NS1 Pulsar is often referenced by enterprises seeking maximum uptime and ultra-low latency. Its ability to monitor real user traffic and instantly reroute requests based on live intelligence is vital for minimizing disruptions or slowdowns.
What Are Multi-CDN Providers?
A Multi-CDN provider is a platform or service that enables organizations to use two or more independent CDN providers simultaneously. The aim is to optimize content delivery by dynamically routing user requests to the most performant, available, or cost-effective CDN according to real-time conditions.
When evaluating providers, consider not just network coverage, but also the depth of automation, monitoring, integrated security, edge compute options, and the overall ease of integration. A robust Multi-CDN strategy is now a business imperative, not a technical luxury.
- Uptime & Redundancy: If one CDN faces an outage or degradation, traffic can be instantly rerouted to alternatives, ensuring business continuity and near-100% uptime.
- Performance: Different CDNs may have strengths in different geographic regions. Multi-CDN orchestrators can steer users to the fastest provider for their location.
- Cost Control: By shifting traffic based on usage thresholds, contracts, or price-performance ratios, organizations can balance performance with budget.
- Security: Multi-CDN orchestrators can enforce unified security policies, including DDoS protection and web application firewalls (WAFs), across all providers.
How Do Multi-CDN Providers Operate?
Key features:
Gcore is both a global CDN platform and a Multi-CDN enabler. As a CDN network, it covers hundreds of cities worldwide, with a strong focus on performance in emerging markets. Its Multi-CDN solution builds on this by allowing customers to integrate additional CDNs for maximum reach and reliability.
- Performance (e.g. lowest latency)
- Geographic location
- Traffic volume (for cost optimization)
- CDN health or status (avoid outages and hot spots)
When choosing a Multi-CDN provider in 2025, businesses should evaluate:
- Unified configuration management: Make changes once; propagate to all CDNs.
- Edge computing: Deploy scripts or apps that execute near the user, regardless of which partner CDN is delivering traffic.
- Analytics dashboards: Unified reports showing traffic, performance, costs, security incidents, and more.
Leading 5 Multi-CDN Providers
Multi-CDN platforms work by integrating with the APIs and edge servers of various CDN vendors. They continuously monitor global network performance, collecting data such as latency, throughput, error rates, and availability from different providers.
The platform supports integration with major CDNs, including Akamai, Cloudflare, Gcore, Fastly, and more. There’s also a free tier for smaller businesses and advanced enterprise workflows for larger organizations. IO River’s mission is to make resilience, reliability, and cost efficiency available to all online services without the duplicative overhead of traditional multi-platform management
Mlytics is a Multi-CDN SaaS platform purpose-built for intelligent, automated content delivery optimization across multiple CDN partners. The company’s vision is to democratize high-performance and resilient web delivery for all.
- Unified Management: Manage all your CDN providers from a single interface.
- Intelligent Traffic Routing: Automatically distribute user traffic based on real-time performance data, region, or customizable policies.
- Security Integration: Built-in WAF, rate limiting, and DDoS protection for consistent security across all connected CDNs.
- Edge Computing: Engineers can deploy scripts that run across all partner CDNs using IO River’s edge compute framework.
- Seamless Transition: Migrate from single to multi-CDN with minimal complexity—import existing configurations and add providers on the fly.
- Analytics Dashboard: Rich traffic, performance, and security reporting.
Why use a Multi-CDN strategy?
NS1 Pulsar is unique in focusing on optimizing network traffic and steering for performance, with deep capabilities in “application traffic intelligence”. It works by aggregating internet performance data globally, then using that analysis to direct users to the best available CDN at any moment.
By Walter Bailey
- Global Network: Over hundreds of PoPs covering North/South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
- Hybrid Approach: Use Gcore’s robust in-house CDN alongside third-party networks in a combined Multi-CDN strategy.
- Custom Routing: Real-time traffic steering ensures that users are always routed to the fastest and most available CDN.
- Security Suite: Offers automated DDoS mitigation, WAF, and bot protection at the edge.
- Content Acceleration for Any Use Case: Streaming, gaming, SaaS, e-commerce, and enterprise IT are all supported.
- Developer-Friendly API: Complete management via automation tools and API endpoints.
