its site's footprint in Google search, one row a site: the products the models named on it with their shares, and the share they add up to; monthly searches on Google, and DataForSEO's estimate of AI search demand (modeled from search signals, directional, not a count of queries to any assistant), for the most-searched of the company's and its products' names (the name is in each row's hover text); estimated monthly organic visits to the site; and its best position in Google's top ten for “best cdn”, “cdn”, “cdns”. US estimates from DataForSEO and Google's Ads Transparency Center. A small company's site, or a mid-sized company's site for its flagship, is marked company; a product on a large parent's site (Google, Microsoft) has no site figures. A column with no figures for this category is left out, and an empty cell means none were seen, not none exist. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
Company and productsShareOwn site citedName searches, GoogleAI search demand, est.Organic visitsPaid search a month, est.Google ads, last 30 daysBest Google position
Cloudflare cloudflare.com80%421550,00010,8974,995,4131111
Bunny.net bunny.net15%1091,3004422,08343
Fastly fastly.com2%14818,100950107,961$2,4601201
jsDelivr jsdelivr.com2%152,90068155,279
Amazon aws.amazon.com
Amazon CloudFront 0%
0%153151,000,0001,380,9399,238,321$20,4763
Google Cloud google.dev
Google Cloud CDN 0%, Google Media CDN 0%
0%54165,0007,596881,346109
KeyCDN keycdn.com0%5539010256,464
CDN77 cdn77.com0%2148032,0935
Gcore gcore.com0%241,6004423,5249
Akamai akamai.com0%14227,1001,614474,820$2,159807

Google's top ten for the three searches hold 21 sites; 5 of them are among the sites the models cited here (broadbandnow.com, cloudflare.com, fastly.com, reddit.com, wpforms.com). The first result for “best cdn” is fastly.com.

How they answered

Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
ShowHide
ModelDirect“What is the best CDN for a mid-market B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which content delivery network would you recommend to a mid-sized B2B company?”Comparative“What are the top CDNs and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best CDN for a company with a limited budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 500 person company evaluating a CDN. What should we look at?”Negative“Which CDNs should I avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5Cloudflare
Three alternativesAkamai, Amazon CloudFront, Fastly
CloudflareHeld
Three alternativesAkamai, Amazon CloudFront, Bunny.net
Cloudflare
Seven alternativesAkamai, Amazon CloudFront, Azure CDN, Bunny.net, CDN77, Gcore, KeyCDN
Cloudflare, jsDelivr
Three alternativesBunny.net, Gcore, KeyCDN
no first choiceagainst: Akamai, Amazon CloudFront, Cloudflare, Fastly, Microsoft Azure
GPT-5.4 miniCloudflare
Three alternativesAkamai, Amazon CloudFront, Fastly
CloudflareHeld
Three alternativesAkamai, Amazon CloudFront, Fastly
no first choice
Six alternativesAkamai, Amazon CloudFront, Cloudflare, Fastly, Google Cloud CDN, Microsoft Azure CDN / Front Door
Cloudflare
One alternativeBunny.net
against: Fastly
no first choicenothing named
Gemini 3.5 FlashCloudflare
Three alternativesAmazon CloudFront, CDN77, Fastly
CloudflareHeld
Two alternativesAmazon CloudFront, Fastly
against: Akamai, Bunny.net, KeyCDN
Cloudflare
Four alternativesAkamai, Amazon CloudFront, Bunny.net, Fastly
Cloudflare
Three alternativesAmazon CloudFront, Bunny.net, Gcore
Cloudflare
Four alternativesAmazon CloudFront, Azure Front Door, Bunny.net, Fastly
against: Akamai, Alibaba Cloud CDN, Amazon CloudFront, Azure CDN, Azure Front Door, Baidu Cloud, CDNetworks, Edgio, Google Cloud CDN, StackPath, Tencent Cloud CDN, cdnjs, jsDelivr, unpkg
Perplexity SonarCloudflare
Four alternativesAkamai, Amazon CloudFront, CDN77, Fastly
CloudflareHeld
Four alternativesAmazon CloudFront, Bunny.net, Fastly, KeyCDN
Cloudflare
Four alternativesAkamai, Amazon CloudFront, Fastly, Google Cloud CDN
Bunny.net, Cloudflare
One alternativeKeyCDN
no first choicenothing named
Grok 4.20Cloudflare
Four alternativesAmazon CloudFront, Bunny.net, CDN77, Fastly
against: Akamai
CloudflareHeld
One alternativeAmazon CloudFront
against: Akamai
Cloudflare
Four alternativesAkamai, Amazon CloudFront, Fastly, Google Cloud CDN
Cloudflare
One alternativeBunny.net
Cloudflare
Three alternativesAmazon CloudFront, Bunny.net, Fastly
against: Akamai
against: Akamai, Amazon CloudFront, Azure CDN, Cloudflare, Fastly, Google Hosted Libraries, Imperva, cdnjs, jsDelivr, unpkg
Mistral SmallCloudflare
Three alternativesAmazon CloudFront, Bunny.net, CDN77
CloudflareHeld
One alternativeFastly
against: Akamai
Cloudflare
Four alternativesAkamai, Amazon CloudFront, Fastly, Google Cloud CDN
Cloudflare
Two alternativesBunny.net, jsDelivr
no first choiceagainst: BootCDN, BootCSS, Google Hosted Libraries, Polyfill.io, Staticfile, cdnjs
DeepSeek V4 FlashCloudflare
Three alternativesAmazon CloudFront, Bunny.net, Fastly
against: Akamai
CloudflareHeld
Three alternativesAmazon CloudFront, Bunny.net, Fastly
against: Akamai
Bunny.net, Cloudflare
Four alternativesAkamai, Amazon CloudFront, Fastly, Google Cloud CDN
Bunny.net, Cloudflareno first choiceagainst: Amazon CloudFront, BlazingCDN, Bunny.net, Microsoft Azure
Llama 4 Maverickno first choiceBunny.netChanged
Five alternativesAkamai, Amazon CloudFront, Cloudflare, Fastly, Google Media CDN
no first choiceBunny.net
Two alternativesBlazingCDN, Cloudflare
no first choiceagainst: Cloudflare, Google Hosted Libraries, cdnjs, jsDelivr
Qwen 3.7 FlashCloudflare
Three alternativesAmazon CloudFront, Bunny.net, CDN77
CloudflareHeld
Two alternativesBunny.net, Fastly
no first choice
Five alternativesAkamai, Amazon CloudFront, Cloudflare, Fastly, Google Cloud CDN
Bunny.net, Cloudflare
One alternativeKeyCDN
Cloudflare, Fastlyagainst: Akamai, Amazon CloudFront, LiteSpeed, StackPathagainst: Akamai, Amazon CloudFront, Cloudflare, Edgio, Fastly
Kimi K2Bunny.net, Cloudflare
Two alternativesCDN77, Fastly
CloudflareChanged
Three alternativesAmazon CloudFront, Bunny.net, Fastly
Cloudflare
Four alternativesAkamai, Amazon CloudFront, Fastly, Google Cloud CDN
Cloudflare
Three alternativesBunny.net, EdgeOne, KeyCDN
no first choiceagainst: Akamai, Amazon CloudFront, Cloudflare, Fastly, cdnjs, jsDelivr
GLM 4.7 FlashXCloudflare
Three alternativesAmazon CloudFront, Bunny.net, CDN77
against: Akamai, Fastly
CloudflareHeld
One alternativeAmazon CloudFront
against: Akamai, Fastly
Cloudflare
Seven alternativesAkamai, Amazon CloudFront, BlazingCDN, Bunny.net, Fastly, Google Cloud CDN, KeyCDN
Cloudflare
Three alternativesBunny.net, EdgeOne, KeyCDN
against: Akamai, Fastly
no first choiceagainst: Akamai, Amazon CloudFront, Cloudflare, Fastly, Microsoft Azure
MiniMax M2.5Cloudflare
Four alternativesAmazon CloudFront, Bunny.net, CDN77, Fastly
CloudflareHeld
Three alternativesAkamai, Amazon CloudFront, Fastly
Cloudflare
Four alternativesAkamai, Amazon CloudFront, Fastly, Google Cloud CDN
Cloudflare
One alternativeBunny.net
Bunny.net, Cloudflare
One alternativeFastly
against: Amazon CloudFront, Google APIs, Webflow CDN, cdnjs, jsDelivr, unpkg
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

