BlazingCDN vs Cloudflare
Both networks put your files close to your users. The difference shows up on the invoice, and in how long it takes you to even get a price.
Our rate is printed on the pricing page. You can check it before you talk to anyone.
Cloudflare sells CDN as a subscription tier. Enterprise, the tier that carries heavy traffic, is widely reported to start around $5,000 a month as a platform floor, with your volume negotiated into the contract.
Or open the full pricing table and read the rate yourself.
Which one actually fits your traffic
We would rather lose the click than lose a month of your team’s time. Here is the honest split.
Pick BlazingCDN if
- You move video, game builds, updates or other large files
- Terabytes drive your bill, not the number of requests
- You want one rate across our regions, with no geo multipliers
- You want the price before the sales call, not after it
- You are adding a second CDN next to the one you already run
Pick Cloudflare if
- Your traffic is mostly HTML pages and API calls
- You want DNS, security tooling and CDN in one console
- Their security products are the reason you are buying
- Your volume is small enough that a flat plan is simply cheaper
Side by side
Pricing model
Per terabyte delivered
Subscription tier, Enterprise reported from around $5,000 a month
Published price
Yes. $5 down to $2.50 per TB in progressive tiers, the full table printed on the pricing page
Free, $25 and $250 tiers are published. Enterprise is not: it is widely reported to start around $5,000 a month and the rest is negotiated
Regional pricing
One rate across our regions
Depends on the contract you agree
Heavy video and large files
What the network is built and priced for
Video is handled by their separate video product
Time to a number
Same day, by email
Through their sales team
Why Cloudflare limits video and large files on the CDN
This is not our characterisation of their product. It is their own contract, under the heading “Content Delivery Network (Free, Pro, or Business)”.
“Cloudflare reserves the right to disable or limit your access to or use of the CDN, or to limit your End Users’ access to certain of your resources through the CDN, if you use or are suspected of using the CDN without such Paid Services to serve video or a disproportionate percentage of pictures, audio files, or other large files.”
Cloudflare Service-Specific Terms, Application Services. Last updated 2 June 2026. Read it on their site
What it means in practice
On the self serve plans, video and large files are meant to move through Stream, Images or R2, each billed as its own product. The clause sits under the Free, Pro and Business heading, so an Enterprise contract is a different conversation, and that conversation starts at the platform floor shown above.
Why we have no such clause
Heavy files are the traffic we are built to carry. Video segments, installers, patches and archives are not an exception to our pricing, they are the thing the rate per terabyte is for. See Video CDN, HLS Streaming CDN and Anycast CDN.
Tell us your monthly terabytes. We send back the number.
No account needed to get a price. One email, one answer.
Speed tests look similar on both networks. The invoice does not. Here is the same traffic, priced two ways.
Our lowest tier rate, on traffic above 1,000 TB. Billing is progressive: $5 on the first 5 TB, stepping down through the table to $2.50. The whole table is printed on the pricing page, today, before you talk to anyone.
Widely reported as the starting point for their Enterprise plan, per month, as a platform floor. Your volume is negotiated into that contract, not metered on top. The self serve tiers below it are $25 and $250 a month.
Run your own volume through it
50 TB a month
50 TB billed across the tiers, which works out at $4.30 a terabyte. With Cloudflare at this volume you are on a plan subscription plus whatever your content mix allows.
200 TB a month
Where most video and software teams sit. $3.83 a terabyte effective, and the whole tier table is printed on the pricing page. Nobody has to book a call to see it.
1 PB a month
1,000 TB billed down through the tiers, $3.32 a terabyte effective. On the other side you are past a $5,000 a month platform floor before your volume is even negotiated.
Our pricing is progressive, like tax brackets: $5 on the first 5 TB, stepping down to $2.50 on traffic above 1,000 TB. Figures above are the full monthly bill at that volume, taken from our published tier table and verified 28 August 2026.
The three questions everyone asks next
Cheaper means slower, right?
Test it on your own files instead of taking our word for it. Point one pull zone at us, compare, keep whichever wins. Our own numbers are on Performance Metrics.
Do I have to move everything?
No. Most teams move the heavy traffic first, video, builds and downloads, and leave the rest where it is.
What about my security stack?
Keep it. Teams run us alongside their existing provider and split traffic by workload rather than replacing the whole setup.
Keep it. Move the heavy traffic to us.
You do not have to pick a winner. Leave your pages, DNS and security where they are, and point the terabytes that actually cost money at a network priced for them.
- One pull zone, pointed at the origin you already use
- From $5 down to $2.50 per TB, published, no negotiation to see it
- Roll back by changing one CNAME if you do not like the result
Get your rate
Four fields. We reply with a written price for your volume, usually the same day.
We use this only to price your traffic and reply to you.
Splitting the traffic takes an afternoon
Create a pull zone
Point it at the same origin Cloudflare already pulls from. Nothing changes on your side.
