Best 7 CDN Providers for China: Behind the Great Firewall
Compare the 7 best CDN providers for China, plus ICP license rules, Great Firewall limits, and mainland vs Hong Kong delivery.
A page that loads in a second in Singapore can take ten seconds in Shanghai, or not load at all. China is the one major market where your usual CDN can't simply switch on more nodes, because the law decides which networks you can use.
The market also changed in 2026. Akamai shut down its own mainland CDN on June 30, and AWS has stopped taking new CloudFront customers in China. If you are choosing a China CDN now, the options look different from a year ago.
Key Takeaways
- Serving users from mainland nodes requires an ICP filing or license, and every mainland CDN asks for your ICP number first.
- The Great Firewall slows and filters traffic that enters China from outside, so a global CDN without local nodes will be slow and unpredictable there.
- Domestic providers such as Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud own the largest mainland networks, while CDNetworks and Cloudflare are the easiest entry points for foreign companies.
- Hong Kong needs no ICP, but over ordinary transit it can be slower for mainland users than California.
- IO River lets you add a licensed China provider to your existing CDN stack and steer only Chinese traffic to it.
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ICP Licenses and the Great Firewall: The Rules That Decide Your Options
China's rules on internet information services split websites into two groups. Non-commercial sites need an ICP filing, often called Bei'an. Sites that sell goods or services online need the commercial ICP license China requires on top of that filing. Outside a few pilot zones, the license holder must be a local company or a joint venture with less than 50% foreign ownership. Running a commercial site without one can bring a fine of three to five times the income earned, or 100,000 to 1 million yuan when income is small, and serious cases can be shut down.
The filing is also your ticket to a mainland CDN, and it is where most CDN China projects stall. Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud, like other mainland providers, require an ICP number before they serve your domain from mainland nodes. Without one, you can only choose their regions outside the mainland. Read more about these challenges in CDN implementation in China.
The Great Firewall adds technical limits on top of the legal ones:
- DNS poisoning: a USENIX Security study found that the firewall's DNS filtering also caught about 41,000 harmless domains by mistake.
- Sudden blocks: on August 20, 2025, the firewall reset every connection on port 443, the standard HTTPS port, for about 74 minutes.
That leaves three real routes: a licensed mainland CDN, a nearby edge such as Hong Kong, or a global CDN that partners with a local network.
The 7 Best CDN Providers for China in 2026
Two big names are missing for a reason. Akamai ended its own mainland CDN service on June 30, 2026, and moved customers to Tencent Cloud or Wangsu, which it now resells, as covered in our article on Akamai's exit from China. Amazon CloudFront in China takes no new customers after September 30, 2026, and its four mainland PoPs close on May 31, 2027.
1. IO River
IO River is first because most global companies don't need a new CDN for the world. They need a licensed one for China, and a way to run it alongside the stack they already have.
Picture a global advertising SaaS company that serves client content through one of the largest CDNs. In China, that traffic crawls through the Great Firewall. The usual fix means running a second CDN with its own configuration and steering rules. IO River manages all of it as one stack. It works with more than 15 CDN providers, including CDNetworks, which runs licensed mainland nodes. It translates your configuration across providers and sends Chinese visitors through the licensed network while everyone else stays on your main CDN, with automatic failover between them. The same approach helps in Russia, where local ISPs began throttling content served by Cloudflare in June 2025.
2. Alibaba Cloud CDN
Alibaba Cloud runs more than 2,300 PoPs in mainland China across all 31 provinces, plus 900 outside it. First-tier mainland traffic costs 0.04 USD per GB. You need a registered mainland entity, and the filing runs through a Chinese-language account. It suits companies with a China entity that want the domestic default.
3. Tencent Cloud CDN and EdgeOne
Tencent Cloud CDN has about 2,300 mainland nodes and 400 Tbps of bandwidth. Its EdgeOne platform adds WAF and bot management. Akamai named Tencent Cloud as one of its two mainland partners, so many former Akamai customers land here. It suits gaming and video platforms that also want built-in security.
