CDN
A Content Delivery Network caches your content across the globe and serves it from the location nearest each visitor — faster loads, less origin load, often free.
A Content Delivery Network puts copies of your content in data centers around the world and serves each visitor from the nearest one. The result is lower latency, higher reliability and reduced load on your origin — and because caching is cheap to provide at scale, the free tiers are unusually generous, sometimes including effectively unlimited bandwidth. Cloudflare is the standout here, having built much of its reputation on a free plan.
The category has expanded well beyond plain caching. Today’s CDNs run code at the edge, so you can do routing, authentication checks, header rewriting, A/B testing or personalization at the point of presence without a round trip to a central server. They also bundle security: DDoS mitigation, TLS termination with automatic HTTPS, and modern protocols like HTTP/3 are commonly included even on free plans. That blurs the line between a CDN and a serverless platform.
When evaluating free tiers, start with the bandwidth allowance and the breadth of edge locations, then look at what’s bundled — automatic HTTPS, DDoS protection, caching controls — and whether edge compute is available if you’ll want logic at the edge. Keep in mind that if you already deploy to a static host, you likely have a CDN already; a standalone CDN earns its place when you’re fronting your own origin or want capabilities your host doesn’t expose.
Free CDN platforms
FAQ
Often not — most static hosts and many platforms serve through a CDN already. A standalone CDN is useful when you're fronting your own origin server, need fine-grained caching control, or want edge compute and security features the host doesn't provide.
Static hosting builds and stores your site; a CDN distributes and caches content (which may originate anywhere) close to users. They overlap because static hosts run on CDNs, but a pure CDN sits in front of an origin you control.
Modern CDNs do both. Edge compute lets you run lightweight functions at the points of presence — for routing, auth checks, A/B tests or personalization — without a round trip to a central server.