Cloudflare vs Fastly
A source-aware comparison of pricing, documented capabilities and workflow fit.
Short answer
- Price: not directly comparable — Cloudflare is free tier available, Fastly is usage-based pricing.
- How to start: Cloudflare is free tier available, Fastly is usage-based pricing.
- Where they differ: only Cloudflare has mobile app; both offer public api and sso (saml).
These lines are generated from the pricing we track, not from a paid placement. How we score tools.
What Cloudflare is
What Cloudflare isCloudflare is the world's leading web infrastructure and security company. It acts as a protective shield and an accelerator for millions of websites. By routing traffic through its massive global network, it blocks DDoS attacks, speeds up content delivery via its CDN, and provides a 'serverless' environment through Cloudflare Workers. It is the most accessible way to make your website faster, safer, and more reliable with just a simple DNS change.
Who it is for: almost any site owner, because the free plan gives DNS, a global CDN, TLS certificates and DDoS protection at no cost, and most small sites never need more. Developers get a second product family on top: Workers for edge code, Pages for static hosting, R2 for object storage with no egress fees, and D1 and KV for data at the edge.
Where it falls short: the more of that family you adopt, the harder it is to leave, because Workers and its bindings do not run anywhere else. The Pro and Business plans add image optimisation, a WAF ruleset and better analytics, but some features that look free have paid tiers once traffic grows, and Enterprise pricing is by negotiation. Support on free and Pro plans is community and ticket based. Bunny is cheaper for pure CDN traffic; Fastly is stronger for programmable caching at scale; Cloudflare wins on breadth and on the price of getting started.
What Fastly is
What Fastly isFastly is an edge cloud and CDN with programmable edge compute and very fast cache purging. Instant purge and programmable edge logic are its differentiators: cache invalidation happens in seconds and routing rules run at the edge. It is priced and shaped for teams that treat the CDN as part of the application, not a checkbox.
Side by side
| Cloudflare | Fastly | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Hosting | Hosting |
| How to start | Free tiernot a monthly price | Usage-basednot a monthly price |
| Public API | Yes | Yes |
| Mobile app | Yes | No |
| Open source / self-hostable | No | No |
| SSO (SAML) | Yes | Yes |
| Visit | Cloudflare ↗ | Fastly ↗ |
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What Cloudflare is built to do
- DDoS Protection
- Automatically detect and block sophisticated attacks before they reach your server.
- Global CDN
- Cache your static content on hundreds of servers worldwide for instant loading.
- Cloudflare Workers
- Run JavaScript/Rust code at the network edge to modify requests and responses.
- Zero Trust
- Secure your internal team's access to apps without needing a traditional VPN.
What Fastly is built to do
- Instant cache purge
- Invalidates cached objects across the network within seconds.
- Edge compute
- Runs custom logic at the edge for routing and personalisation.
- Real-time logging
- Streams request logs to your own systems as they happen.
Choose Cloudflare if
- Sites that need CDN, DNS, universal SSL, unmetered DDoS protection and a WAF at no cost — all are on the free plan
- Small sites where community-forum support is acceptable
- Stepping up gradually: Pro is $20/mo billed annually, not an enterprise contract
Skip Cloudflare if
- You need an uptime SLA — the 100% uptime SLA starts at Business, $200/mo billed annually
- You want image optimization; lossless image optimization begins at Pro, not Free
- You cannot move DNS management to Cloudflare, which the platform requires
Choose Fastly if
- Traffic concentrated in North America or Europe, where delivery is $0.12/GB in the first paid band and $0.08/GB in the next
- Small or spiky sites: the first 100 GB of bandwidth and the first 1 million requests each month are free
- Image-heavy sites — Image Optimizer includes 100,000 image requests free and the per-request rate falls sharply above 10 million
- Teams that do not want seat licensing: everything here is metered by usage, with volume discounts applied automatically
Skip Fastly if
- Your audience is in Africa, India or South Korea: delivery there is $0.28/GB, more than twice the $0.12/GB charged for North America and Europe
- You need many TLS domains — only 5 are free, then $20 per domain per month, and a commercial-CA certificate is $275 per domain per month
- You need mutual TLS beyond two domains: that switches to a $500 flat monthly rate
- You want a quoted enterprise package before talking to sales — package and support-plan prices are not published
Evidence and freshness
Where a claim on this page comes from a vendor page, it is linked here.
Cloudflare: pros & cons
- Global Speed: Massive edge network ensures your site loads fast anywhere on earth.
- Best DDoS Protection: Industry-leading security that stops even the largest attacks.
- Free Tier: Extremely generous free plan that covers most small site needs.
- Serverless Power: Run code at the edge with 'Workers' for near-zero latency.
- Complex Pro Features: Advanced settings like Page Rules can be tricky to configure.
- Support: Free users mostly rely on community forums for technical help.
- DNS Dependence: Requires you to move your DNS management to their platform.
Fastly: pros & cons
- Instant global cache purge
- Programmable edge with VCL and Compute
- Strong performance and observability
- Configuration is developer-oriented
- Pricing suits larger traffic volumes
- Steeper learning curve than simple CDNs
Our verdict on Cloudflare
The pragmatic first layer for speed and security: Free for most sites, Pro at $20/mo, Business at $200/mo when WAF depth matters.
Our verdict on Fastly
Powerful for teams who will use the programmability. Simple static sites do not need it.
Published plans, side by side
Every figure below was read from the vendor's own pricing page and is shown with the sentence it came from. Where a vendor publishes no plan prices, we say so rather than guess.
Cloudflare
- Free$0/mo billed annually
Free $0, Pro $20/mo annual ($25 monthly), Business $200/mo annual ($250 monthly)
- Pro$20/mo billed annually
Free $0, Pro $20/mo annual ($25 monthly), Business $200/mo annual ($250 monthly)
- Business$200/mo billed annually
Free $0, Pro $20/mo annual ($25 monthly), Business $200/mo annual ($250 monthly)
Fastly
No published plan prices verified. Fastly either quotes on request or renders its prices in a way we could not read from the pricing page.
Cloudflare vs Fastly: common questions
- Does Cloudflare or Fastly have a free plan?
- Cloudflare has a free tier with limits, while Fastly has no free plan listed.
- What is the difference between Cloudflare and Fastly?
- On the criteria we check, only Cloudflare has mobile app; both offer public api and sso (saml). The table above lists every criterion side by side.