---
title: Why is running another CDN on top of Vercel not recommended?
description: Information about possible strategies when using a CDN on top of Vercel.
url: /kb/guide/why-running-another-cdn-on-top-of-vercel-is-not-recommended
canonical_url: "https://vercel.com/kb/guide/why-running-another-cdn-on-top-of-vercel-is-not-recommended"
published: 2025-11-03
last_updated: 2026-01-08
authors: Justin Vitale
related: []
install_vercel_plugin: npx plugins add vercel/vercel-plugin
---
<!-- docsgraph:related -->
## Related pages

> **For AI agents:** Follow these links to understand how this page connects to the rest of the Vercel ecosystem. For the full cross-link map (inbound, outbound, prerequisites, and semantic neighbors), see the .graph.md link below.

- [How Vercel CDN works](https://vercel.com/docs/how-vercel-cdn-works?from=related) — Learn how Vercel's CDN processes requests through routing, caching, and compute layers to deliver your content with low
- [Overview](https://vercel.com/docs/cdn?from=related) — Vercel's CDN is a globally distributed platform that handles routing, caching, security, and compression for every deplo
- [Reverse Proxy Servers and Vercel](https://vercel.com/docs/security/reverse-proxy?from=related) — Learn why reverse proxy servers are not recommended with Vercel's firewall.
- [Debug Cache Issues](https://vercel.com/docs/caching/cdn-cache/debug-cache-issues?from=related) — Diagnose stale content and fix CDN cache, data cache, and build cache issues using the CLI.
- [Security](https://vercel.com/docs/cdn-security?from=related) — Learn how Vercel's CDN secures every request with HTTPS, TLS, DDoS mitigation, firewall protection, and security headers
- [How to troubleshoot stale content returned from the Edge Network when using an external proxy or CDN](https://vercel.com/kb/guide/how-to-troubleshoot-stale-content-returned-from-the-edge-network-when-using-an-external-proxy-or-cdn?from=related) — Learn how to diagnose and fix stale content issues when using external proxies or CDNs with Vercel. Understand troublesh
- [Using Vercel as a Standalone CDN](https://vercel.com/kb/guide/using_vercel_as_a_cdn?from=related) — Use Vercel's external rewrites to proxy and cache content from external websites or APIs through Vercel's global edge ne
- [Should I use Cloudflare in front of Vercel?](https://vercel.com/kb/guide/cloudflare-with-vercel?from=related) — Information on using Cloudflare together with Vercel.
- [Can I use a proxy on top of my Vercel Deployment?](https://vercel.com/kb/guide/can-i-use-a-proxy-on-top-of-my-vercel-deployment?from=related) — General information about using an external proxy to serve a Vercel Deployment.
- [Avoiding duplicate-content SEO with vercel.app URLs and custom domains](https://vercel.com/kb/guide/avoiding-duplicate-content-with-vercel-app-urls?from=related) — Discover why search engines may treat your vercel.app URL and custom domain as separate pages, and how to consolidate ra

Full cross-link map for this page: [/kb/guide/why-running-another-cdn-on-top-of-vercel-is-not-recommended.graph.md](/kb/guide/why-running-another-cdn-on-top-of-vercel-is-not-recommended.graph.md)
<!-- /docsgraph:related -->


## Understanding the problem

The Vercel CDN was designed to carefully perform new releases of your application without downtime. Therefore, once a new production deployment is ready, we will purge our cache globally and replace the current deployment being served at your production domain with the new version.

If you use a CDN on top of Vercel, you may experience issues since our infrastructure cannot control those providers. A new release on Vercel can cause other CDNs to serve stale content referencing files that no longer exist. You can see an example of the issue below:

A common symptom of the issue described above can be an increase in errors reported by your users after a production deployment is created. The stale HTML is returned by the 3rd party CDN but other assets were purged from it, returning a 404. For that reason, we recommend users to either configure the 3rd party CDN with a very short TTL in the cache or disable it completely.

For more information, see [Can I use a proxy on top of my Vercel Deployment?](https://vercel.com/guides/can-i-use-a-proxy-on-top-of-my-vercel-deployment)