What Is CDNChart? Global CDN Rankings, Speed Tests, Comparisons, and Selection Platform

When preparing to add a CDN to a website, many people go through a similar process.

First, search for which CDN is fastest and open a dozen pages; then compare vendors such as Cloudflare, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Akamai, and CloudFront side by side. After looking around, there is more and more information, but the answer does not become clearer.

Every vendor says it has more nodes, faster speeds, and higher stability. But what users really care about is:When my visitors access from mainland China, Southeast Asia, or North America, which vendor performs better? Where is my website slow now? And will it actually get faster after adopting a CDN?

CDNChart was built around these specific questions.

Simply put,CDNChartis a global CDN performance evaluation and selection platform based on active probe data. It brings CDN rankings, vendor comparisons, website speed tests, CDN detection, and selection recommendations into one platform, helping site owners, developers, operations staff, and enterprise technical teams narrow down their options and then validate them with their own real business.

If you are searching for a CDN speed test site that can check global CDN rankings and run multi-region tests, or you want a tool to compare different CDN vendors, CDNChart provides exactly these capabilities.

There is an important distinction here:CDNChart does not just provide a who-is-number-one leaderboard; it aims to provide a complete path from discovering candidates and understanding metrics to comparison and validation.

Why build a CDN ranking and speed testing platform?

Because the hardest part of CDN selection has never been finding vendors; it is that different vendors are hard to compare directly.

Some show the number of global nodes, some emphasize peak bandwidth, some highlight security products, and others provide test results completed on a specific network at a specific time. They may all be true, but if the test targets, statistical periods, and calculation methods differ, putting these numbers directly into one ranking means little.

What is more, CDN performance is not a fixed value.

The same CDN may perform differently for Beijing Unicom and Guangzhou Mobile; it may differ during the day and at evening peak; and accessing a 50 KB image versus downloading a 100 MB file may lead to different conclusions.

A product well suited to an enterprise site serving domestic visitors may not be right for an overseas expansion business whose main users are in Europe and North America.

So CDNChart's approach is: under test targets and aggregation rules that are as consistent as possible, initiate requests from different regions, continuously record latency, availability, throughput, and other results, and then present sample size, update time, and known limitations together. For the full methodology, seeCDNChart Methodology.

This cannot eliminate all network fluctuations, but it can turn which CDN is faster from a broad marketing claim into a question with a test scope, a time window, and room for further validation.

What can you mainly do on CDNChart?

These features are not five unrelated entry points.

In practice, they can connect in sequence: start with the rankings or AI Selection to find candidates, then use the comparison page to narrow the list, and finally use Website Speed Test to validate your own domain.

The first part is the continuously changing global CDN rankings.

On the CDNChart homepage, you can view CDN performance by overall score, latency, availability, and throughput.

The platform also providesfastest CDN rankings,most reliable CDN rankingsas well asCDN performance in mainland China,CDN performance in North Americaand other perspectives.

Why not keep only one overall ranking?

Because fastest and best fit are not the same thing.

News sites may care more about the response speed of small files and page requests; software downloads, game updates, and similar businesses may care more about large-file throughput; e-commerce and online services not only need speed but also cannot afford frequent access failures; products with cross-border users must be viewed separately by region.

Several common metrics in the rankings can be understood as follows:

• P50 latency: Half the samples are faster than this value and half are slower, making it useful for observing typical access performance.

• P95 latency: 95% of samples do not exceed this value, making it easier to see slow requests and tail-end experience.

• Availability (Uptime): The proportion of successful requests within the statistical scope.

• Throughput: The amount of data transmitted per unit of time, which is more useful for downloads, images, videos, and larger static files.

• Sample size and update time: Tell you how many observations this conclusion is based on, and whether the data is recent enough.

Averages can sometimes be skewed by a few extremely fast or extremely slow requests, so CDNChart uses percentiles such as P50 and P95 when observing latency.

Percentiles are not a concept unique to the CDN industry. When explaining Web performance thresholds, Google also uses percentiles to describe the experience most users have, and notes that percentiles are less affected by extreme values than averages.You can refer to web.devfor its explanation of percentiles.

However, when you see a vendor ranked first, do not rush to purchase.

The right way to read it is: Under the current test targets, regions, period, and sample conditions, this vendor ranks high on this metric. Then ask: Are these conditions close to my business?

