Cloudflare said on October 2, 2026 that it was the fastest provider in 74% of the world's 1,000 largest networks in August, up 14 percentage points from its last update in April 2026, in a Birthday Week blog post that also introduced a new way of gathering performance data.
What Cloudflare reported
According to the company, it became the fastest provider on an additional 150 networks out of the top 1,000 since April, and there are 38 additional countries where Cloudflare now ranks as the fastest.
Cloudflare said it measures this by looking at the fastest provider for users on the networks serving the largest number of users in each country. The company framed the result as a claim about its own ranking, writing that every millisecond affects how quickly users can reach the applications, APIs, and websites they rely on.
How the measurements work
Cloudflare said its analysis begins with the 1,000 largest networks in the world, ranked by estimated user population using data from APNIC. For each network it evaluates performance using connection time, which it describes as the amount of time required for a user's device to complete a TCP handshake when requesting content.
To rank providers, the company calculates the trimean of connection times, combining the 25th, 50th and 75th percentiles into a weighted average, which it said reduces the influence of unusual outliers.
Since 2021, Cloudflare said, its branded error pages have provided real-user performance data: when someone reaches such a page, the browser can run a small background measurement that fetches lightweight files from several providers, including Cloudflare, Amazon CloudFront, Google, Fastly, and Akamai.
The new Challenge Pages method
Cloudflare said it has expanded data collection by adding measurements on Challenge Pages, the full-page screens that verify visitors before they reach a website. The company said these are delivered by Cloudflare Turnstile, its privacy-preserving, risk-based challenge technology that runs in the visitor's browser.
The measurement is described as small and non-interactive, fetching lightweight files from a fixed set of endpoints including Cloudflare, Amazon CloudFront, Google, Fastly, and Akamai, and recording whether each request completed and how long it took. Cloudflare said it designed the test to avoid adding noticeable latency for visitors.
For now, the company said, it is running measurements on only a small fraction of eligible free Challenge Pages, alongside continued collection from Cloudflare-branded error pages, and will only increase the sampling rate if the extra data improves measurement quality and end-user performance remains unaffected.
Why the ranking moved
Cloudflare acknowledged that the improvement coincides with the new methodology. It said that with more measurements, results are less sensitive to outliers and day-to-day variation, making rankings more stable in networks where providers are closely matched.
The company gave an example in which top providers are separated by only a millisecond or two of trimean connection time, such as Cloudflare at 50 ms and Fastly at 51 ms, a gap it said is small enough that ordinary variation can flip the ranking. Cloudflare described the results shared in the post as early, and said future movement in the rankings should better reflect real performance changes as the dataset grows.
What to do
- Site operators who want to add Challenge Pages to their own website can follow the Cloudflare Challenge Pages documentation, the company says.
Key facts and where they come from
- Cloudflare says it was fastest in 74% of the top 1,000 networks in August, up from 60% in April 2026.
In August, Cloudflare was the fastest provider in 74% of top networks, up 14 percentage points from our last update during Agents Week in April.
- The company says it gained the top spot on 150 more networks and in 38 more countries.
We improved from 60% to 74% by becoming the fastest provider in an additional 150 networks out of that top 1,000, and there are 38 additional countries where Cloudflare now ranks as the fastest.
- Rankings are based on the trimean of TCP connection times across the 1,000 largest networks ranked using APNIC data.
Our analysis begins with the 1,000 largest networks in the world, ranked by estimated user population using data from APNIC.
- Browser tests fetch files from Cloudflare, Amazon CloudFront, Google, Fastly and Akamai.
It fetches lightweight files from a fixed set of endpoints, including Cloudflare, Amazon CloudFront, Google, Fastly, and Akamai, and records whether each request completed and how long it took.
- Measurements currently run on a small fraction of eligible free Challenge Pages.
For now, we are running measurements on only a small fraction of eligible free Challenge Pages, in addition to continuing to collect data from Cloudflare-branded error pages.
- Cloudflare says the methodology change contributed to the ranking improvement.
This significant improvement coincides with the addition of our new measurement methodology described above.