Content Delivery Network (CDN) Market Size and Share
Content Delivery Network (CDN) Market Analysis by Mordor Intelligence
The content delivery network market is valued at USD 26.47 billion in 2025 and is forecast to reach USD 45.13 billion by 2030 at an 11.26% CAGR, reflecting rapid enterprise migration to edge-native architectures and unrelenting 4K/8K video traffic growth. A surge in artificial-intelligence-driven traffic steering is lowering egress costs for hyperscale’s, while Zero-Trust security bundles embedded in delivery stacks are turning CDNs into full-stack application-protection platforms. Peer-to-peer architectures and network-as-code APIs are expanding delivery options and challenging incumbent models as operators open programmable capabilities to developers. Regional dynamics favor Asia-Pacific, where large-scale data-center buildouts and 5G rollouts underpin the fastest global growth, yet North America retains scale advantages through entrenched hyperscale presence. Intensifying power-availability constraints near dense metro clusters and the decision by several OTT giants to insource delivery infrastructure form the primary growth headwinds to 2030.
Key Report Takeaways
- By offering, Solutions led with 56.2% of content delivery network market share in 2024, while Services are projected to expand at an 18.20% CAGR through 2030.
- By content type, Video held 63.8% revenue share in 2024; non-video is poised for an 18.65% CAGR to 2030.
- By end user, Media & Entertainment accounted for 36.9% of content delivery network market size in 2024, yet Gaming is forecast to grow at 21.40% CAGR.
- By service-provider type, Traditional / Telco operators controlled 45.21% share in 2024, whereas Peer-to-Peer models record the steepest 21.10% CAGR to 2030.
- By geography, North America held 43.67% of content delivery network market share in 2024, and Asia-Pacific is advancing at an 18.60% CAGR to 2030.
Global Content Delivery Network (CDN) Market Trends and Insights
Drivers Impact Analysis
Driver | (~) % Impact on CAGR Forecast | Geographic Relevance | Impact Timeline |
---|---|---|---|
OTT video traffic at 4K/8K bitrates | +2.8% | Global | Medium term (2-4 years) |
Edge-native low-latency use cases | +2.1% | North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific | Long term (≥ 4 years) |
Zero-Trust & WAAP bundles | +1.9% | Global | Short term (≤ 2 years) |
AI-optimised traffic-routing | +1.4% | Global | Medium term (2-4 years) |
Telco network-API exposure | +1.2% | Asia-Pacific, Europe, North America | Long term (≥ 4 years) |
Demand-response incentives for power-hungry PoPs | +0.8% | North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific | Medium term (2-4 years) |
Source: Mordor Intelligence
Explosion of OTT Video Traffic & 4K/8K Adoption
Ultra-high-definition streams demand 25–50 Mbps, far above the sub-5 Mbps requirements of standard definition, forcing providers to deploy dense edge nodes and multi-CDN routing to maintain sub-second latency during live events. Broadcast-grade direct-to-consumer models therefore create sustained capacity upgrades and differentiated tiered-service opportunities.
Proliferation of Edge-Native, Low-Latency Use Cases
Cloud gaming, AR and VR workloads require latency under 10 ms, reshaping capacity-planning assumptions and spurring micro-PoP build-outs inside carrier networks across North America and Europe. Service exposure through standardized APIs further accelerates developer adoption of distributed data-processing models.
Integration of Zero-Trust & WAAP in CDN Stacks
Embedding web-application and API protection at the edge allows enterprises to consolidate vendors, shifting spending from standalone appliances to unified delivery-plus-security platforms. Providers capture new margin while customers improve risk postures without added latency penalties.
AI-Optimized Traffic Routing
Machine-learning engines analyzing live telemetry cut cross-region transfers, producing 20-30% egress savings for hyperscalers and delivering measurable user-experience gains during traffic spikes[1]Akamai Technologies, “The Future of OTT Streaming at Scale,” akamai.com. CPU-based inference at edge nodes lowers GPU capex and aligns with sustainability mandates.
