Cloudflare vs Fastly
SEPT 2026 auditA comparison of Cloudflare and Fastly built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
Adoption share
BuiltWith counts — how much more of the web runs Cloudflare than Fastly, among the sites BuiltWith actually detects. Measured . Source: BuiltWith.
The short answer
Choose Cloudflare if…
Teams that want CDN, DDoS protection and WAF bundled together and effectively unmetered on bandwidth — the pricing axis here is feature tier, not gigabytes served.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Choose Fastly if…
High-traffic sites where volume-discount tiers actually kick in, or teams that want CDN and edge compute (Fastly Compute) on the same platform.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Consider something else if…
- Cloudflare: The workload needs Cloudflare's edge-compute or storage products alongside the CDN — those are priced and profiled separately (see Cloudflare Pages, Cloudflare R2), not part of this plan.
- Fastly: Traffic is modest — the $1,500/month entry plan for dedicated network services is priced for scale a smaller site won't reach, where a pay-as-you-go CDN has no equivalent floor.
Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Cloudflare alternatives · Fastly alternatives
16 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.
Pick the criteria you care about. The chart counts how many of them lean toward each provider — the same read as scanning the bars below, just totalled for the ones you chose.
Cloudflare 0
Fastly 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Cloudflare | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Kind of free offer | Free tier | Free tier |
| Entry paid plan | Pro plan: $20/month billed annually, or $25/month billed monthly. | Network Services packages start at $1,500/month, including 100M requests. |
| Pricing model | Flat monthly plans that differ by feature set rather than by traffic: Free, Pro at $20/mo billed annually, Business at $200/mo billed annually, and a custom Contract tier. | Usage-based with built-in volume-discount tiers — the per-GB and per-request rate falls as monthly usage rises. |
| Egress over allowance | Bundled into the plan price: Cloudflare states bandwidth costs are bundled rather than charged as cloud egress fees; no per-GB CDN rate is quoted. | North America and Europe: free to 100 GB, then $0.12/GB to 10 TB and $0.08/GB for the next 10 TB. Priced by region — Africa, India and South Korea are $0.28/GB in the same band. |
| Infrastructure | ||
| Regions | 8 regions, listed alongside 348 cities in the Data Center Locations section of the global network page. Cloudflare's own regional grouping of its data centres, not cloud-style deployment regions. | 10 billing regions priced separately for Full Site Delivery bandwidth: Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, India, Mexico, North America, Saudi Arabia, South America, South Korea. |
| CDN | ||
| Points of presence | 348 cities in the Data Center Locations list on Cloudflare's global network page. | 164 POPs, counted from Fastly's own complete list of active POPs in the docs — Fastly publishes the table of POP identifiers rather than a total. |
| Image optimization | Lossless Image Optimization included from the Pro plan, alongside AMP support. | Image Optimizer: first 100,000 image requests a month free, then $0.50 per 10,000 requests, with volume discounts scaling down to $0.01 per 10,000 beyond 5 billion monthly requests. |
| Compliance | ||
| SOC 2 | SOC 2 Type II attestation covering Security, Confidentiality and Availability against the AICPA Trust Service Criteria. | SOC 2 Type 2 audited against the AICPA Trust Service Criteria for Security and Availability; reports on request (NDA for prospective customers). |
| ISO 27001 | ISO 27001:2022 certified — an Information Security Management System (ISMS) and security risk management processes certification. ISO 27017, 27018 and 27701 are listed on the same page. | Certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022 for its Information Security Management System (ISMS). |
| HIPAA | HIPAA is listed in Cloudflare's certifications; the HIPAA AoC is obtained by contacting your account team. | Audited against relevant sections of the HIPAA Security and Privacy Rules; customers configure a HIPAA-compliant caching product to support compliance. |
| GDPR / data residency | Data Localization Suite, an Enterprise-only paid add-on, chooses where Cloudflare inspects and stores data, for regimes such as GDPR. | Audited against key articles of the GDPR, mapped to data protection and privacy controls for Fastly as a data processor. Audit scope as processor; the page states no region-pinned storage guarantee. |
| PCI DSS | PCI DSS 4.0 Attestation of Compliance, listed among Cloudflare's certifications and reports. | PCI DSS compliant as a Level 1 Service Provider; a PCI-compliant caching product covers Network services, Compute and Observability. |
| Encryption at rest | DPA Annex 2 requires all disks storing Personal Data to be encrypted with AES-XTS at a key length of 128 bits or longer. | Customer-provided private keys are encrypted at rest; disk encryption and secure boot are maintained as additional controls where deemed appropriate. |
| Customer-managed keys | Keyless SSL keeps TLS private keys on a customer-run key server; only for Enterprise customers holding their own CA-issued certificate. Availability table on the same page: No on Free, Pro and Business; paid add-on on Enterprise. | Supported logging endpoints take a PGP public key you supply; Fastly encrypts log files with it before writing to disk and you hold the private key. Scope: streamed log files only; separate from Fastly TLS bring-your-own-certificate keys. |
| Role-based access control | On any Cloudflare account, members are granted access through policies made of an actor, a role and a scope; roles are account-, domain- or resource-scoped. | User roles and permissions control account access; account-management roles (Superuser, User Admin, Billing) plus service-configuration roles are assigned per user. |
| Private networking / VPC | Cloudflare Network Interconnect, Enterprise-only, connects your network infrastructure directly to Cloudflare rather than over the public Internet. | Origin Connect provides a dedicated private network interconnection between a customer origin server and a Fastly Shield POP. |
| Dedicated infrastructure | CNI Direct Interconnect gives a dedicated physical fiber connection into Cloudflare hardware that sits in a shared data center. Dedicated connectivity into a shared network; no single-tenant CDN deployment is published. | Dedicated anycast IPv4/IPv6 address pools assigned exclusively to a single customer, maintained and managed by Fastly across its global edge cloud platform. Scope is dedicated IP addressing on Fastly's edge platform. |
Where they differ.
