China CDN Showdown: Alibaba Cloud vs Tencent Cloud vs Upyun

Why Switch CDN?

I’d been using Alibaba Cloud CDN, but occasionally cross‑province speeds lagged. A friend suggested Tencent and Upyun, so I tested all three with real traffic for a week.

Methodology

• Same image site, three different CDN domains with identical content
• Monitored via boce.com for one week, three checks daily
• Metrics: avg latency per ISP, cache hit ratio, origin fetch time
• Pay‑as‑you‑go cost tracking

Latency & Stability

Alibaba had the lowest latency for China Telecom and Unicom (~25ms), slightly higher for Mobile. Tencent excelled on Mobile (~20ms). Upyun was balanced across all three, no extreme peaks. All were stable with near‑zero downtime.

Cache Hit Ratio

• Alibaba: ~93%
• Tencent: ~95% (static files almost always cached)
• Upyun: ~90% but decent dynamic acceleration

HTTPS Origin Speed

My origin is outside China. Alibaba uses dedicated interconnects, fastest; Tencent slightly slower; Upyun struggled a bit with overseas origins. If your origin is domestic, ignore this.

Pricing

• Alibaba: ~$0.03/GB with volume discounts
• Tencent: often as low as $0.02/GB for Mobile users
• Upyun: free quota for small sites, then competitive

Choose Alibaba for China Telecom/Unicom dominance, Tencent if your audience is Mobile, Upyun for small sites with free tier.