Move the heavy paths
Video segments, installers, patches, archives. The paths that generate the terabytes on your invoice.
Compare one invoice
One billing cycle is enough to see the difference. If it is not better, change the CNAME back.
What the plan costs before your traffic is counted
We sell a rate. They sell a tier, and the tier that carries heavy traffic is the expensive part.
Where you start
$5 per TB delivered, pay as you go
Free tier, then Pro at $25 a month billed monthly
Mid tier
The same tier table. Your rate steps down as volume grows, with nothing to re-sign
Business at $250 a month billed monthly, $200 on annual
The tier that carries heavy traffic
$2.50 per TB on the top tier, and no platform fee at any volume
Enterprise, reported from around $5,000 a month as a platform floor, volume negotiated into the contract
Commitment
None. Monthly, stop whenever you like
Enterprise is a contract, normally annual
What gets billed
Delivered traffic only. Cache volume is never billed
Plan fee, plus whatever the contract defines
Cloudflare plan prices are their published figures. Cloudflare publishes no Enterprise price and no per-TB CDN rate anywhere, so the $5,000 figure is the widely reported starting point, not a quote. Verified 28 August 2026.
CDN feature by feature
Static files, downloads, images and APIs. Everything on our side is taken from our product documentation, and we have left in the rows where they are ahead.
Routing
Anycast with built in failover. 50+ signals weighed per request, routes re-evaluated in real time
Anycast across their global network
Cache control
TTL up to 365 days, a separate TTL per HTTP status code, minimum requests to cache from 1 to 10, inherit or ignore origin headers
Cache rules on all plans, quantities vary by tier
Per-path rules
Locations: a rule set matched to an HTTP route, so different parts of one resource get different delivery settings. Extension proxying, URL parameter truncation, HLS and DASH handling and image processing, all per path
Rules and Cache Rules do the same job, matched by expression rather than by route
Purge
By path, in bulk, or total purge in one action. Plus cache warm-up through the API before a release
Purge by URL, hostname, tag and prefix, on every plan including Free; rate limits vary
Origin Shield
Included. Automatic, or pinned to a region you choose
Tiered cache included free on all plans; custom topologies on Enterprise
Compression
gzip, Brotli and zstd. At the edge or at origin, with a separate cache per encoding
gzip, Brotli and zstd
Delivery speed control
A download speed cap you set per account, per domain or per URL, plus rate matched delivery so one big file does not take the whole pipe. Request intensity limits per client or subnet on top of that
Rate limiting rules count requests, not bytes. Capping the actual delivery speed means writing it yourself in a Worker
Signed URLs
Validity window, signature bound to a client IP, a limit of 1 to 5 unique IPs per link, two secrets for rotation, partial path signing and URL encryption
Signed URLs and token authentication, depending on the tier
Country and IP lists
Country allowlist or blocklist, IP allowlist or blocklist with mask support, referrer allow and deny lists and cookie checks. Set per resource, with no security plan to buy
IP Access Rules cover country and IP allow or deny on all plans; expression-based rules sit on paid tiers
Security stack
Their round
Access control only, as in the two rows above. No WAF, no bot management, no Zero Trust, and we do not claim any
WAF, bot management, rate limiting and Zero Trust. This is the reason to buy Cloudflare
Certificates
Let’s Encrypt at no extra charge, renewed automatically. Upload your own, in bulk, auto-assigned to matching domains
Universal SSL on every plan, custom certificates from Business up
Origins and import
HTTP(S), S3, Swift, Wasabi and S3 compatible buckets, FTP, SFTP, rclone and rsync. Pull or push, pre-import or lazy, with a callback on the result
HTTP origins, or R2 and their own storage products
Image processing
One file at origin, every variant from a query string on your own domain. Variants are cached like any other file and cost nothing extra
Cloudflare Images, a separate product billed per image and per delivery
Logs and metrics
A Prometheus endpoint, Grafana, Alertmanager and OpenTelemetry on every account. Raw JSON logs for Graylog or ELK as a $50 a month add-on
Analytics on every plan, raw log push on Enterprise
Running it from an agent
One MCP server, 52 typed tools: pull zones, cache and purge, metrics, domains and certificates, Cloud Storage and Video CDN. Read-only by default, with cache purge and warm-up; create and update are opt-in; deletes are a second opt-in limited to custom domains and Video CDN resources, and deleting pull zones, buckets or accounts is not implemented at all. Public on npm as @blazingcdn/mcp
Full REST API and a Terraform provider. Their MCP surface is 16 product servers covering Workers, DNS analytics, Radar, logs, browser rendering and docs. None of them configures the CDN
Our column is taken from our own product documentation. The Cloudflare column describes their publicly documented products and tier availability, verified 28 August 2026. They change this from time to time, so check before you decide.
