Cloudflare vs Fastly Comparison
Compare Cloudflare vs Fastly features, pricing, and more.
Last updated: November 2026
Cloudflare
7.6/10
Cloudflare is a global edge network. It offers CDN, DNS, DDoS protection and a WAF, plus serverless compute and storage (Workers, R2, D1) for developers and businesses.
Fastly
6.7/10
Fastly is an edge cloud platform that combines a programmable CDN, WebAssembly serverless compute, edge storage, and web security for engineering-led businesses.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 7.6/10 | 6.7/10 |
| Integration | 8/10 | 8/10 |
| Support | 4/10 | 6/10 |
| Cost | 9/10 | 4/10 |
| Customization | 8/10 | 9/10 |
| Security | 9/10 | 8/10 |
| Reliability | 7/10 | 7/10 |
| Ease of Use | 7/10 | 4/10 |
| Analytics | 7/10 | 7/10 |
| Scalability | 9/10 | 8/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Cheapest paid plan | $5/mo Workers Paid | $500/mo Compute Starter |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | Free Free | Free Usage-based (free allowance) |
| Features | ||
| Content Delivery Network | ||
| DDoS Protection | ||
| Free SSL Certificates | ||
| Object Storage | ||
| Serverless Functions | ||
| API and CLI | Not listed | |
| Dedicated Servers | ||
| Managed Databases | Not listed | |
| Managed Kubernetes | Not listed | |
| Managed WordPress | Not listed | |
| Multiple Regions | Not listed | |
| Shared Hosting | ||
| Uptime SLA | Not listed | |
| VPS Hosting | Not listed | |
Cloudflare vs Fastly cost by team size
Cloudflare and Fastly cost the same at every team size we checked.
| Team size | Cloudflare | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | FreeFree | FreeUsage-based (free allowance) |
| 5 users | FreeFree | FreeUsage-based (free allowance) |
| 10 users | FreeFree | FreeUsage-based (free allowance) |
| 25 users | FreeFree | FreeUsage-based (free allowance) |
| 50 users | FreeFree | FreeUsage-based (free allowance) |
The plan that fits each team size, billed monthly, before add-ons and usage charges. Each cost opens that tool's pricing calculator for the team size.
Which One Should You Choose?
Why choose Cloudflare
- Higher Cost score (9/10 vs 4/10)
- Higher Ease of Use score (7/10 vs 4/10)
- Better fit for small business (7/10 vs 4/10)
Why choose Fastly
- Higher Support score (6/10 vs 4/10)
- Higher Customization score (9/10 vs 8/10)
Pros & Cons
Cloudflare
Pros
- The free plan includes unmetered DDoS protection, a CDN, a WAF and universal SSL.
- R2 object storage charges no egress fees.
- Workers has very low entry pricing: a $5 monthly minimum and $0.30 per additional million requests.
- The Business plan adds a 100 percent uptime SLA and PCI DSS compliance for $200 a month billed annually.
Cons
- Reviewers report slow support on Free and Pro, which have no chat or phone support.
- Global outages in November and December 2025 disrupted many sites at the same time.
- Reviewers report billing problems, such as charges after cancelling add-ons.
- It offers no traditional shared hosting, VPS or dedicated servers, so you still need an origin host for conventional workloads.
Fastly
Pros
- Instant Purge clears cached content worldwide in about 150 ms, which suits news and e-commerce sites that change content often.
- VCL and WebAssembly-based Compute give engineers fine control over edge logic per request.
- Real-time log streaming to more than 30 endpoints, including Datadog, Splunk, and BigQuery, is included.
- The Next-Gen WAF, from the Signal Sciences acquisition, is known for low false-positive rates (a vendor claim reported by Technologymatch).
- Self-serve sign-up includes free monthly allowances for delivery, compute, storage, and TLS.
Cons
- Reviewers describe VCL as hard to learn and say the dashboard is complex for beginners.
- Region-based bandwidth rates make monthly bills hard to predict, especially for smaller companies.
- About 76 POPs, far fewer than Cloudflare or Akamai, with no presence in mainland China, Russia, or the CIS region.
- Some PeerSpot reviewers report slow support responses.
- Bot management and the full security suites are sold by sales quote only.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
Cloudflare scores higher on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria: 7.6/10 against 6.7/10 for Fastly. The largest gap is in Cost: 9/10 for Cloudflare and 4/10 for Fastly.
Both are free for 10 users.
Yes, both Cloudflare and Fastly have a free plan.
Cloudflare is the better fit for small business: we rate it 7/10 for them, against 4/10 for Fastly.
