BlazingCDN vs Google Cloud CDN
Google publishes everything, which is admirable. What is easy to miss is that a single terabyte of delivery is metered three separate times before it reaches your invoice.
Our rate is printed on the pricing page. You can check it before you talk to anyone.
Cache data transfer out, cache fill from your origin, and a charge on every cache lookup. At 200 TB the transfer meter alone is $9,684 against our $765. The lookup meter swings from $38 on 4 MB video segments to $3,000 on 50 KB web assets, and it is in nobody’s CDN quote.
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
- You want one meter instead of three, with requests and cache fill not billed at all
- Their transfer line alone is thirteen times our whole bill, before the other two meters
- You want one rate across our regions rather than a per-destination table
- You are adding a second CDN next to the one you already run
Pick Google Cloud CDN if
- Your origins are in GCP and it rides on the same load balancer you already run
- You want Cloud Armor, IAM and VPC controls on the same edge
- You have negotiated volume commitments or credits. Send us one month of invoice lines and we will price the same traffic against your actual rate, not their list rate
- Your objects are large, so the per-lookup meter stays small
Side by side
Pricing model
Per terabyte delivered
Per GiB out, plus per GiB of cache fill, plus per 10,000 cache lookups
Published price
Yes. $5 down to $2.50 per TB in progressive tiers, the full table printed on the pricing page
Yes, in full, at every volume: $0.08, $0.055, $0.03 and $0.02 per GiB as you grow. Above 500 TiB they also invite you to negotiate
Regional pricing
One rate across our regions
A per-destination table. At the same volume tier their cheapest and dearest destinations differ by roughly three to seven times
Heavy video and large files
What the network is built and priced for
Delivered on the same meters. Media CDN is a separate product with its own pricing
Time to a number
Same day, by email
Published, with a calculator. Both of us pass this one
The same terabyte, metered three times
This is not a hidden fee. It is all on their pricing page, and their own worked example adds up the same three lines.
“Cache data transfer out: $0.02-$0.20 per GiB · Cache fill: $0.01-$0.04 per GiB · Cache lookup requests: $0.0075 / 10,000”
“If you plan to serve a large volume of content from Cloud CDN (more than 500 TiB per month), you can contact us to discuss volume-based discounts.”
Google Cloud CDN pricing page. Checked 29 August 2026. Read it on their site
What it means in practice
Work 200 TB of North American delivery through it and the transfer meter alone is $9,684. Cache fill adds about $93 at a 95% hit rate. The third meter depends entirely on how big your files are: at a 200 KB average object it is $750, at 4 MB video segments it drops to about $38, and at 50 KB web assets it climbs to $3,000. Most people never model it at all.
Why ours is a single line
We bill delivered terabytes. Requests are not billed, cache fill is not billed, pull cache volume is not billed, purges are not billed. One number on the invoice, and it is the one you can predict. See the full tier table and Anycast CDN.
Tell us your monthly terabytes. We send back the number.
No account needed to get a price. One email, one answer.
The same 200 TB, two invoices
Speed tests look similar on both networks. The invoice does not. Here is the same traffic, priced two ways.
200 TB a month here, one meter, billed across progressive tiers from $5 down to $2.50. Requests, cache fill and purges are not metered.
The same 200 TB on Google Cloud CDN in North America: $9,684 of transfer, $93 of cache fill and $750 of lookups. Around 14 times ours, and Google bills in gibibytes rather than gigabytes, which we have accounted for.
Run your own volume through it
50 TB a month
$4.30 a terabyte effective, one meter. On Google Cloud CDN 50 TB in North America is $2,817 of transfer before cache fill and lookups.
200 TB a month
Where most video and software teams sit. $3.83 a terabyte effective against roughly $10,500 once all three of their meters are added up.
1 PB a month
1,000 TB billed down through the tiers, $3.32 a terabyte effective. On Google’s published list rates the same petabyte is about $32,000 of cache data transfer, before cache fill and lookups.
Our pricing is progressive, like tax brackets: $5 on the first 5 TB, stepping down to $2.50 above 1,000 TB. Google figures are calculated from their published North American rates, converted from gibibytes, at a 95% cache hit rate. The lookup meter assumes a 200 KB average object, and the section below shows how far that one assumption moves the total. Checked 29 August 2026. Negotiated volume commitments and credits are not reflected here.
How big are your files? That decides the third meter
Requests scale with how small your files are, not with how many terabytes you move. Same 200 TB, same 95% hit rate, only the average object changes. This is the number to work out before you compare anything, and it is the one nobody has in their quote.
50 KB
web assets, icons, thumbnails
Their lookup meter
$3,000
Their total
$12,777
Ours, unchanged
$765 · 16.7x
200 KB
a normal mixed workload
Their lookup meter
$750
Their total
$10,527
Ours, unchanged
$765 · 13.8x
1 MB
software updates, large images
Their lookup meter
$150
Their total
$9,927
Ours, unchanged
$765 · 13.0x
4 MB
video segments, game builds
Their lookup meter
$38, and it stops mattering
Their total
$9,815
Ours, unchanged
$765 · 12.8x
If you deliver video or game builds, the lookup meter is the least of your worries and we will say so plainly: at 4 MB objects it is $38 and the argument rests entirely on the transfer meter, which is still 12.8 times our whole bill. If you deliver small web assets, the lookup meter is a quarter of your Google invoice and almost certainly not in your forecast. Either way the gap holds. Calculated from Google’s published North American rates at 200 TB and a 95% cache hit rate, checked 29 August 2026.