Entry paid plan
- Cloudflare
- Pro plan: $20/month billed annually, or $25/month billed monthly.
- Fastly
- Network Services packages start at $1,500/month, including 100M requests.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Cloudflare Plans ↗
“Pro For professional websites that aren't business-critical. $20 /mo billed annually, or $25/mo billed monthly”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Fastly Pricing ↗
“Price per Month $1,500 $6,000 Contact sales Contact sales Requests per Month 100M Requests 500M Requests 2B Requests 5B Requests”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
Pricing model
- Cloudflare
- Flat monthly plans that differ by feature set rather than by traffic: Free, Pro at $20/mo billed annually, Business at $200/mo billed annually, and a custom Contract tier.
- Fastly
- Usage-based with built-in volume-discount tiers — the per-GB and per-request rate falls as monthly usage rises.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Cloudflare Plans ↗
“Free For personal or hobby projects that aren't business-critical. $0 /month [...] Pro For professional websites that aren't business-critical. $20 /mo billed annually, or $25/mo billed monthly [...] Business For small businesses operating online. $200 /mo billed annually, or $250/mo billed monthly [...] Contract For mission-critical applications that are core to your business. Custom Billed annually”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Fastly Pricing ↗
“only pay for what you use, with built in discounts as usage grows. [...] Usage-based, volume discounts Spend less as you use more with our built-in pricing tiers”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
Egress over allowance
- Cloudflare
- Bundled into the plan price: Cloudflare states bandwidth costs are bundled rather than charged as cloud egress fees; no per-GB CDN rate is quoted.
- Fastly
- North America and Europe: free to 100 GB, then $0.12/GB to 10 TB and $0.08/GB for the next 10 TB. Priced by region — Africa, India and South Korea are $0.28/GB in the same band.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Cloudflare CDN ↗
“Predictable, Affordable Cost [...] We exist to help kill egregious cloud egress fees. Bandwidth costs are bundled and competitively priced.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
- Fastly Pricing ↗
“Bandwidth (per month) Africa Asia Australia Europe India Mexico North America Saudi Arabia South America South Korea 0 - 100 GB Free Free Free Free Free Free Free Free Free Free 100 GB - 10 TB $0.28 $0.19 $0.19 $0.12 $0.28 $0.16 $0.12 $0.19 $0.19 $0.28 Next 10 TB $0.24 $0.14 $0.14 $0.08 $0.24 $0.12 $0.08 $0.14 $0.14 $0.24”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
Regions
- Cloudflare
- 8 regions, listed alongside 348 cities in the Data Center Locations section of the global network page. Cloudflare's own regional grouping of its data centres, not cloud-style deployment regions.
- Fastly
- 10 billing regions priced separately for Full Site Delivery bandwidth: Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, India, Mexico, North America, Saudi Arabia, South America, South Korea.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Cloudflare global network ↗
“Data Center Locations [...] 348 cities · 8 regions”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
- Explore Fastly Pricing Tiers and Package Options | Fastly ↗
“Billed per GB per Region per month [...] Africa Asia Australia Europe India Mexico North America Saudi Arabia South America South Korea”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
Points of presence
348 cities in the Data Center Locations list on Cloudflare's global network page.
164 POPs, counted from Fastly's own complete list of active POPs in the docs — Fastly publishes the table of POP identifiers rather than a total.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Cloudflare global network ↗
“Data Center Locations [...] 348 cities · 8 regions”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
- Using Fastly's global POP network | Fastly Documentation ↗
“The following table lists all POPs current active in the Fastly network”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
Image optimization
- Cloudflare
- Lossless Image Optimization included from the Pro plan, alongside AMP support.
