Fastly vs Google Cloud Comparison

Why choose Fastly

• Higher Support score (6/10 vs 5/10)

Why choose Google Cloud

• Higher Reliability score (9/10 vs 7/10)
• Higher Analytics score (9/10 vs 7/10)
• Includes Managed Kubernetes, which Fastly lacks

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.

Google Cloud

Pros

• Very broad managed catalogue that spans VMs, GKE, serverless, several database engines, a CDN and Cloud Armor, so most infrastructure can come from one vendor.
• Global footprint, which Wikipedia put at 40 regions and 121 zones in early 2024, helps teams deploy close to users and across zones.
• A 300 USD, 90-day credit plus a permanent Always Free tier, including a small VM, lets developers prototype at no cost.
• Capterra reviewers credit its scalability with helping them adapt quickly to changing client demand.

Cons

• Capterra reviewers repeatedly say the billing is complex, hard to audit and sometimes produces unexpected charges.
• Technical support requires a paid plan priced as a percentage of spend, and Premium starts at 15,000 USD a month.
• Reviewers report a steep learning curve and inconsistent documentation.
• The free e2-micro VM is limited to three US regions, so other regions incur standard charges.