# Content delivery networks: what AI models recommend, September 2026

IT AI Recommendation Index, September 2026 Edition. Asked as "CDN" and as "content delivery network", six framings each, to twelve models with search on, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. Page: https://it-ai-index.com/network/content-delivery-networks/

**Standing:** Cloudflare leads with 80% of first choices; verdict clear leader. 46 first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts.

## First-choice share

| # | Product | Share | Negative rate | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cloudflare | 80% | 9% | 64 |
| 2 | Bunny.net | 15% | 5% | 43 |
| 3 | Fastly | 2% | 18% | 49 |
| 4 | Amazon CloudFront | 0% | 18% | 51 |
| 5 | Google Cloud CDN | 0% | 5% | 19 |
| 6 | KeyCDN | 0% | 6% | 16 |
| 7 | CDN77 | 0% | 0% | 11 |
| 8 | Akamai | 0% | 40% | 42 |

## Each model's first choice on the direct prompt

- Claude Haiku 4.5: Cloudflare; alternatives Akamai, Amazon CloudFront, Fastly
- GPT-5.4 mini: Cloudflare; alternatives Akamai, Amazon CloudFront, Fastly
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: Cloudflare; alternatives Amazon CloudFront, CDN77, Fastly
- Perplexity Sonar: Cloudflare; alternatives Akamai, Amazon CloudFront, CDN77, Fastly
- Grok 4.1 Fast: Cloudflare; alternatives Amazon CloudFront, Bunny.net, CDN77, Fastly
- Mistral Small: Cloudflare; alternatives Amazon CloudFront, Bunny.net, CDN77
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: Cloudflare; alternatives Amazon CloudFront, Bunny.net, Fastly
- Llama 4 Maverick: no first choice
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: Cloudflare; alternatives Amazon CloudFront, Bunny.net, CDN77
- Kimi K2: Bunny.net, Cloudflare; alternatives CDN77, Fastly
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: Cloudflare; alternatives Amazon CloudFront, Bunny.net, CDN77
- MiniMax M2.5: Cloudflare; alternatives Amazon CloudFront, Bunny.net, CDN77, Fastly

## Sources the answers cite

61 of 72 answers came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models. Sites named in the most answers:

- blog.blazingcdn.com: 40 answers, 97 citations
- fastly.com: 26 answers, 33 citations
- wpforms.com: 20 answers, 20 citations
- linkedin.com: 15 answers, 15 citations
- yewsafe.com: 14 answers, 20 citations
- techradar.com: 12 answers, 13 citations
- broadbandnow.com: 11 answers, 11 citations
- edgenext.com: 10 answers, 11 citations

Pages named in the most answers:

- https://wpforms.com/best-cdn-providers (20 answers)
- https://blog.blazingcdn.com/en-us/top-cdn-providers-2025-an-expert-guide-to-types-technologies-and-performance-0 (13 answers)
- https://fastly.com/blog/best-cdn-providers (13 answers)
- https://linkedin.com/pulse/choosing-best-cdn-top-content-delivery-networks-2026-rajesh-kumar-ua4ac (13 answers)
- https://techradar.com/news/best-cdn-providers (12 answers)
- https://broadbandnow.com/guides/CDN-Providers (11 answers)
- https://33rdsquare.com/cdn-services (10 answers)
- https://blog.blazingcdn.com/en-us/the-best-cdns-in-2026-compared-by-speed-price-and-global-coverage (8 answers)
- https://it-server-room.com/en/cdn-compare-2026-cloudflare-aws-akamai-fastly-google (8 answers)
- https://cloudinsight.cc/en/blog/cdn-comparison (7 answers)

## Warned against

- Akamai: 17 of 42 labels negative. "Avoid jumping straight to Akamai or other enterprise-tier CDNs unless you have truly global enterprise needs" (DeepSeek V4 Flash, paraphrase prompt)
- Amazon CloudFront: 9 of 51 labels negative. "All major CDNs studied (including Cloudflare, Microsoft Azure, Amazon, and Fastly) have been found to have back-end TLS connections vulnerable" (Claude Haiku 4.5, negative prompt)
- cdnjs: 6 of 6 labels negative. "Public CDNs like Google Hosted Libraries, CDNjs, and jsDelivr, as they can pose security, privacy, and stability risks." (Llama 4 Maverick, negative prompt)
- Cloudflare: 6 of 64 labels negative. "Cloudflare's CDN, as it may slow down your website, and pointing your DNS to Cloudflare can make timely recovery unlikely in case of an outage." (Llama 4 Maverick, negative prompt)

## Record

- Method: https://it-ai-index.com/methodology/
- Raw judge labels and full responses: https://it-ai-index.com/data/
- License: CC BY 4.0. Cite as IT AI Recommendation Index, September 2026 Edition, it-ai-index.com.