Cloudflare vs Laguna by Poolside: Features, Pricing & Which Is Better (2026)
A side-by-side comparison of Cloudflare and Laguna by Poolside — features, pricing, and ideal use cases — to help you decide which AI tool fits your workflow.
Cloudflare
Cloudflare, Inc.
Global network platform delivering CDN, DDoS protection, DNS, WAF, and edge serverless compute to secure and accelerate internet properties.
Key features
- Global CDN & Caching: Caches static and dynamic content across a worldwide Anycast edge to reduce latency, lower origin load, and accelerate page and API responses for global users.
- DDoS Mitigation & Network Protection: Automatic, always-on mitigation for volumetric and application-layer attacks across Layers 3–7, protecting sites and infrastructure with large-scale scrubbing capacity.
- Authoritative DNS & DNS Resolver: High-performance, globally distributed authoritative DNS hosting with rapid propagation and enterprise features; Cloudflare Resolver provides privacy-focused DNS resolution for clients.
- Web Application Firewall (WAF) & Bot Management: Managed and customizable WAF rules, OWASP protections, and bot management to block malicious traffic and reduce false positives for legitimate users.
- Cloudflare Workers (Edge Serverless): Serverless JavaScript/Wasmtime runtime that runs user code at the edge for low-latency customization, middleware, API aggregation, and microservices without managing servers.
- Cloudflare Tunnel (cloudflared): Secure outbound-only tunnels to expose internal services to the internet without opening inbound ports, integrated with access control for Zero Trust remote access.
- Load Balancing & Smart Routing (Argo): Global load balancing with health checks, geographic steering, and Argo Smart Routing to optimize traffic paths and improve reliability and failover.
- Pages & Jamstack Hosting: Static site hosting and continuous deployment from Git with edge serving, integrated build and preview flows, and performant delivery for frontend applications.
- Global CDN and caching across 300+ data centers
- Managed DNS with fast resolvers
- DDoS mitigation and basic protection on free tier
- Web Application Firewall (WAF) on paid plans
- Cloudflare Workers — edge serverless compute
- Add-ons: Argo Smart Routing, Load Balancing, Stream, Images, Cache Reserve
- Access / Zero Trust features to secure internal apps
- Registrar (domain registration at-cost) and DNSSEC integration
- Global CDN and reverse-proxying to accelerate content delivery and mask origin
- DDoS mitigation and layer 3-7 attack protection
- Distributed authoritative DNS services with global resolution
- Web Application Firewall (WAF) with managed rulesets (paid tiers)
- Cloudflare Workers: edge serverless platform for running JavaScript/TypeScript on the edge
- Cloudflare Pages: JAMstack hosting and deployment platform
- Cloudflare Tunnel (cloudflared) to securely expose internal services without opening firewall ports
- APIs and SDKs (official Go library, Terraform provider, REST APIs) for automation and integration
- Apps Directory and plugin ecosystem (including a WordPress plugin with one-click settings)
- Open-source tooling and repositories for CI/CD, agents, and platform extensions (VibeSDK, agents-starter)
- Operational features: rate limiting, logging/analytics (Logflare), encrypted secrets, sandboxed execution for generated apps
- Multiple distribution options: binaries, packages (Debian/RPM), Homebrew, Docker images, and source builds
Best for
- Global Website Acceleration: Reduce page load times for international audiences by caching assets and routing traffic through Cloudflare's nearest edge POPs.
- Protection from DDoS and Attacks: Mitigate large-scale volumetric attacks and application-layer threats for e-commerce, SaaS platforms, and public-facing APIs to maintain uptime.
- Edge-Hosted Serverless Applications: Deploy business logic and API endpoints using Cloudflare Workers to run code at the edge for minimal latency and reduced origin compute costs.
- Secure Remote Access & Zero Trust: Publish internal applications securely with Cloudflare Tunnel and Access to enforce identity-based policies without VPN exposure.
- Authoritative DNS and Fast Failover: Host DNS zones with low-latency resolution and automatic failover to ensure continuity for critical services during outages.
- Accelerating and Protecting WordPress and CMS Sites: Use Cloudflare plugin and caching rules to improve performance, automatically purge caches on updates, and apply WAF protections.
- DevOps and CI/CD Integration: Integrate Pages, Workers, and APIs into developer workflows for automated deployments, preview environments, and edge testing.
- Speeding up websites and apps via CDN and optimized routing
- Protecting sites from DDoS and application-layer attacks
- Serving images and video with optimization and streaming
- Running serverless functions at the edge with Workers
- Securing internal applications and remote access with Cloudflare Access / Cloudflare One
- Enterprise-grade networking with load balancing and multi-region failover
- Accelerate websites and APIs globally using CDN and edge caching
- Protect web applications from DDoS and common attack patterns using WAF and mitigation
- Deploy serverless business logic at the edge with Cloudflare Workers for low-latency compute
- Securely expose internal services to the internet via Cloudflare Tunnel (cloudflared)
- Automate infrastructure and configuration using Cloudflare APIs, official SDKs, and Terraform provider
- Host JAMstack sites and CI/CD deployments with Cloudflare Pages
- Extend sites with Apps Directory offerings or ship custom apps to Cloudflare customers
- Integrate logging, analytics and event processing with open-source projects like Logflare
Laguna by Poolside
Poolside
Poolside's family of open Mixture-of-Experts foundation models for agentic coding — XS.2 runs locally, M.1 reaches 72.5% on SWE-bench Verified.
Key features
- Two Model Sizes: Laguna XS.2 (33B total / 3B active) and Laguna M.1 (225B total / 23B active) target different latency and capability needs.
- Mixture-of-Experts Architecture: Routes each token through a subset of experts for efficiency at large scale.
- Local Deployment: XS.2 is small enough to run on a Mac with 36 GB of RAM via Ollama under an Apache 2.0 license.
- Strong SWE-bench Results: XS.2 hits 68.2% and M.1 reaches 72.5% on SWE-bench Verified.
- Bundled Coding Agent: Ships 'pool,' a lightweight terminal-based coding agent.
- Agent Client Protocol: Includes a dual ACP client-server used internally for agent RL training and evaluation.
Best for
- Local Agentic Coding: Running XS.2 on a laptop for private, offline code generation and editing.
- High-Capability Code Tasks: Using M.1 for harder, long-horizon software engineering work.
- Self-Hosted Deployments: Building on open weights to avoid third-party API dependencies.
- Research & Fine-Tuning: Adapting permissively licensed weights for custom coding workflows.
- Benchmarking: Evaluating agentic coding performance against SWE-bench Verified and Pro.