Cloudflare vs Bunny.net vs Fastly - which edge platform for SMEs?

What is the duel about?

Three providers dominate the edge-platform market in May 2026 - the bundle of CDN (serving static content from the nearest PoP), DNS (authoritative name service), WAF (Web Application Firewall) and bot protection. Cloudflare, Bunny.net and Fastly. All three solve the task cleanly, but they address very different audiences.

Cloudflare is the dominant US corporation with over 330 PoPs worldwide, covering virtually every use case from personal blog to Fortune 500. Its free tier is unique on the market: unlimited traffic, CDN, DNS, basic WAF, free. Pro tier from USD 20/month, Business USD 200/month, Enterprise from USD 2000+/month with an individual contract. That same breadth is also Cloudflare's weakness: the concentration of a large share of web traffic in a single US provider is not trivial in data-protection terms, and Cloudflare's larger outages (e.g. June 2022, June 2024, February 2026) bring entire chunks of the internet down at once.

Bunny.net (Slovenian provider, founded 2015) has established itself by May 2026 as the serious EU-focused competitor. Pay-as-you-go from USD 0.005 per GB bandwidth in Europe and North America, USD 0.03-0.06 per GB in more expensive regions. No free tier apart from the USD 1 monthly minimum. No WAF in the tariff (separate product), but bot protection and edge-compute functions exist. Target: SMEs and mid-market who find Cloudflare's Pro tier too expensive and to whom EU hosting matters.

Fastly (San Francisco, founded 2011) is the enterprise specialist. Very fast network with relatively few but strong PoPs, programmable edge logic via VCL (Varnish Configuration Language) or Compute@Edge. No free tier, pay-as-you-go realistically starts at USD 200-500 per month, enterprise customers typically pay five figures. Focus: high-traffic media sites, financial services, tech corporations with complex edge logic.

Why the choice matters

Three hard axes decide which edge platform fits a Swiss SME setup: price profile, data-protection position and WAF depth.

Price profile: Cloudflare Free is unrivalled up to about 50 GB/month bandwidth. Anyone wanting more features (image optimisation, R2 storage, advanced WAF) jumps to Pro (USD 20/month) or Business (USD 200/month). Bunny.net charges purely by consumption: 50 GB/month costs USD 0.25-0.50, 1 TB/month around USD 5-10. Anyone serving 24/7 static assets under 100 GB/month sits below Cloudflare Pro prices earlier with Bunny.net. Fastly is simply too expensive for SMEs - its minimum spend disqualifies most setups below 50000 visits per month.

Data-protection position: Cloudflare is a US corporation. Even though EU PoPs cache traffic in Europe, the company remains subject to the Cloud Act and US subpoenas. For DSG-strict fiduciary and law-office setups this requires a documented Transfer Impact Assessment plus standard contractual clauses. Bunny.net (Slovenian, EU law) solves that cleanly - the contractual party is an EU company, the law is GDPR, no third-country transfer. Fastly is, like Cloudflare, a US corporation - same legal posture.

WAF depth: Cloudflare has the most mature WAF in the SME segment in May 2026. OWASP Core Rule Set, own Cloudflare rules, bot management, rate limiting configurable down to fine detail. The Business tier adds custom rules; the Enterprise tier adds API protection and ML-based anomaly detection. Fastly offers comparable depth (Signal Sciences integrated) but requires an enterprise contract. Bunny.net is the lightest here - the WAF is a separate product (Bunny Shield, public beta as of May 2026), feature depth more comparable to Cloudflare Pro than Business.

The three providers in detail

Cloudflare (US, over 330 PoPs as of May 2026): four-tier model. Free covers unlimited CDN bandwidth, DNS, basic WAF, layer-3/4 and layer-7 DDoS protection. Pro (USD 20/month) adds image optimisation, advanced security headers, mobile optimisation, web analytics. Business (USD 200/month) custom SSL, custom WAF rules, priority support. Enterprise (USD 2000+/month individual) full WAF, API protection, ML-based bot management, SLA. Adjacent products: R2 (S3-compatible storage with no egress cost), Workers (edge compute), Pages (static hosting), D1 (edge SQLite), Stream (video CDN), email routing, zero-trust access. Weaknesses: concentration of web traffic, outages with global impact, US contractual party.

Bunny.net (Slovenia, founded 2015, EU-focused): pay-as-you-go model without tiers, USD 1/month minimum spend. CDN pricing by region: USD 0.005/GB in Volume Network (simplified, global flat rate), USD 0.01-0.06/GB in Standard Network (geographically differentiated, EU+NA USD 0.01, Asia USD 0.03, Africa/SA USD 0.06). Bunny Storage (S3-like) from USD 0.01/GB+month. Bunny CDN Volume tier offers a global flat rate for heavy-traffic setups. Bunny Stream for video CDN. Bunny Edge Scripting for worker-like edge logic. Bunny Shield (WAF, public beta as of May 2026) as a separate product. Weaknesses: fewer PoPs than Cloudflare (about 120 in May 2026), no free tier, WAF still ramping up.

