Zero Trust performance in LATAM: Cloudflare vs. Zscaler and Netskope
Performance is more than a convenience metric for Zero Trust products — it is a security control. If access requests crawl, employees notice, and they will find ways to route around the security layer entirely. A Zero Trust suite that gets switched off or bypassed is ineffective, no matter how robust its policy engine is.
That is why network placement and latency matter. Cloudflare operates 47 data centers across Latin America and the Caribbean, which it says is the largest SASE point-of-presence footprint of any vendor in the region. The proximity of those POPs shortens the distance between users and the security services that mediate their application traffic.
In earlier testing, Cloudflare reported that its Access product was 38% faster than Zscaler's ZPA product on a worldwide basis. The company has now published regional results covering ten LATAM countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
How the tests were run
Cloudflare contracted Miercom to run the comparative tests. The objective was to simulate a real end-user session against an application protected by each vendor's Zero Trust Network Access product.
The test harness used a Catchpoint instance to mimic a browser. The flow was:
- A new session connects to the application from the browser.
- The user authenticates against an identity provider.
- The user accesses a resource.
- The browser page is refreshed and the same resource is accessed again, this time with cached credentials (an existing session).
Measurements were taken for both Time to First Byte and full Response at the 95th percentile. Applications were hosted in two locations: Brazil and the US South West region. The results below reflect response times for an existing session, when authentication data can be served from the provider's cache.
Country-by-country results
Cloudflare's reported 95th percentile Time to First Byte advantages varied by country and destination. The improvements were consistently in Cloudflare's favor across all ten markets.
Argentina
Against an app hosted in Brazil, Cloudflare was 75% faster than Zscaler and 85% faster than Netskope. For the US South West hosted app, the margins were 70% versus Zscaler and 68% versus Netskope.
Brazil
For a domestic app in Brazil, Cloudflare was 61% faster than Zscaler and 59% faster than Netskope. Connecting to the US South West region, Cloudflare was 58% faster than Zscaler and 59% faster than Netskope.
Chile
Cloudflare was 77% faster than Zscaler and 76% faster than Netskope for the Brazil-hosted app. For the US-hosted app, it was 80% faster than Zscaler and 79% faster than Netskope.
Colombia
Against the Brazil app, Cloudflare showed a 65% advantage over Zscaler and a 39% advantage over Netskope. The US app saw Cloudflare 59% faster than Zscaler and 56% faster than Netskope.
Costa Rica
The smallest margins in the set. For the Brazil destination, Cloudflare was 32% faster than Zscaler and 29% faster than Netskope. For the US destination, the figures were 36% and 32%, respectively.
Ecuador
Cloudflare was 48% faster than Zscaler and 43% faster than Netskope for the Brazil app. For the US app, the differences were 46% and 40%.
Mexico
Cloudflare was 34% faster than Zscaler and 19% faster than Netskope for the Brazil-hosted application. For the US-hosted one, the figures were 56% against Zscaler and 53% against Netskope.
Peru
One of the stronger showings for Cloudflare. It was 79% faster than Zscaler and 74% faster than Netskope for the Brazil app, and 80% faster than Zscaler and 73% faster than Netskope for the US app.
Uruguay
Cloudflare was 72% faster than Zscaler and 65% faster than Netskope for the Brazil destination. Against the US destination, the advantage was 60% over Zscaler and 48% over Netskope.
Venezuela
Cloudflare was 66% faster than Zscaler and 63% faster than Netskope for the Brazil app. The steepest margin in the region appeared here for the US app: 85% faster than Zscaler and 77% faster than Netskope.
Why the gap matters
The practical effect of these numbers is in the user experience. A Zero Trust proxy that caches authentication context can reduce repeated logins, but it still has to shuttle every request through its network. If that network path is long, the lag becomes part of the application feel.
Cloudflare argues that its larger regional footprint lets it deliver Access and related Zero Trust services closer to users, which trims both login latency and steady-state request latency. The claim is not that competitors are slow in absolute terms, but that their network coverage does not compress the distance between user, security checkpoint, and application as efficiently — particularly in regions like these LATAM markets where POP density varies sharply between vendors.
The full Miercom methodology and report are available from Cloudflare.
