· cdn / cloudflare-pages / vercel

Best CDN for developer static sites: 2026 comparison

Cloudflare Pages is the default: unlimited bandwidth, $0, commercial OK. BunnyCDN wins on cost at scale. Vercel Hobby is free until the ToS bites you.

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1,884 words · 10 min read

Cloudflare Pages is the right default for most static sites in 2026: unlimited bandwidth, zero cost for commercial projects, and a median TTFB that beats every managed alternative. If you’re moving serious volume and running your own CI/CD pipeline, BunnyCDN at $0.01/GB undercuts everything else by an order of magnitude. Vercel Hobby is free on paper — the non-commercial ToS restriction is real and will get you if you’re running a side project that earns money.

Who this is for

Developers shipping Astro, Hugo, SvelteKit, or Next.js static exports who want to know where to host in 2026. If your site uses server-side rendering, edge functions, or database-backed dynamic routes, you’re picking a compute platform — the tradeoffs are different and this comparison won’t cover them.

If you’re still choosing a stack, see our best static blog stack in 2026 for a framework-level comparison before committing to a host.

How we compared them

Six providers: Cloudflare Pages, Vercel (Hobby and Pro), Netlify (Free and Pro), BunnyCDN, Fastly, and AWS CloudFront. Pricing is from published rate cards as of May 2026; we checked against each provider’s billing documentation directly. TTFB figures are global medians from CDNPerf.com (May 2026), measured via global real-user monitoring probes. DX (CLI, dashboard, preview URLs, build pipeline) was hands-on with a representative Astro site and a Next.js static export.

The comparison

ProviderFree bandwidthTTFB (median)Custom domainPreview URLsPrice at 100 GB
Cloudflare PagesUnlimited~45 msYesYes$0
Vercel Hobby100 GB~70 msYesYes$0 *
Vercel Pro1 TB~70 msYesYes$20/user/mo
Netlify Free~15 GB~90 msYesYes~$17 †
Netlify Pro1 TB~90 msYesYes$20/mo
BunnyCDNNone~24 msYesManual$1.00
Fastly100 GB—YesNo$0
AWS CloudFront1 TB (yr 1)—YesNo$0 (yr 1)

* Non-commercial only — Vercel Hobby ToS prohibits commercial use. † Netlify changed from 100 GB to a credit-based model; ~15 GB/month free at current credit allocations.

Cloudflare Pages

The unlimited bandwidth clause is the headline. Every other platform in this comparison imposes a monthly cap; Cloudflare Pages doesn’t. For a static site serving cached assets, that changes the math entirely — no bill surprises, no bandwidth budget to track.

TTFB of ~45 ms globally reflects Cloudflare’s 300+ PoP network. That’s measurably faster than Vercel (~70 ms) and Netlify (~90 ms) on uncached first-load. On a warm cache with a good CDN in front, the gap narrows — but Cloudflare is the CDN, so warm cache behavior is part of what you’re measuring.

DX has improved significantly through 2025. Wrangler v4 makes local preview and deploy commands predictable. The dashboard is functional but more dense than Vercel’s — expect a 20-minute familiarization cost if you’re coming from Vercel. Build minutes are capped at 500/month on the free tier; a CI-heavy team will hit this, but a solo developer publishing weekly won’t.

Preview deployments work well. Every push to a non-main branch gets a unique URL. The URL format is deterministic enough to use in PR comments automatically.

Best for: Everyone who doesn’t need Next.js-specific features and doesn’t want to think about bandwidth.

BunnyCDN

BunnyCDN is a CDN-first product, not a deploy platform. That distinction matters: there’s no native Git integration, no built-in preview URLs, and no official deploy CLI. What you get instead is the fastest median TTFB in this comparison at ~24 ms — nearly 2× faster than Cloudflare Pages globally — and pricing that makes the other free tiers look expensive at scale.

At $0.01/GB for EU and North America edge locations, 100 GB costs exactly $1.00. A site pulling 1 TB/month pays $10.00. None of the managed platforms get close to that.

The catch is operational overhead. You need your own CI/CD pipeline to push to BunnyCDN’s storage. The community maintains a GitHub Actions workflow that handles this, and it works reliably, but it’s one more thing you own. There’s no preview URL mechanism unless you build one yourself (a staging zone with a different pull zone is the common pattern — two zones, two monthly minimums, roughly $2/month overhead).

BunnyCDN’s ~24 ms TTFB is a function of its network architecture: assets are pushed to storage close to the origin, then served from edge PoPs with aggressive caching. No build pipeline overhead, no function invocations — pure file serving.

Asia-Pacific pricing is $0.06/GB, not $0.01/GB. If your traffic is concentrated in APAC, model accordingly before committing.

BunnyCDN has an affiliate program ($20 flat per paid customer). That link above goes through toolchew’s tracked redirect. Affiliate status doesn’t change the recommendation — BunnyCDN is the honest answer for teams running their own pipelines at volume.

Best for: Teams with existing CI/CD infrastructure who are optimizing for cost at scale (1 TB+/month) or raw performance.

Vercel

Vercel’s developer experience is still the best in the category. The dashboard is well-designed, the preview deploy workflow is tight, and Next.js support is unsurprisingly thorough — Vercel built Next.js, and the integration shows in build speed, ISR support, and edge function co-location.

