What Fastly can do for you‍

Fastly is an advanced CDN vendor leveraging edge computing to guarantee ultra-fast content delivery with extremely low latency. Businesses with complex requirements and an emphasis on quick transfer of assets can enjoy several major selling points including:

• Multi-CDN optimization;
• Dynamic on-the-fly packager tool;
• Superfast image optimization using edge processing;
• Granular routing control;
• Simplified Transport Layer Security (TLS) management;
• Hyper-modern HTTP/3 and QUIC protocols;
• Real-time edge messaging.

Fastly pricing structures and tiers‍

Fastly pricing is split into four broad categories — Services, Security, Compute, and Observability. Each product has up to four subscription tiers, allowing small to large businesses to choose the right CDN resources and tools. Organizations can also access free trials for specific solutions within each product. We strongly recommend taking advantage to ensure the full-scope CDN solution gels with your workflows and developer teams. Here’s a detailed breakdown of Fastly pricing across its various products:  

Fastly pricing – Network Services

The flagship product and main Fastly pricing category is Network Services. The powerful CDN suite is underpinned by a global network of edge servers, generating ultra-fast and reliable content delivery with minimal latency. Exact costs aren’t publicly disclosed, but you can get a taster of each tier’s functionality below:

• Basic – Core CDN capabilities for small businesses. Requests are limited to 100 million per month with up to 10 services and 50 backends. Other things to consider include the 30 million limit on monthly image optimization requests and 20 Fastly TLS domains.
• Starter – More advanced CDN tools for businesses on a tight budget. Fastly pricing for the Starter Network Services plan begins to reveal the vendor’s highly effective and scalable use cases. Upgrades from Basic include 500 million monthly requests, 20 services, and 100 backends.
• Advantage – Significantly upgraded resources for businesses scaling quickly. Some of the most eye-catching upgrades are the 48,000 purges per hour (up from 18,000), 80 domains, and 800 million image optimization requests (up from 150 million).  
• Ultimate – The most powerful Fastly pricing package for complex distribution systems and advanced developer requirements. All resources are maxed out for the Ultimate plan, which also features upgraded enterprise-level customer support.

Fastly pricing – Security

The modular Fastly pricing structure for its overall CDN service allows organizations to prioritize security separately. Smaller businesses and large enterprises will benefit from upgraded security posture, with the managed security service protecting from bot attacks and DDoS threats. Fastly emphasizes how its edge network delivers more robust and streamlined security solutions. Organizations can start feeling the benefits from the Advantage tier and up. Here’s a summary of the main features of each plan:

• Starter – Simple yet effective OWASP Top 10 app protection. Users get 25 requests per second (RPS), two workspaces, and gold-level customer support.  
• Advantage – Increased capacity up to 150 RPS and six workspaces. Businesses can also get five Edge Rate Limiting (ERL) Counters and Penalty Boxes. There’s scope to add Fastly Bot Management as a paid add-on too.
• Ultimate – The most scalable and advanced security features. Organizations requiring advanced app and API security receive 250+ RPS, 10+ workspaces, and advanced rate limiting rules alongside 10 ERL Counters and Penalty Boxes.  

Fastly pricing – Compute

Compute is the most unique category within the Fastly pricing structure. Get an introduction to edge computing with the Starter plan or leverage a sophisticated toolset for developer teams requiring maximum capacity and cutting-edge functionality with the Ultimate package. Here’s a breakdown:

• Starter – Capacity for up to 500 million monthly requests, 20 services, and 500 entries per config store. Users also get a 20ms CPU time per request. The Starter plan is great for developers getting started with edge computing.
• Advantage – The Advantage package extends the edge computing capacity. For example, organizations get two billion monthly requests and 30 services. It’s perfect for developer teams requiring boosted capacity.
• Ultimate – Fastly pricing for a top-spec approach to edge computing includes unique features like 1 TB of KV store capacity alongside Class A and Class B operations. It can be a gamechanger, but we recommend working up to this subscription plan to ensure you’re not paying for solutions you won’t use.

