CacheFly.The throughput veteran.
Delivering since 2002, when it built the world’s first TCP-anycast CDN, CacheFly is the specialist that optimized for one thing, throughput, and backed it with the industry’s boldest promise: a 100% uptime and performance SLA. Big files, game builds, podcasts and streams, sold by people who answer the phone and design contracts around your traffic, not their tiers.
CacheFly in seven bars.
Our advisory read, scored against the 25+ provider field we benchmark. Blue is where CacheFly leads; gray is where the trade-offs live.
Scores are CDN World’s advisory judgment, not a lab measurement.
The oldest trick in the book, still working.
Launched in Chicago in 2002, CacheFly pioneered TCP-anycast delivery before most of today’s CDNs existed, and never diversified away from the core mission: move large amounts of data very fast, very reliably. Two decades on, the pitch is unchanged and the receipts, from game studios to podcast networks, keep coming.
Anycast routing tuned for sustained transfer rates rather than just first-byte sprints, the difference that shows on multi-gigabyte game builds, software updates and long-form media, where CacheFly claims materially faster delivery than bigger rivals.
Not five nines, one hundred percent, covering uptime and performance. SLAs are payout clauses, not force fields, but publishing the boldest guarantee in the market for two decades signals an operations culture built around never invoking it.
The Storage Optimization System pairs dedicated cache with origin storage so hot content simply cannot miss, an origin-shield architecture sold as a guarantee rather than a best effort, and a genuine differentiator for fragile origins.
Design-your-own contracts, month-to-month if you want it, engineers on support at every tier, and a sales process that starts with your traffic profile, the anti-enterprise-theater experience, from a company old enough to have invented some of the theater’s alternatives.
The platform, by line.
What CacheFly actually sells, in the names its console uses.
TCP-anycast delivery optimized for throughput across 75+ PoPs on all seven continents, with self-healing routing that doesn’t depend on a central brain making decisions.
CoreSub-second WebSocket-based live streaming with synchronized playback across devices, plus the audio-delivery heritage that made CacheFly a fixture of the podcast industry, with real-time listener analytics.
CoreOrigin storage plus reserved cache capacity that together guarantee a 100% hit ratio for designated content, the strongest origin-offload promise on this site.
CoreReal-time log delivery into your own pipeline plus a reporting dashboard with customizable insight, adequate ops tooling without a platform pretense.
IncludedOn-the-fly image handling, DDoS protection and access controls priced as separate add-ons rather than bundled, delivery stays the headline.
Add-onDedicated nodes for platforms that outgrow shared capacity, emerging-market builds (a native Mumbai PoP is a point of pride), and custom private implementations, including China PoPs for private deployments.
CustomWhere the network runs deep.
Our regional read of a footprint the company quotes at 75+ PoPs across all seven continents, with plan tiers unlocking different subsets, from a 19-PoP core to the full map with edge acceleration proxies.
Regional depth is CDN World’s advisory read of published PoP information, July 2026. China PoPs exist for custom private-CDN implementations only; for standard in-country delivery, pair with CDNetworks.
How CacheFly is bought.
Self-serve at the bottom, handshake at the top, and unusually willing to meet in the middle.
Month-to-month if you want it, discounts for 12-month commits, and a stated willingness to build terms around your traffic instead of forcing tiers.
The 100 GB monthly developer account has no card requirement and no time limit; paid evaluation runs through a 30-day POC, sales-engineering-led at the top end.
Email support is staffed by CDN engineers across all plans; Silver, Gold and Platinum add SLA-backed response times.
Published figures differ across channels as the plan structure evolved (plan tiers, bandwidth commits and support plans now sold separately), confirm the current menu before comparing quotes.
Lower plans ride a 19-PoP core network; the full map and edge acceleration proxies arrive with higher tiers, price the network you’ll actually get.
Image transformation, security features and SLA-backed support price separately; the throughput headline rate is not the whole invoice.
CacheFly is not sold through our resale tiers, so our role here is pure advisory: we benchmark its throughput claims on your file profile against the 25+ provider field, decode the current plan packaging, and tell you honestly whether the veteran wins.
The technical checklist.
The green lights and the amber ones, as we’d brief an engineering team.