The second part is comparing candidate CDNs directly.

Looking only at individual vendor detail pages can easily give you the impression that every vendor seems good.

CDN Comparison Toollets users select multiple CDNs and view them side by side. When P50 and P95 latency, availability, throughput, and security information are placed in the same table, the differences become much clearer.

For example, two CDNs may have similar P50 latency, but one has a noticeably higher P95. That means most requests look about the same, but among the slower requests, the user experience may differ significantly.

Or one vendor may respond quickly for small files while another has an advantage in throughput. If your business mainly involves large file downloads, you cannot decide based on latency alone.

The best use of the comparison page is not to prove that one vendor wins across the board, but to identify trade-offs:

• Which one has lower latency in your main user regions;

• Which one handles slow requests better;

• Which one has more stable availability in the current observation;

• Which one better fits business characteristics such as images, web pages, large files, or cross-border access;

• Which metrics still lack sufficient samples and need to be confirmed through testing.

Once the differences are broken down, selection discussions no longer come down to only brand recognition and sales quotes.

The third part is testing your own website directly.

Rankings answer how various CDNs perform under the platform's unified observation, but website owners ultimately still need to answer another question:How does my website actually perform for real visitors?

InCDNChart Website Speed Testenter a domain to initiate requests from China Telecom, China Unicom, China Mobile, and overseas monitoring locations, and view DNS resolution, connection, download time, response IP, and other information.

It is suitable for handling several very practical questions:

• The website opens fine on my own computer, so why do users elsewhere keep saying it is slow;

• Has access performance in key regions changed before and after adopting a CDN;

• Is a particular carrier consistently slow or experiencing failures;

• Does the response IP the domain resolves to vary by region;

• When a website suddenly slows down, is the problem local network, the origin, or a broader access anomaly?

Speed test results also have scope limitations.

The speed of a single HTTP request does not mean the full web page has finished rendering. The browser still needs to load CSS, JavaScript, and images and execute page logic.

Take TTFB as an example: it describes the time from when a request starts to when the first byte of the response arrives. For the specific definition, see web.devTTFB explanation.

Therefore, CDNChart speed tests are better suited for observing network requests and regional differences; to evaluate the full page experience, you should also use browser performance tools and real user data.

The fourth part is checking which CDN a website may be using.

Sometimes we are not choosing a new vendor, but investigating an existing website: Does this domain actually go through a CDN? Do the asset domain and the main site domain use different services? Why is there no visible change after adopting a CDN?

OpenCDN Detection and Node Lookup Toolenter the specific domain to check, and the platform will use the CNAME chain, HTTP response headers, and public network signals to identify the possible CDN vendor and related evidence.

The word possible is used deliberately here, because CDN identification cannot be concluded with 100% certainty just from seeing an IP.

A website may use DNS services, cloud load balancing, reverse proxies, and multiple CDNs at the same time; some response headers can be hidden or rewritten, and IP ranges may also be shared by different businesses. Therefore, CDNChart uses multiple types of evidence for cross-checking and shows the basis for identification, rather than returning only an unexplained vendor name.

To further understand the identification process, you can readHow to identify the CDN used by a website. For important business, the identification results should also be cross-checked against your own DNS configuration, CDN console, and access logs.

The fifth part is AI selection recommendations that help users narrow down their options.

When actually starting to choose a CDN, many people are not choosing between two options but facing dozens of names and do not know whom to rule out first.

CDN Selection Assistantrecommends options from the current candidate pool based on main user regions, business type, top considerations, and budget sensitivity, and explains the performance data and conditions behind the recommendation.

This step is more like filtering than making the decision for the user.

If the main users are in mainland China, regional performance becomes more important; if it is a static website or image business, latency and availability deserve close attention; if it is a download business, throughput cannot be ignored; and if the budget is very tight, price and free quotas become necessary conditions.

The value of AI selection is to first compress a very long vendor list into a few candidates worth further research.

The final decision should still take into account real business testing, contractual SLAs, billing methods, technical support, ICP filing requirements, origin architecture, and security needs.

How should CDNChart data be read to avoid misjudgment?

We want every set of data to answer two questions: how it was produced, and where its boundaries are.

The platform'smethodology pagepublishes the probe network, unified sample criteria, continuous sampling method, scoring thresholds, and known limitations.