The three questions everyone asks next
We have negotiated rates
Then the list prices above are not yours, and you should compare against your actual rate rather than ours against theirs. Take one month of real invoice lines, send us the terabytes, and we will price the same traffic. That is a five minute exercise and it settles the question properly.
Do I have to move everything?
No. Most teams move the heavy paths first, video, builds and downloads, and leave dynamic content on the load balancer where Cloud Armor and IAM apply.
What about Cloud Armor?
Keep it. It is a real product and we do not compete with it. Split by workload: keep protected routes behind Cloud Armor and send large static objects to us.
Keep it. Move the heavy traffic to us.
You do not have to leave GCP. Keep your origins, your load balancer and Cloud Armor where they are, and point the terabytes that actually cost money at a network with one meter.
- 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 Cloud Storage bucket or backend your load balancer already uses. 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 gets counted before the invoice
We meter one thing. They meter three.
Where you start
$5 per TB delivered, one meter, with a $25 monthly minimum that covers 5 TB
Cache data transfer out, $0.02 to $0.20 per GiB depending on destination and volume
Mid tier
The same tier table. Your rate steps down as volume grows, with nothing to re-sign
Cache fill, $0.01 to $0.04 per GiB. You pay to put your own content into their cache
The tier that carries heavy traffic
$2.50 per TB on the top tier, and no platform fee at any volume
Cache lookup requests, $0.0075 per 10,000. Every request that touches the cache is counted, hit or miss
Commitment
None. Monthly, stop whenever you like
None on list pricing. Volume commitments and credits are negotiated separately
What gets billed
Delivered traffic only. Pull cache volume is never billed
All three meters, plus load-balancer data processing on cache misses and any Cloud Armor policies you attach
Google figures are their published rates, checked 29 August 2026. Google bills in gibibytes, which is about 7% more bytes per unit than a gigabyte, and every figure on this page has been converted so the comparison is like for like.
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 on Google’s global network, the same backbone that carries their own services
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 modes and TTL overrides per backend, with negative caching by status code
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
URL maps and backend services on the load balancer, plus Cloud Armor rules
Purge
By path, in bulk, or total purge in one action. Plus cache warm-up through the API before a release
Invalidation by path or host through the console or API, with quotas per minute
Origin Shield
Included. Automatic, or pinned to a region you choose
No separate origin shield. Cache fill from origin is a billed line item instead
Compression
gzip, Brotli and zstd. At the edge or at origin, with a separate cache per encoding
gzip and Brotli
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
No delivery speed control. Cloud Armor rate limiting counts requests, not bytes
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 signed cookies on the backend bucket or service
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
Geo and IP rules through Cloud Armor, which is billed separately per policy and per request
WAF and DDoS
Their round
Access control only, and we say so plainly: allow and block rules, referrer and cookie checks, hotlink protection. No WAF and no DDoS scrubbing, because we do not sell security
Cloud Armor is a real WAF and DDoS product, billed separately per policy and per request. If this is why you are shopping, keep it
Certificates
Let’s Encrypt at no extra charge, renewed automatically. Upload your own, in bulk, auto-assigned to matching domains
Google-managed certificates on the load balancer, or bring your own
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
Cloud Storage buckets, instance groups, or an external backend you define
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
Image optimization is in Preview and unpriced until it reaches general availability
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
Cloud Logging billed on ingestion past the free allotment; platform metrics are free in Cloud Monitoring
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. Writes are off by default and deletes need a second opt-in flag. Public on npm as @blazingcdn/mcp
Full API, gcloud, Terraform, and a general Compute Engine MCP server whose backend-service tools can toggle CDN settings. No CDN-dedicated toolset with CDN-scoped safety defaults
Our column is taken from our own published feature list. The Google column describes Cloud CDN as documented on their public pages and priced on their public rate card, checked 29 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.
$765 against $9,684
That is their transfer meter alone at 200 TB in North America, against our entire bill. Add cache fill and lookups and it reaches $10,527 at a 200 KB average object. The 12.7 times is the floor, not the headline.
Requests are not billed
Google charges $0.0075 for every 10,000 cache lookups, hit or miss, and that line swings eighty-fold with your average object size. We do not count requests at all, and we do not charge you to fill your own cache either, so there is nothing to model.
Pull cache is never billed
Pull cache volume is never billed, and neither is filling it. You pay for what left the edge, not for putting your own content on it. Permanently cached Video CDN files are the one exception, at $0.02 per GB a month after the first 500 GB.
Raw logs, no upsell
A Prometheus endpoint, Grafana, Alertmanager and OpenTelemetry on every account with nothing to enable and nothing metered, raw JSON logs for Graylog or ELK as a $50 a month add-on. On Google the same visibility is billed on log ingestion volume.
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 you set, not code
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, stay on Google Cloud CDN. We would rather you read this here than find it out in month two.
- Your origins are in GCP. It rides on the load balancer you already run, with IAM and VPC controls attached, and that integration is real.
- Cloud Armor for WAF and DDoS on the same edge. We do access control, not a security suite.
- Committed-use discounts and credits. If you have them, the list prices on this page are not the prices you pay.
- Google's backbone and edge footprint are larger than ours, and for some routes that is decisive.
Comparing more than one? See also CloudFront pricing, Azure CDN pricing and Cloudflare pricing, or start from our CDN pricing comparison.