Easily compare Akamai and Gcore 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
Gcore
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.
Gcore is a global CDN with a focus on gaming: "We expand the geographical presence of your game and speed up downloads for your players". Gcore is headquartered in Luxembourg and employs 400+ people.
Products
Network
How many POP locations do Akamai and Gcore have in different parts of the world?
Region
Akamai
Gcore
North America
?
14
Latin America
?
13
Europe
?
18
Russia & CIS
?
13
Asia excl. China
?
13
China
?
0
Oceania
?
2
Middle-East
?
11
Africa
?
6
Pricing
Pricing & contract duration
Akamai
Gcore
Minimum contract term
12 months
None
Minimum monthly costs
Unknown
$25
Requests costsCustomers pay for client to CDN requests
Unknown
First 1 billion free, more cost $0.0075/million
Ingress costsCustomers pay for origin-to-CDN bytes transferred
Unknown
Yes
NA/EU traffic (low volume)
Unknown
$0.025 per GB
APAC traffic (low volume)
Unknown
$0.025 per GB
LATAM traffic (low volume)
Unknown
$0.025 per GB
Features
Web acceleration
Akamai
Gcore
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?
~15 minutes
Apex/root domain OK No performance degradation when using http(s)://domain.com
If you also use their Fast DNS for your domain
Custom solution (host your DNS zone ...)
HTTP/2
WebSockets
WebSockets docs
WebSockets docs
IPv6Do the edge servers have IPv6?
Compression Reduce file size for faster delivery
Resend from origin, or compress on edge
Resend from origin, or compress on edge
Origin pull - protocolHTTP only or HTTPS possible too?
HTTP and HTTPS
HTTP and HTTPS
Origin pull - Host headerUse client > edge value? Set specific value?
Can be different from origin host
Origin ShieldOne POP pulls from origin, other POPs pull from the shield POP
Waiting RoomDuring peak traffic, route users to a virtual waiting room
Virtual Waiting Room
Push / uploadStore your content directly on CDN, no customer origin
Cache control - CDN caching
Origin or CDN controlled
Cache control - client caching
Origin or CDN controlled
Serve Stale CDN serves cached but expired content in case origin is in trouble
Always Online
Purge Invalidate or delete cached objects on CDN
Purge Speed
Purge - capabilities
Purge all, directory, and by file type/pattern
Analytics
Many metrics, real-time updates
Log files
Export logs to your storage. Logs are exported at the end of each hour.
API
Purge, analytics, configuration
HTTPS & Content Protection
Akamai
Gcore
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
Manage self in control panel
Token authentication
Secure Token
Geo blocking
Country Access Policy
Hotlink protectionThird parties cannot deeplink to your content
Referer Access Policy
Basic authenticationUser logs in on the CDN to get content
IP white/blacklisting
IP Access Policy
Support