What to look for in a CDN provider in 2026

A 2026 CDN checklist: footprint, Origin Shield, HTTP/3, image and video, purge, DNS cutover, origin protection and a migration you can rehearse.

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The CDN market is noisy. Production is quiet until it is not. Look for a network you can measure, controls you can operate, and a cutover you can rehearse on a hostname that is not production.

Network

PoPs, capacity, peering, IXPs, average latency. Aptranet publishes 210+ locations, 200+ Tbps, 14,000+ peers, 120+ IXPs and 30 ms average latency. Ask others for the same shape of numbers.

Miss path and media

Origin Shield, origin groups, image transformation, live and VOD, large files. If your workload is any of those, a static-only edge will show up on the first event.

Operate it

Purge, prefetch, logs, API, managed and custom TLS. If those are tickets, you do not operate the edge.

Leave production DNS for last

A provider that cannot give you a test hostname is asking you to practise in production. Cloud CDN expects you to validate first. Cloud DNS is optional and makes the final cutover sane.

Continue on Aptranet

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I pick on price alone?

Compare included traffic and overage, then judge miss handling and operations. An incident is more expensive than a plan step.

Do I need DNS from the same vendor?

No. Same-footprint DNS and CDN reduces moving parts. Aptranet offers both independently.

How do I trial?

Create a distribution, pull origin, validate on an Aptranet hostname, then move DNS.