This week in caching: edge vs origin, the latency gap

This week in caching: edge vs origin, the latency gap

What moving the cache closer to users actually did:

— EU store, US buyers — caching full HTML at CDN edge (not just assets) dropped Sydney TTFB from 940ms to 70ms; the page was identical, only the cache location changed.
— Docs platform — Cloudflare 'Cache Everything' + edge cache TTL on a static-rendered site offloaded 94% of requests; the origin in Virginia barely registered traffic from Asia.
— Marketing pages — serving from edge cut Largest Contentful Paint by ~600ms in far geos, which moved a chunk of pages into the 'good' Core Web Vitals bucket.

The takeaway: origin caching speeds the slow part; edge caching deletes the distance. They stack.

Bookmark: check cf-cache-status / x-cache headers per region — 'HIT' from the far edge is the whole game.