Cloudflare vs KeyCDN
A comparison of Cloudflare and KeyCDN built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
The short answer
- Pick Cloudflare if
- Teams that want CDN, DDoS protection and WAF bundled together and effectively unmetered on bandwidth — the pricing axis here is feature tier, not gigabytes served.
- Pick KeyCDN if
- Low-commitment testing or small sites — no free tier, but the $4/month floor and no-commitment billing make it cheap to try against real traffic.
3 sourced criteria separate them:
- Free tier
- Cloudflare: Yes
- KeyCDN: No
- Pricing model
- Cloudflare: Tiered flat-rate monthly plans (Free, Pro, Business, Enterprise) that scale by feature set — bandwidth itself is unmetered on every plan, unlike most CDNs in this category.
- KeyCDN: Pay-as-you-go, tiered by volume, with no commitment required.
- Image optimization
- Cloudflare: Lossless Image Optimization included from the Pro plan, alongside AMP support.
- KeyCDN: Image Processing: $0.40 per 1,000 operations, transforming and optimizing images in real time via query parameters.
Pick the criteria you care about. The chart counts how many of them lean toward each provider — the same read as scanning the bars below, just totalled for the ones you chose.
Cloudflare 0
KeyCDN 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Cloudflare | KeyCDN |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Free tier | Yes | No |
| Pricing model | Tiered flat-rate monthly plans (Free, Pro, Business, Enterprise) that scale by feature set — bandwidth itself is unmetered on every plan, unlike most CDNs in this category. | Pay-as-you-go, tiered by volume, with no commitment required. |
| CDN | ||
| Image optimization | Lossless Image Optimization included from the Pro plan, alongside AMP support. | Image Processing: $0.40 per 1,000 operations, transforming and optimizing images in real time via query parameters. |
Where they differ.
Free tier
- Cloudflare
- Yes
- KeyCDN
- No
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Cloudflare Network & CDN Plans ↗
“$0 /month. Fast, Easy-to-use DNS, Unmetered DDoS Protection, CDN, Universal SSL Certificate, and Web Application Firewall (WAF).”
Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing
- KeyCDN Pricing ↗
“Minimum charge is $4 per month based on the combined total account traffic volume and other services used. [No free trial mentioned.]”
Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing
Pricing model
- Cloudflare
- Tiered flat-rate monthly plans (Free, Pro, Business, Enterprise) that scale by feature set — bandwidth itself is unmetered on every plan, unlike most CDNs in this category.
- KeyCDN
- Pay-as-you-go, tiered by volume, with no commitment required.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Cloudflare Network & CDN Plans ↗
“Unmetered DDoS Protection, CDN [on the Free plan already].”
Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing
- KeyCDN Pricing ↗
“Get access to our entire content delivery network without commitment.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing
Image optimization
- Cloudflare
- Lossless Image Optimization included from the Pro plan, alongside AMP support.
- KeyCDN
- Image Processing: $0.40 per 1,000 operations, transforming and optimizing images in real time via query parameters.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Cloudflare Network & CDN Plans ↗
“Lossless Image Optimization, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).”
Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing
- KeyCDN Pricing ↗
“Image Processing costs $0.40 per 1,000 operations. Transform and optimize images in real time with simple query parameters.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.
Which should you choose?
Choose Cloudflare if…
Teams that want CDN, DDoS protection and WAF bundled together and effectively unmetered on bandwidth — the pricing axis here is feature tier, not gigabytes served.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Choose KeyCDN if…
Low-commitment testing or small sites — no free tier, but the $4/month floor and no-commitment billing make it cheap to try against real traffic.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Consider something else if…
- Cloudflare: The workload needs Cloudflare's edge-compute or storage products alongside the CDN — those are priced and profiled separately (see Cloudflare Pages, Cloudflare R2), not part of this plan.
- KeyCDN: Bandwidth volume is large — $0.04/GB is the highest entry-tier bandwidth rate of the CDNs sourced here for North America/Europe.
Documented by only one.
These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing.
Questions this comparison answers.
Free tier: Cloudflare or KeyCDN?
Cloudflare: Yes
KeyCDN: No
Should I choose Cloudflare or KeyCDN?
Pick Cloudflare if Teams that want CDN, DDoS protection and WAF bundled together and effectively unmetered on bandwidth — the pricing axis here is feature tier, not gigabytes served.
Pick KeyCDN if Low-commitment testing or small sites — no free tier, but the $4/month floor and no-commitment billing make it cheap to try against real traffic.