On the subject of the Web, efficiency is all the things. Each millisecond shaved off a connection is a greater expertise for the actual folks utilizing the functions and web sites you construct. That is why, at Cloudflare, we measure our efficiency always and share updates frequently.
In our final efficiency submit, revealed throughout Birthday Week 2025, we shared that Cloudflare was the quickest community in 40% of the most important 1,000 networks on the planet. On the time, we famous a nuanced studying of that determine; we have been aggressive in lots of extra networks, and the gaps have been typically notably small. Besides, we weren’t happy with 40%. By December 2025 (our most up-to-date out there evaluation), we had turn out to be the quickest supplier in 60% of the highest networks. This is how we obtained there, and what it means.
How will we measure and examine community efficiency?
Earlier than diving into the outcomes, let’s overview how we accumulate the info. We begin with the 1,000 largest networks on the planet by estimated inhabitants, utilizing APNIC’s knowledge as our supply. These networks symbolize actual customers in practically each geography, giving us a broad and significant image of how Web customers expertise the net.
To measure efficiency, we use connection time, which is the time it takes for an finish consumer’s machine to finish a handshake with the endpoint they’re attempting to achieve. We selected this metric as a result of it most intently approximates what customers truly understand as “Internet speed.” It is not so summary that it ignores real-world constraints like congestion and distance, nevertheless it’s exact sufficient to offer us actionable knowledge. (We have beforehand written about why we favor this metric over alternate options.)
We calculate our rankings utilizing the trimean of connection instances. The trimean is a weighted common of three values: the primary quartile (twenty fifth percentile), the median (fiftieth percentile), and the third quartile (seventy fifth percentile). This method smooths out noise and outliers, giving us a cleaner sign concerning the typical consumer expertise fairly than an excessive case that may skew the image.
To seize this knowledge, we depend on Actual Consumer Measurements (RUM). When customers encounter a Cloudflare-branded error web page, a small pace check runs silently within the background. The browser retrieves small information from a number of suppliers together with Cloudflare, Amazon CloudFront, Google, Fastly, and Akamai and information how lengthy every alternate takes. This provides us efficiency knowledge immediately from the consumer’s browser, of their real-world community situations. It is the distinction between testing a automobile’s prime pace on a observe versus watching how folks truly drive on the freeway.
Traditionally we’ve shared how we’ve created new Cloudflare factors of presence and lowered our finish latency by merely getting extra {hardware} nearer to our customers. Most just lately, we deployed new areas in Constantine, Algeria; Malang, Indonesia; and Wroclaw, Poland. Once we deployed our location in Wroclaw, our free customers went from a mean of 19ms round-trip time (RTT) to a mean of 12ms spherical journey time (RTT), a 40% enchancment. In Malang, Enterprise visitors went from a 39ms common RTT to a 37ms common RTT, a 5% enchancment. Seeing our clients’ expertise enhance, even when solely by a few milliseconds, is nice. However including new areas alone doesn’t totally clarify how we went from being #1 in 40% of networks to #1 in 60% of networks.
The reply there has to do with bettering how our community handles connections in software program. By leveraging protocols like HTTP/3 and altering how we handle congestion home windows, we will scale back processing time by milliseconds in code, along with the enhancements on the wire. By bettering CPU utilization and reminiscence utilization in our software program that handles elementary actions like establishing connections, SSL/TLS termination, visitors administration, and the core proxy that every one requests movement by way of, we will make that software program extra environment friendly in its utilization of sources throughout our world fleet of {hardware}. These ongoing effectivity features end in higher efficiency for you and your clients.
Consider incoming connections to Cloudflare like toll cubicles on a freeway. Traces can construct up at toll cubicles if there aren’t sufficient toll cubicles, or if the cubicles themselves aren’t environment friendly at processing automobiles going by way of them. We’ve been always working to enhance not solely how our toll cubicles course of incoming automobiles (the software program enhancements in connection dealing with), but additionally at bettering how we ship automobiles between out there cubicles in order that we will preserve traces quick and latency low.
How do the outcomes look at this time?
As we famous above, by December, Cloudflare had turn out to be the quickest supplier in 60% of the highest networks, up from 40% once we final reported. Since Birthday Week in September 2025 we’ve steadily elevated the networks the place we’re the quickest. Let’s break down the affect.
Which means between September and December, we grew to become the quickest in 40 extra nations and in 261 extra networks. We noticed the most important enhance in the US, the place we’re the quickest in 54 extra ASNs.
On common all through December, we have been 6ms sooner than the next-fastest supplier. As proven above, the road representing Cloudflare’s latency, or connection time, is constantly decrease all through December than the subsequent quickest supplier.
A sooner Web is a greater Web
Each share level in our community rating represents actual customers who’re ready to connect with their web site or software that a lot sooner due to Cloudflare. However we additionally know that 60% is not the ceiling. There are nonetheless networks the place we’re quantity two, generally by the smallest of margins. We see these gaps clearly, and we’re engaged on them. We’re dedicated to being the quickest supplier throughout each community on the planet.
Comply with our weblog for extra efficiency updates as we proceed to make the Web sooner.