The house specialty since 2002: self-healing, throughput-tuned path selection.
YesModern protocol support at the edge with TCP fallback.
YesCertificates included from the smallest plans up.
YesS.O.S. pairs storage with reserved cache for a designed 100% hit ratio.
YesSub-second WebSocket delivery with cross-device playback sync.
YesThe core competency: sustained throughput on multi-GB payloads.
YesLive dashboards plus raw logs into your own pipeline.
YesConfig and purge over API; a working IaC path, if a smaller ecosystem.
YesFast propagation across the network.
YesNetwork-level protection available; deeper security features are add-ons.
YesSecurity exists as add-ons, not a WAAP platform; security-led buyers should look elsewhere.
LightNo programmable edge runtime to speak of; logic lives at your origin or another layer.
MinimalDocs, humans, status.
Practical setup and configuration docs; the ecosystem of third-party tutorials is small, but the product surface is small too, in a good way.
Email and phone support around the clock, staffed by CDN engineers on every tier, with SLA-backed response times on paid support plans.
“Consultants to our customers” is the company’s own phrase, and reviews back it up: traffic analysis, cache-miss cost modeling and config tuning come with the relationship.
Self-serve developer account in minutes; larger estates get a structured 30-day POC with sales engineering, and dedicated engineering at the top tier.
Where it wins. Where it doesn’t.
The two-minute version we give clients before the numbers.
Sustained-throughput delivery of large objects is the founding competency; distribution-heavy workloads consistently rank it above networks many times its size.
Two decades of audio-delivery heritage, listener analytics, and sub-second live streaming make it a natural home for media businesses that value a vendor who understands the workload.
Custom contracts, consultative engineering and the 100% SLA suit organizations that would rather negotiate with people than parse tier tables, at mid-market prices.
No edge compute, light security, no sprawling product estate. If you’re consolidating a dozen needs onto one vendor, this deliberately isn’t that vendor.
75+ PoPs is honest coverage, not Akamai-class saturation; latency-critical small-object workloads in thin regions may measure better elsewhere, benchmark, don’t assume.
China capability exists only as custom private-CDN builds; for ordinary in-country delivery, pair with an in-country specialist.
CacheFly in context.
Where this profile connects to the rest of our research.
CacheFly questions,
answered straight.
What does the 100% SLA actually mean?
CacheFly contractually guarantees both uptime and performance at 100%, the boldest published SLA in the CDN market. Like every SLA it’s ultimately a payout clause, not a physics guarantee, but a company doesn’t keep that promise on its homepage for twenty years unless its operations are built around never paying it out.
How big is the network?
The company quotes 75+ PoPs across all seven continents, with plan tiers unlocking different subsets, from a 19-PoP North America and Europe core on entry plans to the full map with edge acceleration proxies on top tiers. It’s honest mid-size coverage optimized for throughput, not an eyeball-density arms race.
What does CacheFly cost?
A free developer account carries 100 GB monthly with no card and no time limit. Paid entry sits in the few-hundred-dollars-a-month class for the 10 TB range, with the current packaging built from plan tiers, bandwidth commits and separate SLA-backed support plans, and everything above roughly 100 TB a month is custom. Published figures have shifted with recent repackaging, so verify the current menu, or let us decode it against market rates.
Is it really faster for large files?
Throughput on large objects is the founding specialty and the company publishes aggressive comparative claims. Our advice is the same as for every vendor benchmark: the only number that matters is measured on your files, on your routes, which is exactly what a structured POC or our independent benchmark produces.
Does CacheFly work for mainland China?
Only via custom private-CDN implementations that can include China PoPs; there’s no standard in-country delivery product. For an ordinary China audience we pair a CacheFly core with an in-country specialist; see our CDNetworks profile.
How does CDN World fit in?
CacheFly isn’t part of our resale tiers, so our role is purely advisory: we benchmark its throughput on your traffic against the 25+ provider field, decode the plan packaging, and bring market data to your negotiation. Start with a free assessment.
CacheFly is a trademark of CacheNetworks, LLC. CDN World is an independent advisory and is not affiliated with or endorsed by CacheFly. Network, SLA and pricing figures are as published by CacheFly or reported in public sources as of July 2026 and may change.