Vercel Hobby has one hard constraint worth front-loading: the terms of service prohibit commercial use. “Commercial use” is defined broadly — any site generating revenue, including affiliate income, SaaS products, or client work. This isn’t enforced aggressively, but it is in the ToS, and Vercel does contact users when usage patterns suggest commercial deployment. If you’re running anything that earns money, Vercel Hobby is not a legal deployment target.

Vercel Pro at $20/user/month is the right tier if you’re on Next.js and the team DX value justifies the cost. Build pipelines are faster than Netlify in our testing — roughly 30–60% on our Astro and Next.js static export projects. The observability dashboard — real-time function logs, deployment speed metrics — is ahead of the competition.

For pure static sites with no Next.js dependency, Vercel Pro is expensive for what you get. Cloudflare Pages at $20/month (or free) delivers better raw CDN performance.

Best for: Next.js teams with a Pro budget. Avoid Vercel Hobby for any commercial project.

Netlify

Netlify’s free tier changed significantly in 2025. The old 100 GB/month bandwidth allowance was replaced with a credit-based system; current credit allocations work out to approximately 15 GB/month for most users, down from 100 GB. If you were relying on the old free tier for a mid-traffic site, the economics no longer hold.

Netlify Pro at $20/month includes 1 TB bandwidth and is competitive with Vercel Pro on price, though build performance consistently ran 30–60% slower in our testing on equivalent Astro and Next.js projects. The dashboard is clean and the deploy workflow is well-documented.

Preview URLs and branch deploys work reliably. The CLI (netlify dev) handles local environment variable injection cleanly, which is useful when you have multiple environments.

TTFB of ~90 ms globally is the weakest number in this comparison. Netlify’s CDN footprint is smaller than Cloudflare’s, and it shows on first-load timing for international audiences.

Best for: Teams already embedded in the Netlify workflow who’ve upgraded to Pro. Hard to recommend as a fresh start for static sites when Cloudflare Pages is free with better performance.

Fastly

Fastly is an enterprise-heritage CDN with a 100 GB/month free tier and a pay-as-you-go model after that. The configuration system (VCL, or the newer Compute@Edge for WASM) is powerful and flexible — appropriate for teams with existing Fastly expertise or very specific cache behavior requirements.

For most developer static sites, Fastly is the wrong tool. There’s no deploy-from-Git workflow, no preview URLs, and the configuration overhead is significant compared to managed alternatives. The free tier is useful for small projects, but the DX gap versus Cloudflare Pages is real.

TTFB performance wasn’t benchmarked consistently enough across third-party sources to report a reliable median here. Fastly’s network is optimized for enterprise workloads; static file TTFB is adequate but not measured as a headline metric.

Best for: Teams with existing Fastly contracts or specific VCL/Compute requirements. Not a recommendation for static site hosting from a clean start.

AWS CloudFront

CloudFront includes 1 TB/month and 10 million requests in the AWS Free Tier for the first 12 months. After that, pricing is metered: $0.0085/GB for US/EU, $0.12/GB for some Asia-Pacific regions, plus $0.0075–$0.02 per 10,000 HTTPS requests.

If you’re already deep in AWS (S3 for origin, Route 53 for DNS, ACM for certificates), CloudFront is a natural fit with low integration friction. If you’re not already in the AWS ecosystem, the setup complexity is significant compared to Cloudflare Pages or Netlify, and the free tier expiration at 12 months makes long-term cost planning less predictable.

S3 + CloudFront is a viable production setup for high-volume static sites with AWS-native tooling. It’s not a recommendation for developers starting fresh or running solo projects. For a full cost breakdown of running Cloudflare vs AWS infrastructure, see our Cloudflare vs AWS real-bill analysis.

Best for: AWS-native teams with existing S3 infrastructure and a predictable traffic pattern they’ve already modeled.

Verdict

Default pick: Cloudflare Pages. Unlimited bandwidth, commercial OK, ~45 ms global median TTFB, free tier that actually works for production. The DX is slightly more complex than Vercel but the gap is manageable in an hour. For a broader look at how CDN hosting compares to full deploy platforms, see our best deploy platform for static sites comparison.

Scale on cost: BunnyCDN if you’re moving 500 GB/month or more and you already run your own CI/CD. At $0.01/GB, you’re paying $5/month at 500 GB versus $0 on Cloudflare — but BunnyCDN’s ~24 ms TTFB may justify it on performance grounds alone for global audiences.

Next.js teams: Vercel Pro. The framework-native support is real, build performance is better than the alternatives, and the observability tooling is worth the $20/user/month if you’re running a production Next.js site with a team.

Don’t do: Vercel Hobby for commercial projects. Netlify Free for anything expecting more than ~15 GB/month traffic.

Caveats

TTFB figures are global medians from third-party probes. Your users’ location mix will shift the actual numbers — a US-only audience on Vercel will see lower latency than the global median suggests.

BunnyCDN’s $0.01/GB pricing applies to EU and North American edge. Asia-Pacific traffic bills at $0.06/GB; South America and Africa are higher. Model your actual traffic geography before committing.

CloudFront pricing exits the free tier at 12 months. The metered rates aren’t expensive by enterprise standards, but they’re not $0.

Netlify’s credit allocation has changed before and may change again. The ~15 GB/month figure reflects current allocations; check the billing documentation before making long-term plans based on it.

References