NordicCDN vs Cloudflare

A European alternative to Cloudflare, without the tier ladder

Keep your DNS where it is. Get full-page caching, image optimisation, a real firewall and a waiting room in the price — not spread across Pro, Business and an enterprise contract. And a European company on the invoice.

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The short version

Four differences that decide it for most people

No nameserver change

Keep your nameservers

Proxying through Cloudflare generally means moving your whole domain onto their DNS. With us it is one record at whatever DNS provider you use today. For teams where DNS is owned by someone else — or governed by a change process — that difference is the whole decision.

One line, not a ladder

Everything is in the price

Full-page caching for WordPress, image optimisation, waiting room, log search, granular team roles. On Cloudflare each of those sits behind a different plan or add-on. Here they are the product, at EUR 0.01 per gigabyte.

EU data residency

European by default, not by add-on

We are a Danish company operating under EU law. Account data, billing and analytics live in the EU, and a zone can be pinned to European edges only. There is no US parent in the chain and no enterprise SKU required to say so.

Configured, not configurable

Presets instead of a rules engine

Cloudflare gives you a powerful rules engine and expects you to drive it. We ask what your site is — WordPress, WooCommerce, PrestaShop — and configure the cache and bypass rules for you. Both work; one takes an afternoon and one takes a click.

How you connect

One record, versus your whole domain

This is the difference people underestimate until they try to get the change approved.

We do offer managed DNS if you want it — the point is that it is a choice, not a precondition.

Capability by capability

The full comparison

Cloudflare is a serious piece of engineering and there are rows here where they simply win. We have marked those honestly — including the one where the answer is "we do not offer that at all".

Capability	NordicCDN	Cloudflare
Architecture
Global edge network Cloudflare has more PoPs than we do. Past a point, what matters for your visitors is whether there is one near them.	Our own servers across EU, Americas, APAC and Africa	Very large global footprint
Anycast routing	Our own BGP announcements	Yes
Must move DNS to the provider The single most common reason people cannot adopt a CDN at all.	No — one record at your existing DNS host	Nameserver change for full proxying
Optional managed DNS	Available if you want it	Core part of the product
European company and jurisdiction	Danish, EU law	US company
EU data residency	Default; EU-only edges available per zone	Data Localization Suite, enterprise add-on
Performance
Static asset caching	Included	Included on all plans
Full-page HTML caching	Site Accelerators, included	APO for WordPress, or page rules you write
WordPress acceleration	One-click preset, no plugin required	APO — paid add-on, plugin required
WooCommerce acceleration	Preset with cart and checkout bypass	Manual rules; APO explicitly excludes carts
PrestaShop acceleration	Preset included	Manual rules
Edge Side Includes (ESI)	Included	Achievable with Workers you write
Image resize and format conversion	Included	Image Resizing / Polish, paid tiers
CSS and JS minification	Included	Varies by plan
Brotli and HTTP/3	On by default	Supported
Cache purge by path and tag	Included on every account	Tag purge on higher plans
Automatic cache warming	Popular pages re-warmed after purge	Not offered
Application security
DDoS mitigation Credit where it is due — this is Cloudflare at its strongest.	Absorbed at the edge	Industry-leading scale
Managed TLS certificates	Issued and renewed automatically	Included
IP and country firewall rules	Included, unlimited rules	Rule count and features scale with plan
Proof-of-work bot challenge	Invisible or interactive, per rule	Managed Challenge
Bot management	Automatic scanner and scraper blocking	Full bot management is enterprise
Network-wide threat intelligence	Edge Shield blocklist, shared across all zones	Large-scale threat data
Honeypot and 404-flood detection	Included, admin and per-zone rules	Buildable with rules or Workers
Rate limiting	Included	Metered and plan-dependent
Waiting room	Included, on every account	Paid add-on / higher plans
Hotlink protection and CORS	Included	Included
Visibility
Real-time traffic analytics	Included	Included
Per-request log search in the dashboard	Included on every account	Logpush is an enterprise feature
Raw log retention	7 days of request-level detail, then aggregates	Retention depends on plan
Geographic, status and cache-hit breakdowns	Included	Included
Independent latency monitoring	RIPE Atlas probes checking our own routing	Internal
Management & administration
Time to first cached page	Minutes — one DNS record and a preset	Minutes for basics; longer for tuned caching
Configuration model	Presets for what your site is	Rules engine — powerful, and your job to write
Custom domains with auto-SSL	Unlimited, included	Included
REST API and scoped tokens	Included	Included
Team accounts and roles	Included on every account	Granular roles on higher plans
Programmable edge compute If you want to write code that runs at the edge, Cloudflare is the answer and we are not.	Not offered — we do presets, not a runtime	Workers
Support	Email straight to the engineers	Community first; priority support by plan
Commercials
Pricing model	EUR 0.01/GB used, everything included	Plan tiers, plus per-product add-ons
Free allowance	25 GB every month, no card	Generous free plan for basic delivery
Cost of full-page WordPress caching	Included	Paid add-on
Cost of the waiting room	Included	Paid add-on / higher plan
Cost of image optimisation	Included	Paid tier or separate product
Contracts or minimums	None	Enterprise terms are contractual

Compiled from publicly documented product information as of 2026. Cloudflare's feature availability varies significantly by plan tier, and both products change often — verify anything decision-critical against Cloudflare's current documentation and pricing before you rely on it. Spotted something out of date? Tell us and we will correct it.