- Fastly
- Image Optimizer: first 100,000 image requests a month free, then $0.50 per 10,000 requests, with volume discounts scaling down to $0.01 per 10,000 beyond 5 billion monthly requests.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Cloudflare Plans ↗
“Lossless Image Optimization - Lossless Image Optimization Free - Pro Business Contract”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Fastly Pricing ↗
“Image Optimizer Turn image-heavy into conversion-ready Sign up for free Image Requests 100,000 free Billed per 10,000 Image Requests Image Requests (per month) Monthly Price (per 10,000 Image Requests) 0 - 100,000 Free 100,000 - 10 Million $0.50 10 Million - 50 Million $0.15 50 Million - 150 Million $0.07 150 Million - 500 Million $0.03 500 Million - 1 Billion $0.02 1 Billion - 5 Billion $0.015 Beyond 5 Billion $0.01”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
SOC 2
- Cloudflare
- SOC 2 Type II attestation covering Security, Confidentiality and Availability against the AICPA Trust Service Criteria.
- Fastly
- SOC 2 Type 2 audited against the AICPA Trust Service Criteria for Security and Availability; reports on request (NDA for prospective customers).
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Certifications and compliance resources — Cloudflare Trust Hub ↗
“Certifications and Reports [...] SOC 2 Type II [...] Certification to attest to Security, Confidentiality, and Availability controls in place in accordance to the AICPA Trust Service Criteria.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
- Compliance | Fastly ↗
“Fastly is audited against the Trust Service Criteria for Security and Availability as established by the AICPA [...] If you are a Fastly customer, you can request these audit reports via your customer success point of contact.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
ISO 27001
- Cloudflare
- ISO 27001:2022 certified — an Information Security Management System (ISMS) and security risk management processes certification. ISO 27017, 27018 and 27701 are listed on the same page.
- Fastly
- Certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022 for its Information Security Management System (ISMS).
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Certifications and compliance resources — Cloudflare Trust Hub ↗
“ISO 27001:2022 [...] Implementation of an Information Security Management System (ISMS) and security risk management processes certification.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
- Compliance | Fastly ↗
“Fastly is certified to the ISO/IEC 27001:2022 standard for its Information Security Management System (ISMS).”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
HIPAA
- Cloudflare
- HIPAA is listed in Cloudflare's certifications; the HIPAA AoC is obtained by contacting your account team.
- Fastly
- Audited against relevant sections of the HIPAA Security and Privacy Rules; customers configure a HIPAA-compliant caching product to support compliance.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Certifications and compliance resources — Cloudflare Trust Hub ↗
“HIPAA [...] Contact your account team to request the HIPAA AoC.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
- Compliance | Fastly ↗
“Fastly is audited against relevant sections of the Security and Privacy Rules of the Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accessibility Act (HIPAA). Customers can configure their services using our HIPAA-compliant caching product to support their compliance with these requirements.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
GDPR / data residency
- Cloudflare
- Data Localization Suite, an Enterprise-only paid add-on, chooses where Cloudflare inspects and stores data, for regimes such as GDPR.
- Fastly
- Audited against key articles of the GDPR, mapped to data protection and privacy controls for Fastly as a data processor. Audit scope as processor; the page states no region-pinned storage guarantee.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Data Localization Suite · Cloudflare Docs ↗
“Enterprise-only paid add-on [...] The Data Localization Suite (DLS) is a collection of tools that enable customers to choose the location where Cloudflare inspects and stores data, while maintaining the security and performance benefits of our global network.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Compliance | Fastly ↗
“Fastly is audited against key articles of the General Data Protection Regulation, mapped to data protection and privacy controls for Fastly as a data processor.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
PCI DSS
- Cloudflare
- PCI DSS 4.0 Attestation of Compliance, listed among Cloudflare's certifications and reports.
- Fastly
- PCI DSS compliant as a Level 1 Service Provider; a PCI-compliant caching product covers Network services, Compute and Observability.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Certifications and compliance resources — Cloudflare Trust Hub ↗
“PCI DSS 4.0 [...] Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard Attestation of Compliance.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
- Compliance | Fastly ↗
“Fastly is Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant as a Level 1 Service Provider.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
Encryption at rest
- Cloudflare
- DPA Annex 2 requires all disks storing Personal Data to be encrypted with AES-XTS at a key length of 128 bits or longer.