Restraint Impact Analysis
Restraint | (~) % Impact on CAGR Forecast | Geographic Relevance | Impact Timeline |
---|---|---|---|
Large OTTs insourcing DIY CDNs | -1.8% | Global | Medium term (2-4 years) |
Rising data-center energy caps | -1.2% | Europe, North America | Long term (≥ 4 years) |
Geopolitical restrictions on foreign PoP ownership | -0.9% | Asia-Pacific | Medium term (2-4 years) |
Skills shortage in edge-native operations | -0.7% | Global | Short term (≤ 2 years) |
Source: Mordor Intelligence
Large OTTs In-Sourcing DIY CDNs
Major streaming platforms are funding global caches, transcoders and private backbone links, displacing third-party CDNs for the heaviest traffic volumes and shrinking bulk-video revenue pools. Their vertically integrated delivery removes commercial transit fees, improves service stability through full-stack observability and unlocks granular QoE optimisation tied to proprietary codecs. Because licensing costs for blockbuster titles can exceed USD 20 million per territory, in-house delivery also shields sensitive performance analytics from rivals, strengthening negotiation leverage with content owners. The model scales once an OTT surpasses 100 Tbps average peak, a threshold Netflix, YouTube and Disney+ crossed in 2024, making capex amortisation per delivered gigabyte attractive. Smaller SVOD players lack such scale, leaving a bifurcated market where CDNs must court midsize publishers with premium security and edge-compute add-ons to compensate for lost hyperscale volume. Vendors are responding by offering managed multi-CDN orchestration and advanced watermarking that remain difficult for DIY operators to replicate quickly.
Rising Data-Center Energy Caps & Sustainability Mandates
Electric-grid scarcity in Virginia, Dublin and Frankfurt forces providers onto waiting lists exceeding 150 MW, delaying new PoP go-lives by up to three years and reducing available headroom for burst traffic Lumen. European regulators now tie building permits to demonstrable heat-reuse or renewable-power-purchase contracts, adding 8-10% to project capex while requiring sophisticated load-balancing to stay within hourly carbon-intensity thresholds. At the same time, GPU-rich inference clusters consume up to 10 kW per rack, tripling historical draw and amplifying cooling needs that liquid systems only partially offset. Customers increasingly scrutinise Scope-3 emissions, favouring CDNs publishing independently audited carbon data, which pressures laggards to retrofit legacy facilities or risk procurement exclusion. Providers are diversifying into wind-powered Nordic campuses and experimenting with micro-modular solar-backed edge nodes that can bypass constrained metros yet still satisfy latency budgets under 30 ms. Long term, energy pricing volatility and embodied-carbon reporting are expected to reshape total cost of ownership calculations, making sustainability performance as decisive as raw throughput in enterprise RFPs.
Segment Analysis
By Offering: Services Accelerate Despite Solutions Dominance
Solutions generated 56.2% of 2024 revenue, mirroring enterprise appetite for integrated platforms covering delivery, security and analytics within the content delivery network market. Professional and managed offerings, however, grow 18.20% annually as organizations lacking in-house expertise outsource multi-CDN orchestration and edge-application tuning.
Services adoption rises with each new latency-sensitive workload that demands continual optimization at the edge. Network-API integration, Zero-Trust rollout and AI traffic-model retraining are labor-intensive tasks better handled by skilled partners. As a result, services contributions to content delivery network market size are expected to double by 2030, creating fresh cross-sell pathways for incumbents.
By Content Type: Non-Video Surges on API Economy Growth
Video retained 63.8% of 2024 spending thanks to bandwidth intensity and continued streaming expansion. Yet API-driven applications, real-time analytics and software-update distribution accelerate Non-Video revenue at 18.65% CAGR.
Edge databases and global data networks move stateful workloads nearer to users, propelling demand for dynamic object caching and real-time routing. Gaming platforms alone require 10–20 Mbps sustained throughput, steepening the traffic curve outside traditional video and driving incremental gains in content delivery network market size through 2030.
By End User: Gaming Outpaces Traditional Media Growth
Media and Entertainment held 36.9% of spending last year, but cloud gaming is the standout, advancing 21.40% annually as interactive experiences move to server-side rendering.
Developers rank reliability and ultra-low latency above cost, steering workloads toward premium multi-PoP footprints. Concurrently, e-commerce and telehealth lean on encrypted edge capabilities for personalized pages and diagnostic imaging, sustaining diverse use-case breadth inside the content delivery network market.
