Cloudflare vs Fastly
Cloudflare and Fastly both operate edge networks providing CDN, DDoS protection, and edge compute. Cloudflare offers a broader product suite including DNS, Zero Trust, and Workers at competitive prices. Fastly is known for its Varnish-based edge logic and is popular with media companies requiring highly customizable caching.
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The connectivity cloud vs Edge cloud platform.
| Feature | Cloudflare | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing from | Free–$200/mo | Pay-as-you-go from $0.12/GB |
| Pricing | Free; Pro $20/mo; Business $200/mo; Enterprise custom | Pay-as-you-go; no minimum; Enterprise custom |
| Best for | Broad edge security, DNS, and developer tools | High-performance CDN and custom caching logic |
| CDN PoPs | 310+ data centers in 100+ countries | 100+ PoPs globally |
| Edge compute | Cloudflare Workers (V8 isolates) | Fastly Compute (Wasm) |
| DDoS protection | Unmetered DDoS on all plans | DDoS mitigation on Enterprise |
| DNS | Authoritative and recursive DNS included | No authoritative DNS |
The third option most teams miss
Picking between Cloudflare and Fastly isn't the only choice.
Appaca deploys AI-powered edge logic on Cloudflare Workers to handle personalization, bot scoring, and real-time content adaptation at the edge before requests hit your origin. Reduce latency and cost without rewriting your application.
- No code, no deployment, no devops
- Built-in database, dashboards, team access
- Refine with chat as your needs change
- Free to start, no per-seat pricing surprises
Common questions
Cloudflare Free is genuinely useful for small production sites, covering CDN, SSL, basic DDoS protection, and DNS. Paid plans add WAF, advanced rate limiting, and analytics.
Fastly's Varnish Configuration Language (VCL) gives engineers fine-grained control over cache behavior, purging, and request routing at microsecond latency. Media companies with complex caching needs favor this control.
Some organizations use Cloudflare as the outer security and DNS layer with Fastly behind it for content caching. This adds complexity but is a documented pattern for enterprises needing both security breadth and caching control.