- Fastly
- Customer-provided private keys are encrypted at rest; disk encryption and secure boot are maintained as additional controls where deemed appropriate.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Cloudflare Customer Data Processing Addendum ↗
“Measures for the protection of data during storage [...] employing effective encryption algorithms and parameterization, such as requiring all disks storing Personal Data to be encrypted with AES-XTS using a key length of 128-bits or longer.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
- Security program | Fastly Products ↗
“Encrypt customer-provided private keys at rest. [...] Maintain additional technical security controls, such as disk encryption and secure boot, where deemed appropriate.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
Customer-managed keys
- Cloudflare
- Keyless SSL keeps TLS private keys on a customer-run key server; only for Enterprise customers holding their own CA-issued certificate. Availability table on the same page: No on Free, Pro and Business; paid add-on on Enterprise.
- Fastly
- Supported logging endpoints take a PGP public key you supply; Fastly encrypts log files with it before writing to disk and you hold the private key. Scope: streamed log files only; separate from Fastly TLS bring-your-own-certificate keys.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Keyless SSL · Cloudflare SSL/TLS docs ↗
“Keyless SSL allows security-conscious clients to upload their own custom certificates and benefit from Cloudflare, but without exposing their TLS private keys. [...] Keyless SSL is only available to Enterprise customers that maintain their own SSL certificate purchased from a valid Certificate Authority.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Encrypting logs | Fastly Documentation ↗
“For supported logging endpoints, Fastly allows you to encrypt your log files before they are written to disk. [...] Keep your private key safe! If you lose it, your encrypted log files will be permanently unreadable.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
Role-based access control
- Cloudflare
- On any Cloudflare account, members are granted access through policies made of an actor, a role and a scope; roles are account-, domain- or resource-scoped.
- Fastly
- User roles and permissions control account access; account-management roles (Superuser, User Admin, Billing) plus service-configuration roles are assigned per user.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Members and permissions · Cloudflare Fundamentals docs ↗
“On any Cloudflare account, you can collaborate by adding members to your account and assigning them access via one or several policies. [...] Use policies to grant each member the minimum level of access they need.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- About user roles and permissions | Fastly Documentation ↗
“This guide explains user roles and permissions and how they control access to your account. [...] These roles control access to account-level configuration, user management, and billing”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
Private networking / VPC
- Cloudflare
- Cloudflare Network Interconnect, Enterprise-only, connects your network infrastructure directly to Cloudflare rather than over the public Internet.
- Fastly
- Origin Connect provides a dedicated private network interconnection between a customer origin server and a Fastly Shield POP.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Cloudflare Network Interconnect · Cloudflare Docs ↗
“Enterprise-only [...] Cloudflare Network Interconnect (CNI) allows you to connect your network infrastructure directly to Cloudflare — rather than using the public Internet — for a more performant and secure experience.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Origin Connect | Fastly ↗
“Origin Connect provides a fully supported, dedicated private network interconnection between your origin server and a Fastly Shield POP.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
Dedicated infrastructure
- Cloudflare
- CNI Direct Interconnect gives a dedicated physical fiber connection into Cloudflare hardware that sits in a shared data center. Dedicated connectivity into a shared network; no single-tenant CDN deployment is published.
- Fastly
- Dedicated anycast IPv4/IPv6 address pools assigned exclusively to a single customer, maintained and managed by Fastly across its global edge cloud platform. Scope is dedicated IP addressing on Fastly's edge platform.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Cloudflare Network Interconnect · Cloudflare Docs ↗
“Direct Interconnect [...] A dedicated physical fiber connection between your network equipment and Cloudflare's hardware in a shared data center.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- IP Addresses | Fastly ↗
“Dedicated IP addresses provide a pool of IPv4 and IPv6 IP addresses, maintained and managed by Fastly, across our global edge cloud platform. [...] A dedicated IP address is an IP assigned exclusively to a single Fastly customer instead of being shared with other customers.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.
Documented by only one.
These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing — except where we say we read the other provider's own page on a given date and it does not state it. Those rows lean, and the provider can correct them with a link.
Questions this comparison answers.
Entry paid plan: Cloudflare or Fastly?
Cloudflare: Pro plan: $20/month billed annually, or $25/month billed monthly.
Fastly: Network Services packages start at $1,500/month, including 100M requests.
Egress over allowance: Cloudflare or Fastly?
Cloudflare: Bundled into the plan price: Cloudflare states bandwidth costs are bundled rather than charged as cloud egress fees; no per-GB CDN rate is quoted.
Fastly: North America and Europe: free to 100 GB, then $0.12/GB to 10 TB and $0.08/GB for the next 10 TB. Priced by region — Africa, India and South Korea are $0.28/GB in the same band.
Should I choose Cloudflare or Fastly?
Pick Cloudflare if Teams that want CDN, DDoS protection and WAF bundled together and effectively unmetered on bandwidth — the pricing axis here is feature tier, not gigabytes served.
Pick Fastly if High-traffic sites where volume-discount tiers actually kick in, or teams that want CDN and edge compute (Fastly Compute) on the same platform.
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