2026 Birthday week: network performance update

Cloudflare is now the fastest provider in 74% of the 1,000 largest networks around the world, up from 60% in April 2026. This huge improvement matters because every millisecond affects how quickly users can reach the applications, APIs, and websites they rely on. In this Birthday Week performance update, we’ll review how we get our measurements, introduce a new measurement methodology using Cloudflare Challenge Pages, and discuss where these improvements have had the biggest impact for customers.

Cloudflare is fastest in 74% of top networks

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 figure below shows the countries where Cloudflare is the fastest provider.

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. We measure this by looking at the fastest provider for users on the networks serving the largest number of users in each country.

The graphic below shows countries where Cloudflare has become the fastest provider across those networks since April.

Here you see the number of additional networks on which Cloudflare is now the fastest.

Our analysis begins with the 1,000 largest networks in the world, ranked by estimated user population using data from APNIC. Because these networks cover users across a wide range of geographies and access environments, they give us a useful view into how people actually experience the Internet.