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CacheFly versus Fastly

Easily compare CacheFly and Fastly for POP locations, products, pricing, features & support. We hope this helps you better understand the similarities and differences between these content delivery networks.

CacheFly logo Fastly logo

Company

Company CacheFly Fastly
Short profile Launched in 2002, CacheFly developed the world's first TCP-anycast based content delivery network. CacheFly has a focus on optimizing the CDN for throughput and has steadily built out the network to now have 50+ POPs on 6 continents. CacheFly provides a 100% uptime SLA and takes pride in acting as 'consultants to our customers'. Founded in 2011, Fastly has grown into a mature CDN provider. Fastly offers a range of services including streaming media delivery and private CDN but Fastly is best known for being a 'real-time CDN', meaning changes happen instantly and the platform can deliver 'uncacheable' content well.

Products

Yes
Sort of/partially
No
Extra costs
Unknown
Product CacheFly Fastly
Dynamic content deliveryNon-cacheable content delivery. User login, shopping cart ...
Small file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of small files (file size <1 MB)
Large file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of large files (file size >1 MB)
Live videoDelivery of live video. RTMP? Transcoding/transmuxing? Ultra Low Latency Video Streaming
Video on demandDelivery of on demand video VoD Video on Demand
Image OptimizationAutomatic image transformation/compression/optimization Smart Image Optimization Image Optimizer
DNSAuthoritative DNS for customer domain
WAFWeb Application Firewall Web application firewall
Anti-DDoSDDoS attack protection. Specific product(s) for this. DDoS Mitigation
Private CDNDedicated edge resources & custom configs Fully custom solution Fastly Managed CDN
Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers Custom solutions available for edge scripting Compute@Edge

Network

How many POP locations do CacheFly and Fastly have in different parts of the world?

Region CacheFly Fastly
North America 17 25
Latin America 18 8
Europe 16 20
Russia & CIS 0 0
Asia excl. China 7 13
China 2 0
Oceania 3 8
Middle East 5 2
Africa 1 3

Pricing

Pricing & contract duration CacheFly Fastly
Minimum contract term 1 month None
Minimum monthly costs $0 (5 TB/m) $50
Requests costsCustomers pay for client to CDN requests No $0.0075 - $0.016 per 10k requests
Ingress costsCustomers pay for origin-to-CDN bytes transferred No None
NA/EU traffic (low volume) $0.03 per GB $0.12 per GB
APAC traffic (low volume) $0.03 per GB $0.19 per GB
LATAM traffic (low volume) $0.03 per GB $0.28 per GB

Features

Yes
Sort of/partially
No
Extra costs
Unknown
Web acceleration CacheFly Fastly
Instant setupSign up, configure, start testing.
Change propagation delayHow fast do config changes propagate to all POPs? 5 - 180s depending on the change Instant!
Apex/root domain OK Blog: Root domain on CDN and performanceNo performance degradation when using http(s)://domain.com Must purchase dedicated IP
tooltip Or use DNS provider that can do CNAME flattening
Global anycast IPs are available
HTTP/2
HTTP/3 Enabling HTTP/3
WebSockets Limited availability
IPv6Do the edge servers have IPv6? Custom enablement IPv6 at Fastly
Compression CDN Guide: CompressionReduce file size for faster delivery Resend from origin Resend from origin, or compress on edge. Brotli!
Origin pull - protocolHTTP only or HTTPS possible too? HTTP and HTTPS
tooltip Match client to edge request protocol is possible
HTTP and HTTPS
Origin pull - Host headerUse client > edge value? Set specific value? Set specific Host header value or forward value from client to edge request. Support for AWS Origin Secret Key Header Can be different from origin host
Origin ShieldOne POP pulls from origin, other POPs pull from the shield POP Also available as separate product (Media Shield)
Waiting RoomDuring peak traffic, route users to a virtual waiting room Stateful waiting room with Compute@Edge
Push / uploadStore your content directly on CDN, no customer origin FTP or Cloud Storage can be enabled
Cache control - CDN caching Origin headers are honored. Can config caching overrides Full and granular control
Cache control - client caching Origin headers are forwarded to client. Can config overrides Full and granular control
Serve Stale CDN Guide: Serve StaleCDN serves cached but expired content in case origin is in trouble CacheFly support team can activate this edge behaviour Cache-Control extensions support
Purge CDN Guide: PurgeInvalidate or delete cached objects on CDN Purge Speed Instant!
Purge - capabilities Purge all and by directory, not by tag or header Purge all and by key
Analytics Near real-time, lots of metrics Real-time!
Log files Pull via FTP or have pushed with Log Streaming to customer endpoint
tooltip Logs are 5 minutes delayed
Real-time streaming of logs to your server
API Purge, analytics, configuration Purge, analytics, configuration
HTTPS & Content Protection CacheFly Fastly
CDN domain HTTPSUse the CDN's domain, like cloudfront.net Free Free for first 5 domains, $20 per additional domain
Customer domain HTTPSYour domain in the CDN's certificate $100/m per FQDN, $275/m for wildcard domain
Customer cert HTTPSYour certificate on the CDN Upload your own Certificate or Include Automatic Certificate EV cert possible.
Token authentication Self-service activation/configuration Enabling URL token validation
Geo blocking Self-service activation/configuration. Predefined and custom rules
Hotlink protectionThird parties cannot deeplink to your content Creating and using Edge Dictionaries
Basic authenticationUser logs in on the CDN to get content Available in a Custom/Private CDN scenario Authenticating before returning a request
IP white/blacklisting Custom rules can be scripted (by support team at no extra charge) About Edge ACLs

Support

Customer support CacheFly Fastly
Documentation Yes, public Yes, public
Humans All customers get 24/7 email and phone support and a dedicated implementation/solutions engineer. Extra support ('Elite managed') available at a fee with SLA for support response time Email support during business hours is free. Pay extra if you need more/better. Two paid plans available