Video: the two products are not the same shape
Read this part before the table, otherwise the comparison is misleading. Cloudflare Stream is a video platform: it ingests, transcodes, packages, stores and plays. Our Video CDN is a delivery layer: you bring packaged HLS or DASH from your own encoder and we move it. If you do not run an encoder today, Stream does more for you. If you already run one, you are paying for it twice.
BlazingCDN Video CDN
A delivery layer. Your encoder or media server produces HLS or DASH, we cache and deliver it worldwide and bill you per terabyte.
Cloudflare Stream
A whole platform. Ingest, transcoding, packaging, storage, a player and delivery in one product, billed by the minute.
A minute of video, converted into a terabyte
Stream charges about $1 for every 1,000 minutes delivered. A minute is not a unit you can compare, so convert it. How many gigabytes 1,000 minutes weigh depends only on your bitrate.
1,000 minutes weigh about 22 GB
1,000 minutes weigh about 37 GB
1,000 minutes weigh about 60 GB
The same terabyte costs $5 to $2.50 here, about $3.32 at a petabyte a month.
Be fair about what you are buying: their minute also pays for transcoding, storage and a player. Ours is delivery only. The comparison holds when you already run an encoder, which most streaming teams do.
Video feature by feature
Encoding and transcoding
Their round
Not included, by design. Bring your own encoder or media server. Red5 Pro and Ant Media are documented and tested
Included. Upload a file and it is transcoded and packaged for you
Player and live ingest
Their round
Bring your own player, any HLS or DASH one. Ingest stays with your media server
Embeddable player included, live ingest over RTMP or SRT
How you are billed
Per terabyte delivered, on progressive tiers from $5 down to $2.50. Nothing per minute, nothing per view
Per minute stored and per minute delivered. Roughly $17 to $44 a terabyte depending on bitrate
Formats delivered
HLS in .ts or .m4s containers, MPEG-DASH, and Microsoft Smooth Streaming for the legacy players you still have to serve
HLS and DASH, produced by their own pipeline
Chunk and start-up control
Chunks of 2, 4, 5, 10 or 30 seconds, keyframe aligned. First chunks pre-cached so playback starts fast, and initial buffer tuning for .mp4
Decided by their encoding pipeline, not exposed to you
Clipping and tracks
Clip to the millisecond at delivery time, stitch several clips into one stream, and pick audio and video tracks per request
Clipping through their API on stored video, tracks fixed by the encode profile
Protecting a stream
Signed links bound to a client IP with a 1 to 5 IP limit, partial path signing, URL encryption, two rotating secrets, plus country, referrer and cookie rules
Signed URLs, allowed origins and access rules on their platform
Where the library lives
Your S3, Wasabi, FTP or our storage at $0.02 per GB a month, first 500 GB included. Three geographic copies, checksum validation, self healing after a drive failure
Inside their platform, billed per minute of video stored
Getting out again
Your encoder, your manifests, your storage. Leaving is a CNAME change, and nothing has to be re-encoded
The library sits in their platform, so leaving means standing up ingest and packaging elsewhere first
Rows marked “Their round” are the ones where Cloudflare Stream is genuinely the better tool. We have left them in because a comparison that we win on every line is not a comparison. Stream pricing and features verified 28 August 2026.
Six places where we win
Not opinions. Each of these is a line item you can check on an invoice or in a config screen.
$5,000 vs $0
Their Enterprise tier is widely reported to start around $5,000 a month as a platform floor. Ours has no platform fee at any volume, only the rate per terabyte.
Video by weight
Per minute pricing hides the real unit. Converted to terabytes, Stream lands around $17 to $44. The same terabyte here is $5 to $2.50 depending on tier, about $3.32 effective at a petabyte a month.
Cache is never billed
Cache volume is never billed. You pay for what left the edge, not for how much of your library is sitting on it.
Raw logs, no upsell
A Prometheus endpoint, Grafana, Alertmanager and OpenTelemetry on every account, raw JSON logs for Graylog or ELK as a $50 a month add-on. Elsewhere raw logs are an Enterprise line item.
Links bound to a person
A signature can be tied to a client IP with a limit of 1 to 5 addresses, signed on part of the path, with the URL encrypted and two secrets you can rotate.
Knobs a platform hides
Chunk length, keyframe alignment, pre-cached first chunks, millisecond clipping, track selection, and any origin from S3 to rsync. Delivery is the product, so it is all exposed.
And four places where they win
If any of these four is the reason you are shopping, buy Cloudflare. We would rather you read this here than find it out in month two.
- Security as a product: WAF, bot management, DDoS and Zero Trust. We do access control, not a security suite.
- Video without an encoder: they transcode, package and give you a player. We deliver what your encoder already produced.
- HTTP/3 and a far larger edge footprint than ours. We serve HTTP, HTTPS and HTTP/2.
- One console for DNS, Workers, storage and CDN. We are a delivery layer, not a platform.
Comparing more than one? See also CloudFront pricing, Fastly pricing and Akamai pricing, or start from our CDN pricing comparison.