Fastly pricing for the Compute package also has hyper-granular information on the potential cost based on requests, duration, and vCPU seconds. This can help DevOps professionals calculate a rough estimate of the potential price for their Fastly deployment:

• Compute Requests – $0.50 per million requests
• Compute Duration – $0.000035 per GB-Sec
• vCPU Seconds – $0.000045 per vCPU Sec

Businesses can talk to a Fastly Compute expert for a better idea of exactly how the costs above translate into actual content delivery for specific use cases. Research is a fundamental part of the procurement cycle, so getting in contact to understand the implications of the usage costs above will help you optimize costs and garner more value from a Fastly subscription.

Fastly pricing – Observability

Fastly also offers an Observability product, helping organizations monitor their CDN services through real-time data analysis and origin-to-edge visibility. Each plan includes the Edge Observer, Origin Inspector, and Domain Inspector — three tools you can also trial for a free 30-day period. The main difference between each tier lies in the number of requests per month:

• Starter – 500 million requests per month;
• Advantage – Two billion requests per month;
• Ultimate – Five billion requests per month.

Additional Fastly costs to consider‍

Fastly pricing recently changed from the original pay-per-use model, instead establishing flat rate pricing to provide organizations with more predictable costs and aid SaaS spend management. The vendor doesn’t charge for extra bandwidth, traffic spikes, or security capacity, significantly reducing unexpected spending. That said, one potential add-on to consider is Fastly Bot Management. This security add-on helps organizations mitigate bot activity and protect applications from automated attacks. Use cases include account takeover, account creation abuse, DDoS, credit card fraud, form spam, and vulnerability scanning. Businesses can use a free trial to get acquainted with the Fastly Bot Management suite. Exact pricing for the add-on is obscured, so contact the vendor for a precise quote.

‍Other vendors offering Content Delivery as a Service‍

Fastly is a more advanced CDN vendor than most. While it offers organizations powerful functionality, this can also make the price too expensive for developer teams who don’t require such speedy edge computing solutions. Here are a few potential alternatives.  

Fastly pricing vs Cloudflare

Cloudflare pricing might be a better entry point to CDNs. The vendor is cheaper than Fastly on the whole, with a clearer pricing structure that also includes a Free plan:

• Free ($0/month)
• Pro ($20/month)
• Business ($200/month)
• Enterprise (per quote)

The user-friendly interface is a notable positive, particularly for beginners. However, Fastly is the superior option if you require more advanced features.

Fastly pricing vs StackPath

StackPath pricing offers a slightly broader selection of CDN features, extending to virtual machines and cloud orchestration. Official pricing is only available per request, but customer stories indicate it can be cheaper than Fastly in most instances. Ultimately, StackPath is a good choice for organizations requiring an all-encompassing approach to edge computing.

Fastly pricing vs Akamai

Akamai pricing is available on a more granular level to Fastly, so organizations will need a precise idea of their CDN-related usage metrics. This edge computing vendor has more use cases than Fastly’s CDN-specific products, but functionality is generally not as advanced. You might consider choosing Akamai over Fastly for security robustness and reliability, but be wary of the less intuitive interface.

‍Fastly pricing – the Vertice verdict ‍

Fastly is an attractive option for small and large organizations looking to harness the power of edge computing for content delivery. The vendor offers maximal performance, ultra-low latency, and granular control for advanced CDN use cases. It can be expensive, but customer stories suggest it’s worth the cost.  Exact Fastly pricing is commercially obscured, so organizations must contact the vendor for a precise breakdown. Most cutting-edge SaaS services run on subscriptions delivered per quote to stop customers knowing the average price for leverage during contract negotiation. The Vertice platform bucks this trend, using our intel to negotiate directly with premium SaaS services and deliver you the most optimal price. According to our research, Fastly pricing has 58/100 parity and a high discount possibility — so we could help you get significantly cheaper prices as a result. Our white-glove service also extends to cloud cost management, with unified dashboards and real-time reporting helping you achieve greater cloud visibility and resource optimization.