Note: Segment shares of all individual segments available upon report purchase
By Service-Provider Type: Peer-to-Peer Disrupts Centralized Models
Traditional carriers still control 45.21% of global delivery revenue, leveraging proximity to last-mile infrastructure and bundled connectivity[2]GSMA, “Open Gateway Initiative Whitepaper,” gsma.com. Peer-to-Peer models, however, scale at 21.10% CAGR by harnessing idle capacity on end-devices and micro-edges to cut upstream bandwidth.
Open-gateway APIs let developers assemble composite routes spanning multiple operators, shrinking vendor lock-in and injecting new competitive pressure. Resulting diversification supports a resilient, federated topology that enhances the content delivery network market’s long-term agility.
Geography Analysis
North America’s mature backbone, abundant IXPs and entrenched OTT ecosystem grant it scale advantages that keep average PoP utilization above 60% despite rising operating costs. Sustained investment in 400 Gbps routing and AI-accelerated packet processing ensures the region remains a launchpad for advanced security-integrated services. The presence of three hyperscalers headquartered in the United States preserves technology-standards leadership and sustains developer mindshare within the content delivery network market.
Asia-Pacific’s growth story hinges on demographic scale and aggressive digital-infrastructure spending. China alone added more hyperscale data-center megawatts than North America in 2024, while India and ASEAN members channel sovereign-fund capital into submarine-cable and terrestrial fiber projects. Regional CDNs often partner with local carriers to meet regulatory localization rules and to traverse complex last-mile topologies dominated by mobile broadband. The acceleration lifts both traditional telco CDNs and cloud-native edge platforms, creating a multi-layered competitive field.
Europe balances data-sovereignty imperatives with energy-efficiency targets. Operators in Frankfurt, Amsterdam and London have adopted heat-re-use schemes and renewables-sourcing agreements to secure grid approvals. The Digital Markets Act further nudges content providers to negotiate fair-share contributions for peak-time traffic. While growth is slower than in APAC, higher ARPU and tightening latency requirements for fintech and Industrie 4.0 workloads underpin healthy margins in the region’s content delivery network market.

Competitive Landscape
Market leaders pursue horizontal consolidation and vertical integration. Akamai’s USD 900 million Linode purchase added developer-centric cloud compute, while its 2024 acquisition of Edgio customer contracts brought incremental delivery and security revenue. Cloudflare expands programmable edge-workers, servicing real-time AI inference without GPU hardware. Lumen and Google Cloud combine private fiber and managed WAN to shorten data-migration paths for hybrid enterprises[3]Lumen Technologies, “Lumen-Google Cloud Strategic Alliance Fact Sheet,” lumen.com.
Disruptive entrants target orchestration layers rather than physical PoPs. Multi-CDN SaaS platforms, exemplified by IO River, let buyers broker traffic across two or more networks in real time, mitigating vendor lock-in risks. Telecom alliances are building a federated API exchange—Aduna—to monetize quality-on-demand features such as under-one-second jitter guarantees and location-aware routing. These APIs open fresh revenue streams but also amplify competitive complexity as developers weigh traditional CDNs against direct network programmability.
Sustainability pressure intensifies differentiation. Providers publicize power-usage-effectiveness under 1.2 and deploy liquid cooling for AI accelerators positioned at edge facilities. Operators able to show verified-recycled-heat schemes gain preferential grid permits in Europe. Vendors lacking credible decarbonization roadmaps risk procurement exclusion, especially among multinational enterprises with net-zero pledges tied to scope-3 emissions.
Content Delivery Network (CDN) Industry Leaders
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Amazon Web Services Inc. (Amazon.com Inc.)
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Akamai Technologies Inc.
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Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
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Cloudflare Inc.
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Edgio Inc.
- *Disclaimer: Major Players sorted in no particular order

Recent Industry Developments
- April 2025: Lumen Technologies and Google Cloud activated 400 Gbps private fiber links at 50,000 sites to support AI workloads and low-latency edge services.
- February 2025: Fastly introduced AI Accelerator, using edge semantic caching to cut OpenAI API calls and latency for developers.
- February 2025: Akamai signed a USD 100 million multi-year deal to supply full-stack cloud computing and security services to a global technology firm.
- January 2025: Akamai confirmed its mainland-China CDN exit by June 2026, coordinating customer migration via Tencent Cloud and Wangsu.