Security information also distinguishes between items observable through public edge behavior and capability claims from vendors' public materials, to avoid packaging capabilities that cannot be directly verified as measured conclusions.

When using any ranking, it is recommended to look at four things at the same time:

1. Time range: Is this recent data, or a snapshot from long ago;

2. Sample size: How many observations make up the conclusion, and is the sample insufficient;

3. Regional scope: Does the global result obscure your core market;

4. Test target: Can performance on the unified test file represent your actual pages and file types?

If a dimension temporarily lacks sufficient samples, the platform will downgrade its display or note that data is still accumulating. Node coverage comes from platform probe observations and public materials, and is not equivalent to the vendor's full published node list.

Acknowledging these limitations does not make the data useless.

On the contrary, only by knowing what a dataset can and cannot explain will you avoid using rankings as advertising slogans.

For your first time using CDNChart, you can follow this sequence.

Suppose you are choosing a CDN for a website whose main users are in mainland China and Southeast Asia; you can complete the first round of screening in about ten minutes:

1. First, write down the business conditions: main user regions, static asset sizes, traffic peaks, budget, and ICP filing status;

2. Check the corresponding regional rankings and identify preliminary candidates based on latency, availability, and throughput;

3. Use the AI Selection Assistant to add candidates and read each recommendation's rationale;

4. On the CDN Comparison page, select three to five vendors and compare P50, P95, availability, and throughput performance;

5. Go to vendor detail pages to check sample size, update time, regional performance, and missing metrics;

6. After applying for a trial, use Website Speed Test to compare your business domain before and after adoption;

7. Then combine cost, SLA, configuration capabilities, and support services to make the final decision.

The key to this process is to first use unified data to reduce blind selection, then validate with your own business, and never treat any public ranking as the final purchasing conclusion.

Who is CDNChart suitable for?

If you are an individual site owner, you can use it to check website speed, determine whether a CDN is in use, and quickly learn about common vendors; if you are responsible for development or operations, you can use multi-region speed tests and P95 data to troubleshoot regional slow requests; if you work in overseas expansion, e-commerce, downloads, or content businesses, you can first narrow the vendor range by user region and file type; if you are responsible for enterprise procurement, platform data can also serve as a starting point for technical evaluation and make subsequent test plans more specific.

It is especially useful for that very common moment: you know your website needs a CDN, but you do not yet know which vendors to start with, or how to compare the numbers in sales materials.

Several common questions about CDNChart.

Will CDNChart's rankings stay the same forever?

No. Network conditions, probe regions, sample sizes, and time windows all change. When viewing rankings, rely on the update time, sample size, and filter conditions displayed on the page at that time.

Is the globally top-ranked CDN the CDN that best fits me?

Not necessarily. Global overall performance can only help you build a shortlist. Main user regions, business type, price, ICP filing, technical support, and existing cloud architecture all change the final answer.

What is the difference between Website Speed Test and CDN rankings?

Rankings mainly compare CDN performance under the platform's unified observation conditions; Website Speed Test checks the specific domain you enter. One is suited to filtering vendors horizontally, and the other to validating your actual business.

If CDN Detection does not identify a vendor, does that mean the website is not using a CDN?

It cannot be judged that way. Vendor fingerprints may be hidden, and there may be multiple layers of proxies, private nodes, or network signals not yet indexed. You should continue checking CNAME, response headers, ASN, console configuration, and logs.

Can CDNChart replace formal CDN testing and procurement evaluation?

It cannot fully replace them. It can significantly narrow the research scope, unify comparison logic, and provide external observations, but before going live you still need to test your own domain, files, user regions, and peak traffic.

What we want to solve is not just which CDN ranks first.

When choosing a CDN, people are easily drawn to a striking millisecond number.

But what truly affects the business is often the less eye-catching questions that follow: Is it stable at evening peak? Can users in remote areas open it? Will large file downloads slow down? Has there been improvement after adoption? And when problems occur, can the cause be found?

CDNChart aims to put these questions into the same set of data that can be viewed, compared, and rechecked.

You can start with aGlobal CDN Rankingsor test your own website directly, or first let the selection assistant suggest a few candidates.

What matters is not getting an answer that looks certain within a few minutes, but turning the vague question of which CDN is good step by step into a choice that fits your own business.