Fastly

Fastly operates an edge cloud network and sells a content delivery network on top of it. Its CDN caches web pages, APIs, images and video at points of presence close to users, and exposes the configuration through a web interface, an API, a command line tool and Terraform. The vendor stresses programmability: cache rules written in VCL, logs streamed in real time, and what it calls Instant Purge, which clears cached objects within about 150 ms according to its marketing pages.

The same account can also use Compute, an edge runtime for code, plus Next-Gen WAF, DDoS protection, bot management, image optimization and an AI platform. The vendor says its network has 622 Tbps of capacity. Pricing is usage based, with Free, Growth and Enterprise routes. Fastly mainly suits engineering teams that want to control caching and routing in code and that can read a regional rate card, rather than teams wanting a flat monthly plan.

• Instant Purge. Cached objects can be cleared across the network quickly, which lets sites cache content that changes often, such as inventory, prices or breaking news. The vendor quotes a news publisher seeing updates appear within milliseconds, a customer testimonial we could not verify.
• VCL and real-time configuration. Caching rules, headers, conditions and dictionaries are set in Fastly VCL. Changes can be tested on a staging network, activated, and rolled back, through the interface or API. Versioned service configuration passes from development to production.
• Real-time log streaming. Logs go to third-party endpoints that the docs list, including generic protocols so you can run your own receiver. Endpoints are configured through the web interface, API or CLI for both CDN and Compute services, and a log tailing feature helps during development.
• Compute. An edge runtime where code written in familiar languages deploys globally. The docs provide starter kits for Rust, JavaScript and Go. Pricing is per million requests and per million vCPU milliseconds, with a free allowance on the pricing page.
• Security services. DDoS protection, Next-Gen WAF, bot management, API security and client-side protection are sold as products. Pricing for most of them is contact sales. Managed TLS is priced per domain, and mutual TLS carries a flat monthly fee beyond two domains.
• Image Optimizer. Transforms images at the edge to cut weight. The pricing page bills per 10,000 image requests with 100,000 free each month and tiers that fall in price as volume rises, down to $0.01 per 10,000 beyond five billion.
• Origin shielding and observability. Fastly can act as an origin shield to raise cache efficiency and lower origin egress. Alerts and Edge Observer dashboards are listed as included, while Domain Inspector, Log Explorer and Origin Inspector are priced through sales.

• A newsroom with a small platform team. Breaking-news pages change by the minute, so the team caches HTML and purges single items when editors publish. Staging lets them test cache rules before activation, and streamed logs show hit rates during traffic spikes.
• A media app moving petabytes of video. Serving media from cache instead of cloud object storage reduces origin egress, which the vendor's customer quote describes as a large saving. Regional bandwidth rates matter here, so the team models Europe, North America and Asia separately.
• A developer shipping an API with edge logic. Start on the Free route, deploy a Compute service from a Rust or JavaScript starter kit, and use the free monthly allowances for requests and vCPU time. Move to Growth as usage rises.

The vendor offers a Try Fastly free route and an account sign-up, then guides in its documentation for CDN and Compute. A Fastly service is a set of caching rules and behaviors for a website or app; you create one, add your domain and origin host, and activate a version.

The Full-Site Delivery guide is described as the quickest start for new users. Staging lets you test before production, and Terraform and a CLI are available for repeatable setup. Expect some learning curve with VCL and edge configuration. Time to a first working service is not stated on the pages we read.

Full Site Delivery starts with 100 GB and one million requests a month, then bills bandwidth per region and requests per ten thousand. Europe and North America cost twelve cents a gigabyte at the first tier, and India, Africa and South Korea more than twice that.

TLS is free for five domains and charged per domain after that. Strong for engineering teams that want to control caching in code, costly for plain static sites.

The CDN providers list places Fastly 7 of 12: imgix sits directly above it and Cloudflare directly below. No numeric score is attached; established products follow the challengers in their ranked order.

Fastly is based in the United States; 8 of the 12 products here share its region, North America.

In the catalogue: Free, Growth and Enterprise tiers; usage rates published.

Fastly shows three routes: Free, Growth (usage-based with volume discounts) and Enterprise (custom quote). Amounts are in dollars and billed monthly. Full Site Delivery includes 100 GB of bandwidth free, then bills per GB by region: from 100 GB to 10 TB, Europe and North America cost $0.12, Asia $0.19, Africa and India $0.28; the next 10 TB drops Europe to $0.08. Requests include 1 million free, then $0.01 per 10,000. Managed TLS allows five domains free, then $20 per domain monthly. Compute includes 10 million requests free, then $0.50 per million. Security and observability products are mostly contact sales. A legacy rate card applies to accounts opened before 4 November 2025.

We took this from fastly.com, the vendor’s own site, when we reviewed Best CDN Providers in 2026; that review is dated 5 November 2026.

The meter that grows fastest is bandwidth outside Europe and North America, where rates reach twenty-eight cents.

Fastly publishes regional bandwidth pricing, but we could not read a hosting-region commitment or certification list on the pages fetched, so those are not stated here. The product pages describe built-in DDoS protection, Next-Gen WAF and TLS, with logs that can be streamed to your own endpoints for export and retention.

Customers hold their own cache configuration in versioned services that can be pulled through the API. Check the vendor's trust and DPA documents for certifications and data processing terms before committing.

Integrations the vendor names (12):

• Terraform
• Amazon S3
• Google Cloud Storage
• Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
• Backblaze B2
• DigitalOcean Spaces
• Wasabi
• Oracle Cloud Storage
• Storj DCS
• HUMAN Bot Defender
• TollBit
• CI plugins and CMS plugins

Shared tags and a similar price model decide who is listed here; where none match, the neighbours in the ranking fill in.

• CacheFly (#5 of 12): Not for: teams who need the price to stay fixed through the whole term. Private CDN sold in monthly traffic bundles. (United States)
• imgix (#6 of 12): Not for: sites that only need static files cached at the edge. Image and video processing CDN billed in credits. (United States)
• Amazon CloudFront (#10 of 12): AWS CDN with flat monthly plans or metered usage. (United States)
• Azure Front Door (#11 of 12): Microsoft CDN and load balancer with an hourly base fee. Watch out: a monthly base fee applies even with little traffic. (United States)

Read from the vendor’s own pages on 5 November 2026.

• fastly.com/pricing: pricing routes, rates, free allowances, legacy pricing note, FAQ
• fastly.com/products/cdn: CDN features, Instant Purge, origin shield, testimonials
• fastly.com/documentation/guides/getting-started: documentation structure, quick start guides
• fastly.com/documentation/guides/getting-started/services: what a service is, staging, working with CDN and Compute services
• fastly.com/documentation/guides/full-site-delivery: Full-Site Delivery guide topics
• fastly.com/documentation/guides/integrations/non-fastly-services/developer-guide-logging: log endpoints and setup, integration list

We rank on what separates products after the demo: time to useful, the real price, the exit and who the product is for. Here that gives Fastly the #7 position in a list of 12. How vendor facts are sourced, and how money can and cannot influence a page, is in the editorial process.