4. CDNetworks (Wangsu)
CDNetworks is the international arm of Wangsu, one of China's largest CDN operators. It has more than 3,000 PoPs in 70 countries, including over 140 cities in China, and an ICP Registration Assistant that helps foreign companies through the filing. Wangsu was Akamai's other named partner. It suits foreign enterprises that want English-language support and help with compliance.
5. Cloudflare China Network
Cloudflare's China Network is an Enterprise add-on that runs in JD Cloud data centers, separate from its global network. You keep one Cloudflare configuration, but you need an ICP for each apex domain. In August 2026, Cloudflare said its JD Cloud network agreement now runs to March 2032. It suits companies already on Cloudflare Enterprise.
6. Huawei Cloud CDN
Huawei Cloud CDN runs more than 2,800 PoPs in over 130 countries, with 180 Tbps of bandwidth and HTTP/3 support. Mainland service requires an ICP license and real-name authentication, and Huawei blocks a domain on its CDN if the license lapses. It suits companies already building on Huawei Cloud.
7. BaishanCloud
BaishanCloud runs more than 1,500 self-built nodes worldwide and describes itself as China's second-largest independent edge cloud provider by 2024 revenue. AWS names it as a recommended replacement for CloudFront in China. It suits AWS customers moving China traffic before the 2027 shutdown, and download or video services.
Mainland Nodes or Hong Kong Edge: Choosing a Delivery Route
Hong Kong is close to the mainland on a map, but route quality matters more than distance. In a Globalping test on October 25, 2026, from nine probes across China's big carriers, a Shanghai server answered in a median 31 ms with no packet loss. A Hong Kong server on standard transit took 286 ms, with up to 62.5% loss on some paths.
Treat that as one snapshot, but two weeks of hourly WonderNetwork data agree: Hong Kong to Shanghai had a median of 334 ms, while Los Angeles to Shanghai had 141 ms.
Hong Kong works for marketing pages and static assets, or as a bridge while your ICP is pending, as long as your provider uses a premium China route. For checkout flows and video, use mainland nodes. With IO River, you can start with Hong Kong and shift Chinese traffic to the mainland CDN once your filing clears.
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Conclusion
Choosing a CDN for China starts with your ICP status, then your audience. Domestic leaders give you the deepest reach, CDNetworks and Cloudflare make entry easier, and Hong Kong is only a stopgap. IO River lets you add the right licensed provider without rebuilding your multi-CDN stack.
FAQs
Do I Need an ICP License to Use a CDN in China?
To use mainland nodes, yes. Informational sites need an ICP filing, and sites that sell online need the full license. Without either, you can still use a provider's option that excludes the mainland. Alibaba Cloud's "Global (Excluding the Chinese Mainland)" setting, for example, serves Chinese users from nearby locations such as Hong Kong and Singapore, with no filing required.
Can a Global CDN Deliver Content Inside Mainland China?
Only through a local partner, and you still need an ICP. Cloudflare works through JD Cloud, and Akamai now resells Tencent and Wangsu. CloudFront's China service had limits even before its closing date. It needs an ICP recordal for each CNAME and does not support Lambda@Edge or IPv6.
How Long Does It Take to Get an ICP Filing?
The rule gives provincial regulators 20 working days once your documents are complete. In practice, Alibaba quotes 1 to 20 working days, and AWS China says Shanghai filings take about a week while Gansu can take three. Cloudflare tells customers to plan for 4 to 8 weeks, and a commercial license takes 2 to 3 months on top.
What Happens to China Traffic Without a Local CDN?
Your site usually still loads, but slowly and unpredictably. Traffic from outside enters China through a small number of filtered border links. A University of California, Riverside study found that 79% of 400 inbound connections ran below 1 Mbps, and most bottlenecks sat inside China's own network, which no outside CDN can fix.
Is Hong Kong a Good Alternative to Mainland CDN Nodes?
Only on the right route. Ask your provider whether it uses China Telecom's CN2 GIA. That route stays on China Telecom's premium network the whole way, while the cheaper CN2 GT drops to the standard network for the last mile, where congestion builds at peak hours. Without a premium route, Hong Kong can be slower than the US.