The tier problem

The features you actually need are rarely on the plan you are on

This is the pattern people describe to us most often: the free plan is great until the site grows, and then each thing you need lives one tier further up.

The usual journey

1Free plan. Assets are cached, the site is a bit faster. Good.
2The HTML is still slow, because it is not cached. You want full-page caching — that is an add-on, and it needs a plugin.
3The images are heavy. Optimisation is a paid tier or a separate product.
4A campaign day melts the origin. The waiting room is another add-on.
5Legal asks where the data is. That answer is an enterprise conversation.

With us

There is one plan. Full-page caching, image optimisation, minification, firewall, bot challenges, Edge Shield, rate limiting, waiting room, log search, translation, team roles and SSL are all in it. You pay EUR 0.01 for each gigabyte you deliver, and the first 25 GB every month is free.

The only thing that grows with your traffic is the traffic line.

See the pricing →

Being straight with you

When Cloudflare is the right answer

There are real cases where they are the better choice, and you should know them before you talk to us.

Choose NordicCDN if…

You cannot or will not move your nameservers
You want EU data residency without an enterprise contract
You run WordPress, WooCommerce or PrestaShop and want it fast today
You are tired of finding the feature you need one tier up
You want per-request log search without an enterprise plan
You would rather email an engineer than search a community forum

Choose Cloudflare if…

You need to withstand nation-state-scale volumetric attacks
You want to write and deploy your own edge compute (Workers)
You want a registrar, zero-trust access and a CDN from one vendor
You need presence in markets our network does not reach yet
Your free-plan usage genuinely covers everything you need

You can also run both — Cloudflare at the apex for DNS and DDoS, us on the hostname doing delivery and acceleration. It works, though a single cache in the path is always easier to reason about.

Explore: WordPress CDN · Site Accelerators · Our network · vs Bunny.net

Switching

Testable before it is live, reversible after

Create a zone pointing at your origin
Your real origin — the server behind Cloudflare today. Nothing on it changes.
Pick the preset for your platform
WordPress, WooCommerce, PrestaShop or custom. Cache and bypass rules configured for you.
Test on the temporary hostname
Browse the site, log in, add to a cart, run the checkout — all before touching public DNS.
Point the record at us and let SSL issue
Grey-cloud the record in Cloudflare or move it to your own DNS. Your nameservers can stay exactly where they are.

Want a look first? Run a live before/after demo on your own URL — no signup.

FAQ

Questions, answered

For content delivery, caching, image optimisation and edge security, yes — you point your domain at NordicCDN and it serves your existing site. Cloudflare is much broader than a CDN: a registrar, a DNS platform, a zero-trust suite, a serverless compute platform. If you use those, you would be replacing one part of Cloudflare, not all of it.

No, and this is a real difference. Cloudflare proxying generally means running your domain on their nameservers. With us you add one CNAME or A record at whatever DNS provider you already use, and everything else stays where it is. We do offer DNS hosting if you want it — it is an option, not a requirement.

We are a Danish company under European law, with our control plane, database and analytics storage in the EU. That means EU data residency is the default position rather than an enterprise add-on, and there is no US parent company in the chain when your legal team asks about international transfers.

Cloudflare's free plan is genuinely generous for basic delivery — we are not going to pretend otherwise. The comparison gets interesting once you need the things that sit behind Pro, Business or an enterprise contract: full-page caching for WordPress, image optimisation, the waiting room, better firewall rules. Those are per-month tier upgrades there; here they are simply included at EUR 0.01/GB with 25 GB free.

Cloudflare operates one of the largest networks on the internet and absorbs attacks at a scale we do not match. If defending against nation-state-scale volumetric attacks is your primary requirement, that is a genuine reason to choose them. For the attacks that actually hit ordinary websites and webshops — scanners, credential stuffing, scrapers, 404 floods — our edge handles them, and does it without a support ticket.

Yes. Some customers keep Cloudflare for DNS and DDoS at the apex and run their site delivery through us on a separate hostname. It works fine, though you get the clearest picture of what is happening when only one cache sits in the path.

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