Global Content Delivery Network (CDN) Market Report Scope
A content delivery network (CDN) is comprised of interconnected servers that deliver content securely. To enhance speed and connectivity, CDNs strategically position servers at network exchange points. The content delivery network is defined based on the revenues generated from the solutions and services used at various ends globally. The analysis is based on the market insights captured through secondary research and the primaries. The market also covers the major factors impacting the market’s growth in terms of drivers and restraints.
The content delivery network (CDN) market is segmented by solution and service (media delivery, cloud security, and web performance), end user (media and entertainment, advertising, e-commerce, healthcare, business and financial services, research and education, and other end users), and geography (North America (United States and Canada), Europe (Germany, United Kingdom, France, and Rest of Europe), Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, India, South Korea, and Rest of Asia-Pacific), Latin America (Brazil, Mexico, and Rest of Latin America), and Middle East and Africa (United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Rest of Middle East & Africa)). The market size and forecasts are provided in terms of value (USD) for all the above segments.
By Offering | Solutions | |||
Services | ||||
By Content Type | Video CDN | |||
Non-Video CDN | ||||
By End User | Media and Entertainment | |||
Online Gaming | ||||
E-commerce | ||||
Healthcare | ||||
BFSI | ||||
Education and Research | ||||
Advertising | ||||
By Service-Provider Type | Traditional/Telco CDN | |||
Cloud/Hyper-scale CDN | ||||
Peer-to-Peer CDN | ||||
By Geography | North America | United States | ||
Canada | ||||
Mexico | ||||
South America | Brazil | |||
Argentina | ||||
Rest of South America | ||||
Europe | United Kingdom | |||
Germany | ||||
France | ||||
Italy | ||||
Spain | ||||
Nordics | ||||
Rest of Europe | ||||
Middle East and Africa | Middle East | Saudi Arabia | ||
United Arab Emirates | ||||
Turkey | ||||
Rest of Middle East | ||||
Africa | South Africa | |||
Egypt | ||||
Nigeria | ||||
Rest of Africa | ||||
Asia-Pacific | China | |||
India | ||||
Japan | ||||
South Korea | ||||
ASEAN | ||||
Australia | ||||
New Zealand | ||||
Rest of Asia-Pacific |
Solutions |
Services |
Video CDN |
Non-Video CDN |
Media and Entertainment |
Online Gaming |
E-commerce |
Healthcare |
BFSI |
Education and Research |
Advertising |
Traditional/Telco CDN |
Cloud/Hyper-scale CDN |
Peer-to-Peer CDN |
North America | United States | ||
Canada | |||
Mexico | |||
South America | Brazil | ||
Argentina | |||
Rest of South America | |||
Europe | United Kingdom | ||
Germany | |||
France | |||
Italy | |||
Spain | |||
Nordics | |||
Rest of Europe | |||
Middle East and Africa | Middle East | Saudi Arabia | |
United Arab Emirates | |||
Turkey | |||
Rest of Middle East | |||
Africa | South Africa | ||
Egypt | |||
Nigeria | |||
Rest of Africa | |||
Asia-Pacific | China | ||
India | |||
Japan | |||
South Korea | |||
ASEAN | |||
Australia | |||
New Zealand | |||
Rest of Asia-Pacific |
Key Questions Answered in the Report
What is the current size of the content delivery network market?
The content delivery network market size stands at USD 26.47 billion in 2025, with an 11.26% CAGR projected to 2030.
Which region is growing the fastest in CDN adoption?
Asia-Pacific leads growth with an 18.60% CAGR as massive cloud and 5G investments amplify low-latency traffic needs.
Why are services growing faster than solutions in CDN?
Enterprises often lack in-house skills for multi-CDN orchestration and Zero-Trust deployment, driving an 18.20% CAGR in managed and professional services revenue.
How are OTT platforms affecting third-party CDN revenue?
Large streamers like Netflix increasingly run proprietary delivery networks, trimming third-party volumes and applying pricing pressure, reducing CAGR potential by an estimated 1.8%.
What role does AI play in modern CDN operations?
AI-driven routing engines cut egress charges by up to 30% and boost performance during demand spikes, making them a key differentiator among leading vendors.
Are sustainability mandates impacting CDN expansion?
Yes, strict power-availability caps in Europe and North America lengthen build cycles and push operators toward renewable-powered PoPs and advanced cooling solutions, tempering long-term capacity growth.
Page last updated on: June 30, 2025