The record

One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency.
Seventy-two rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
PromptModelVersion stringTime (UTC)SearchedSourcesLatency
Direct recommendationClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:53no05 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:11no04 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 09:45yes1222 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:11yes206 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 12:42yes3718 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:38yes54 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:58yes1519 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:33yes53 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:03yes555 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:29yes1529 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:33yes15230 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:17yes525 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:22no05 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 09:53yes44 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:04yes922 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 11:14yes203 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 12:35yes3515 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:10yes1411 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:26yes1012 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:23yes53 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:49yes931 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:08yes1527 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:07yes1025 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:19no011 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 13:57yes96 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:12no07 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:06yes928 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 12:45yes208 s
ComparativeGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 10:42yes1412 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:39yes55 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:26yes1014 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:47yes53 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:45yes518 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:37yes1023 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:17yes1025 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:41yes1552 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:02yes97 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:44yes35 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:27yes1421 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 12:41yes205 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 14:01yes199 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:25yes54 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 10:51yes1015 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:45yes53 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:43yes540 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:57yes517 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:08yes1476 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:31yes515 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:43no07 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:19no09 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:42yes829 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:58yes207 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 10:02yes1711 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:29no07 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:29yes1830 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:34yes53 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:41no038 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:42yes1024 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:55no036 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 10:54yes522 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:14yes1810 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 14:11no04 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:41yes2429 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:36yes208 s
Negative framingGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 11:37yes3819 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:51yes55 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:28yes1822 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:48yes64 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:34yes546 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:38yes2345 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 14:11yes2185 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:45yes531 s

Noise floor in this category

Flips between the edition run and its calibration repeat. Six prompts per model is a small sample; the index-wide floor is the number to trust.

ShowHide
Claude Haiku 4.5
2 of 4 flipped
GPT-5.4 mini
0 of 3 flipped
Gemini 3.5 Flash
2 of 6 flipped
Perplexity Sonar
1 of 4 flipped
Grok 4.20
1 of 6 flipped
Mistral Small
0 of 4 flipped
DeepSeek V4 Flash
2 of 4 flipped
Llama 4 Maverick
1 of 3 flipped
Qwen 3.7 Flash
3 of 5 flipped
Kimi K2
2 of 5 flipped
GLM 4.7 FlashX
1 of 4 flipped
MiniMax M2.5
2 of 6 flipped

Normalization in this category

Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.

ShowHide
Category-scoped readings
Amazon read as Amazon CloudFront
Unresolved, counted raw
Baidu Cloud
Google APIs
LiteSpeed
OVHcloud CDN
Webflow CDN
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.
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