By Walter Bailey
- Performance Data Aggregation: NS1 Pulsar continuously measures latency, throughput, and availability from multiple real users worldwide.
- Dynamic Real-Time Routing: Traffic is automatically steered to the optimal CDN provider, with fast reactions to outages, latency spikes, or congestion.
- Integration with Leading CDNs: Works with any CDN provider, enabling both hybrid and fully multi-vendor architectures.
- End-to-End Automation: Integrates with DNS, application delivery, and CDN switching platforms for unified control.
- Advanced Use Cases: Ideal for video streaming, gaming, and SaaS, where network conditions can change rapidly.
By Walter Bailey
- Massive Global Reach: Operates one of the world’s largest networks, covering 300+ cities and every major ISP worldwide.
- Multi-CDN Compatibility: Cloudflare Integrations and APIs support flexible routing, allowing enterprises to include Cloudflare in a larger Multi-CDN mesh.
- Unified Security Model: DDoS, WAF, bot management, and threat intelligence are built-in and centralized across all delivery paths.
- Edge Computing Platform: “Cloudflare Workers” empowers businesses to run code at the edge, close to their end-users, regardless of their primary CDN.
- Analytics and Dashboard: Full suite of real-time performance, security, and usage reporting.
By Walter Bailey
- Automated Traffic Steering: Mlytics constantly monitors CDN providers’ performance and availability and dynamically steers user requests to the best CDN for each region.
- Integrated Analytics: Get unified dashboards for performance, health, and outages across all connected CDNs.
- Security-First Approach: Multi-layered DDoS mitigation and WAF protections are applied across the delivery chain.
- User-Friendly Onboarding: Fast setup—no engineering firepower needed. Teams can add new CDNs, adjust delivery policies, and test failover easily.
- Performance Optimization: AI-driven algorithms ensure consistent user experience by minimizing latency, buffering, and downtime.
Using this intelligence, they route each user request intelligently across their partner CDNs based on policies like:
Use Cases for Multi-CDN Providers
Key features:
- Global Media, Streaming, OTT Video: Video platforms can avoid buffer events, regional outages, and traffic spikes by leveraging multiple CDNs for continuous delivery.
- E-Commerce: Shopping sites can drive conversion by reducing latency and keeping customer experience fast—even during seasonal peaks or traffic surges.
- Gaming: Gamers expect minimal lag and instant content downloads. Multi-CDN ensures low-latency access worldwide.
- Financial Services: Banks and Fintechs require bulletproof uptime, DDoS mitigation, and compliance across regions.
- SaaS Platforms: Serving a global user base reliably means eliminating single points of failure in content and data delivery.
- Enterprises with Global Reach: Companies with offices and customers worldwide rely on Multi-CDN for both employee productivity and customer experience.
Key Factors for Picking the Right Multi-CDN Provider
Cloudflare is famous as a global CDN, security, and edge compute powerhouse—but it also supports multi-CDN strategies for organizations with the highest demands for uptime and performance. Its suite of services extends far beyond simple caching to include serverless computing, comprehensive security, and programmable edge logic.
- Performance Monitoring and Routing Intelligence: Does the provider use real-time analytics to automatically direct traffic to the fastest or healthiest CDN?
- Ease of Integration: How simple is it to onboard new CDNs or migrate between providers?
- Security Suite: Does the Multi-CDN consolidate WAFs, DDoS protection, and threat intelligence for consistent global security?
- Edge Compute Support: Can you deploy edge applications or business logic across all integrated CDNs via one interface?
- Administration and Analytics: Are there dashboards for unified analytics, SLA tracking, billing, and support?
- API and Automation: Can you automate workflows, configuration deployments, and failover strategies via comprehensive APIs?
- Support and SLA: Is 24/7 support available? What are the guaranteed uptime and response times?
- Cost Optimization Capabilities: Does the platform help you balance performance with cost efficiency, including dynamic rerouting based on price or commitment utilization?
As content demands continue to skyrocket and global audiences expect websites, videos, and applications to load at lightning speed regardless of location, businesses are turning to innovative solutions to deliver seamless experiences. One powerful approach is deploying a Multi-CDN strategy, leveraging multiple content delivery networks (CDNs) through unified platforms.
Below, we present an overview of each leading platform, including their technology, differentiators, and why they stand out in 2025