Fastly (US, founded 2011): enterprise-focused model. Fewer but very strong PoPs (about 75 in May 2026), lowest latency in the US market at the top PoPs, real-time logging, programmable edge logic via VCL or Compute@Edge. The pay-as-you-go tier has a realistic minimum of USD 200-500/month, enterprise customers with individual contracts typically pay USD 5000-50000+/month. Includes Signal Sciences for WAF (very strong API protection capability), image optimisation, real-user monitoring. Weaknesses: no free tier, high entry investment, US contractual party.

Edge platform selection in 6 steps

1. 01Measure the traffic profile: monthly bandwidth, visit count, share of dynamic vs. static content, peak load.
2. 02Check data sensitivity: public marketing site = free choice; client login = Bunny.net or own reverse proxy.
3. 03Define feature need: CDN alone, or CDN+WAF+bot management+image optimisation? More features = Cloudflare Pro/Business.
4. 04Make a cost estimate: bandwidth x provider rate, plus feature-tier surcharge. Cloudflare Free is 0; Bunny ~USD 0.50-10 for SME volumes; Fastly not below USD 200.
5. 05DSG check: with Cloudflare/Fastly document standard contractual clauses + TIA; with Bunny.net DSGVO-compliant by default.
6. 06PoC with the favourite: test live for one week, measure latency in real operation (from CH, DE, AT), watch cache hit rate, then commit to production.

Recommendation by scenario

Swiss fiduciary office, static marketing site plus a small client portal: Bunny.net. EU contractual party, GDPR-compliant, USD 1-10 per month for realistic traffic volumes, Bunny Storage and Bunny Stream if needed. Serving 10-20 client logins per day and staying below 50 GB bandwidth per month costs under USD 5/month.

SME marketing site, wish for free CDN and WAF: Cloudflare Free. Usable without issues up to 50-200 GB/month, DDoS protection included, DNS, basic WAF, SSL. As of May 2026 still the large market-share holder among micro-sites. Precondition: no hard DSG argument, US contractual party accepted.

E-commerce site with 100k-1M visits per month, SME budget: Cloudflare Pro (USD 20/month) plus image optimisation, or Bunny.net with Bunny Shield. Bunny is cheaper at high traffic; Cloudflare has the more mature WAF and bot management. Decide by EU sensitivity: DSG-strict = Bunny; OK with US corporation = Cloudflare.

High-traffic site (10M+ visits/month), complex edge logic, programmable API protection: Fastly or Cloudflare Enterprise. Both are serious options here. Fastly has lower latencies at top PoPs and Signal Sciences WAF; Cloudflare has the larger network and the Workers/D1/R2 ecosystem. SME offices rarely play in this league.

Law portal under professional secrecy with client data in transit: Bunny.net or your own reverse proxy on Hetzner with Cloudflare as a pure DNS+DDoS layer (no traffic decryption by Cloudflare). Bunny.net solves the EU contractual question most cleanly.

Video CDN for client training or webinars: Bunny Stream or Cloudflare Stream. Both offer adaptive-bitrate encoding and HLS/DASH streaming. Bunny is cheaper on a consumption basis; Cloudflare is easier to integrate if the rest already runs on Cloudflare.

When an edge platform is wrong

If the site should only be reachable internally (within the company network), a CDN is the wrong lever - then you need a VPN, zero-trust access or an internal reverse proxy. Cloudflare Tunnel and Cloudflare Zero Trust solve that, but they are conceptually different from a CDN.

If the traffic is consistently dynamic and personalised (every response depends on the login cookie), a CDN brings little - it can cache practically nothing. In that case a DNS provider with DDoS protection and a good reverse proxy at the application server matter more than a full CDN subscription.

If a law firm or fiduciary office interprets SCC Art. 321 strictly and accepts no third-party encryption termination at all, Cloudflare is problematic - SSL termination at the Cloudflare PoP means Cloudflare briefly sees the traffic in clear. Solutions: Cloudflare only as a DNS+DDoS layer without proxy mode, or Bunny.net with origin shield, or a fully self-hosted reverse proxy on Hetzner.

If global reach is not important (the site serves only Switzerland and DACH), Cloudflare's high PoP count is overdimensioned. A good EU CDN (Bunny.net) is enough and cheaper.

Trade-offs

FAQ

Related topics

Sources

1. Cloudflare - plans and pricing · 2026-05
2. Bunny.net - CDN pricing · 2026-05
3. Fastly - pricing overview · 2026-04
4. Bunny.net vs Cloudflare comparison (2026 analysis) · 2026-04