Easily compare Akamai and BelugaCDN for POP locations, products, pricing, features & support. We hope this helps you better understand the similarities and differences between these content delivery networks.
Company
| Company | Akamai | BelugaCDN |
|---|---|---|
| Short profile | Akamai is one of the oldest CDNs and generally considered to be the largest global CDN. They have 'servers everywhere' and a wide range of products and services. The company is actively involved in Let's Encrypt and is pushing HTTP/2 adoption. | BelugaCDN launched their services in 2015 and is a pay-as-you-go, low-cost CDN provider. They have a full-featured IPv4+IPv6 network and POPs on 5 continents. |
Products
| Product | Akamai | BelugaCDN |
|---|---|---|
| Dynamic content deliveryNon-cacheable content delivery. User login, shopping cart ... | Dynamic Site Accelerator | |
| Small file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of small files (file size <1 MB) | Ion | |
| Large file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of large files (file size >1 MB) | Download Delivery | |
| Live videoDelivery of live video. RTMP? Transcoding/transmuxing? | Adaptive Media Delivery | Only delivery of the HTTP video streams, no transcoding or transmuxing |
| Video on demandDelivery of on demand video | Pseudo-streaming (progressive streaming), byte range requests support | |
| Image OptimizationAutomatic image transformation/compression/optimization | Image & Video Manager | |
| DNSAuthoritative DNS for customer domain | Edge DNS | |
| WAFWeb Application Firewall | Web Application Protector | |
| Anti-DDoSDDoS attack protection. Specific product(s) for this. | Kona DDoS Defender | |
| Private CDNDedicated edge resources & custom configs | Available upon request. Extra costs apply | |
| Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers | EdgeWorkers |
Network
How many POP locations do Akamai and BelugaCDN have in different parts of the world?
| Region | Akamai | BelugaCDN |
|---|---|---|
| North America | ? | 13 |
| Latin America | ? | 1 |
| Europe | ? | 4 |
| Russia & CIS | ? | 0 |
| Asia excl. China | ? | 5 |
| China | ? | 0 |
| Oceania | ? | 1 |
| Middle East | ? | 0 |
| Africa | ? | 0 |
Pricing
| Pricing & contract duration | Akamai | BelugaCDN |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum contract term | 12 months | None |
| Minimum monthly costs | Unknown | $5 |
| Requests costsCustomers pay for client to CDN requests | Unknown | 5000 requests per GB included. Overages $0.0035 per 10k requests |
| Ingress costsCustomers pay for origin-to-CDN bytes transferred | Unknown | None |
| NA/EU traffic (low volume) | Unknown | $0.01 per GB |
| APAC traffic (low volume) | Unknown | Unknown |
| LATAM traffic (low volume) | Unknown | Unknown |
Features
| Web acceleration | Akamai | BelugaCDN |
|---|---|---|
| Instant setupSign up, configure, start testing. | Can't sign up and get started. Must talk to sales. | |
| Change propagation delayHow fast do config changes propagate to all POPs? | Often instant, sometimes a few minutes | |
Apex/root domain OK  No performance degradation when using http(s)://domain.com |
If you also use their Fast DNS for your domain | Global Anycasted IP available, but Beluga recommends against it |
| HTTP/2 | ||
| HTTP/3 | HTTP/3 announcement | |
| WebSockets | WebSockets docs | |
| IPv6Do the edge servers have IPv6? | ||
| Compression Reduce file size for faster delivery |
Resend from origin, or compress on edge | Compress on the fly |
| Origin pull - protocolHTTP only or HTTPS possible too? | HTTP and HTTPS | HTTP and HTTPS. |
| Origin pull - Host headerUse client > edge value? Set specific value? | ||
| Origin ShieldOne POP pulls from origin, other POPs pull from the shield POP | Available upon request | |
| Waiting RoomDuring peak traffic, route users to a virtual waiting room | Virtual Waiting Room | |
| Push / uploadStore your content directly on CDN, no customer origin | Available upon request | |
| Cache control - CDN caching | Honor origin sent headers or configure overrides | |
| Cache control - client caching | ||
| Serve Stale CDN serves cached but expired content in case origin is in trouble |
||
| Purge Invalidate or delete cached objects on CDN |
Instant | |
| Purge - capabilities | Purge all and purge using regex | |
| Analytics | All metrics are aggregated every 10 seconds, exported in real-time | |
| Log files |
Real-time export to Elastic Search or Redis. FTP.
10 million requests/month free, $0.50/million events exported overage
|
|
| API | Purge, analytics, configuration |
| HTTPS & Content Protection | Akamai | BelugaCDN |
|---|---|---|
| CDN domain HTTPSUse the CDN's domain, like cloudfront.net | ||
| Customer domain HTTPSYour domain in the CDN's certificate | ||
| Customer cert HTTPSYour certificate on the CDN |
Free (SNI)
TLS support includes full TLS Dynamic Record Sizing and ECDSA support per Q1 2017
|
|
| Token authentication | ||
| Geo blocking | ||
| Hotlink protectionThird parties cannot deeplink to your content | ||
| Basic authenticationUser logs in on the CDN to get content | ||
| IP white/blacklisting |
Support
| Customer support | Akamai | BelugaCDN |
|---|---|---|
| Documentation | Akamai techdocs | Yes, public |
| Humans | Basic support (setup & troubleshooting: M-F, 9AM-5PM EST) is included for all accounts. Platinum (monthly spend more than $500) accounts receive priority. Enterprise customers receive phone support (w/ custom SLA). |