Where Cloudflare ranks in edge network speed

Cloudflare has been publishing side-by-side performance comparisons against other major CDNs since 2021, using a measurement methodology based on Real User Measurements (RUM) from end-user browsers. The most recent data, current as of August 30, 2023, shows Cloudflare ranked #1 in 44% of the networks measured (defined as a country and AS number pair), with an additional 10% of networks falling within 2 ms (95th percentile TCP Connection Time) or 5% of the fastest provider. The closest competitor claims the top spot in 19% of networks.

This is a continuation of a steady upward trend. In July 2022, Cloudflare was #1 in 33% of networks (within the same 2 ms or 5% tolerance for 8% more), while the nearest competitor led in 20%. A timeline chart of these percentages shows the gap widening over time, with minor month-to-month dips but a clearly positive slope for Cloudflare that outpaces all other providers.

How the numbers are collected

The benchmarking relies on RUM data: browsers in the wild fetch a small file from Cloudflare, Akamai, Amazon CloudFront, Fastly, and Google Cloud CDN, providing performance measurements from the perspective of the end-user network. This yields metrics including TCP Connection Time, Time to First Byte (TTFB), and Time to Last Byte (TTLB) for each provider.

The headline indicator Cloudflare tracks is the percentage of networks where it ranks #1 in TCP Connection Time. That figure stood at 45% in June 2023 and 44% in August 2023. The broader set of metrics – including 95th percentile values for TCP Connection Time and TTLB – tells the same story: minor fluctuations between months, but Cloudflare holding the top position in more networks than any other provider.

Geographic breakdown

A country-level view of TCP Connection Time ranks, updated for September 2023, shows Cloudflare as the fastest provider across most of the world. Since the June 2023 snapshot, Cloudflare has gained ground in Iran and Paraguay. In the few countries where it no longer holds the #1 spot, Cloudflare is typically within 2 ms of the leader: in Brazil and Norway it trails Fastly by 1 ms, and in several African countries Amazon CloudFront is ahead by 2 ms.

Where performance has slipped, the engineering teams’ workflow is to investigate the root cause of the degradation and track open remediation items until resolved. The same process will be applied to close the remaining sub-5 ms gaps in those countries.

What the roadmap looks like

The recurring plan for the network performance team is unchanged: identify where Cloudflare is slower than a competitor, fix the underlying cause, and re-measure to confirm the improvement. Updates on progress are shared at intervals alongside the accumulated benchmarks.