Easily compare Fastly and Akamai for POP locations, products, pricing, features & support. We hope this helps you better understand the similarities and differences between these content delivery networks.
Company
| Company | Fastly | Akamai |
|---|---|---|
| Short profile | 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. | Akamai is one of the oldest CDNs and generally considered to be the largest global CDN. They have 'servers everywhere' and a wide range of products and services. The company is actively involved in Let's Encrypt and is pushing HTTP/2 adoption. |
Products
| Product | Fastly | Akamai |
|---|---|---|
| Dynamic content deliveryNon-cacheable content delivery. User login, shopping cart ... | Dynamic Site Accelerator | |
| Small file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of small files (file size <1 MB) | Ion | |
| Large file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of large files (file size >1 MB) | Download Delivery | |
| Live videoDelivery of live video. RTMP? Transcoding/transmuxing? | Adaptive Media Delivery | |
| Video on demandDelivery of on demand video | Video on Demand | |
| Image OptimizationAutomatic image transformation/compression/optimization | Image Optimizer | Image & Video Manager |
| DNSAuthoritative DNS for customer domain | Edge DNS | |
| WAFWeb Application Firewall | Web application firewall | Web Application Protector |
| Anti-DDoSDDoS attack protection. Specific product(s) for this. | DDoS Mitigation | Kona DDoS Defender |
| Private CDNDedicated edge resources & custom configs | Fastly Managed CDN | |
| Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers | Compute@Edge | EdgeWorkers |
Network
How many POP locations do Fastly and Akamai have in different parts of the world?
| Region | Fastly | Akamai |
|---|---|---|
| North America | 25 | ? |
| Latin America | 8 | ? |
| Europe | 20 | ? |
| Russia & CIS | 0 | ? |
| Asia excl. China | 13 | ? |
| China | 0 | ? |
| Oceania | 8 | ? |
| Middle East | 2 | ? |
| Africa | 3 | ? |
Pricing
| Pricing & contract duration | Fastly | Akamai |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum contract term | None | 12 months |
| Minimum monthly costs | $50 | Unknown |
| Requests costsCustomers pay for client to CDN requests | $0.0075 - $0.016 per 10k requests | Unknown |
| Ingress costsCustomers pay for origin-to-CDN bytes transferred | None | Unknown |
| NA/EU traffic (low volume) | $0.12 per GB | Unknown |
| APAC traffic (low volume) | $0.19 per GB | Unknown |
| LATAM traffic (low volume) | $0.28 per GB | Unknown |
Features
| Web acceleration | Fastly | Akamai |
|---|---|---|
| Instant setupSign up, configure, start testing. | Can't sign up and get started. Must talk to sales. | |
| Change propagation delayHow fast do config changes propagate to all POPs? | Instant! | |
Apex/root domain OK  No performance degradation when using http(s)://domain.com |
Global anycast IPs are available | If you also use their Fast DNS for your domain |
| HTTP/2 | ||
| HTTP/3 | Enabling HTTP/3 | HTTP/3 announcement |
| WebSockets | Limited availability | WebSockets docs |
| IPv6Do the edge servers have IPv6? | IPv6 at Fastly | |
| Compression Reduce file size for faster delivery |
Resend from origin, or compress on edge. Brotli! | Resend from origin, or compress on edge |
| Origin pull - protocolHTTP only or HTTPS possible too? | HTTP and HTTPS | HTTP and HTTPS |
| Origin pull - Host headerUse client > edge value? Set specific value? | 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 | Virtual Waiting Room |
| Push / uploadStore your content directly on CDN, no customer origin | ||
| Cache control - CDN caching | Full and granular control | |
| Cache control - client caching | Full and granular control | |
| Serve Stale CDN serves cached but expired content in case origin is in trouble |
Cache-Control extensions support | |
| Purge Invalidate or delete cached objects on CDN |
Instant! | |
| Purge - capabilities | Purge all and by key | |
| Analytics | Real-time! | |
| Log files | Real-time streaming of logs to your server | |
| API | Purge, analytics, configuration |
| HTTPS & Content Protection | Fastly | Akamai |
|---|---|---|
| CDN domain HTTPSUse the CDN's domain, like cloudfront.net | 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 | EV cert possible. | |
| Token authentication | Enabling URL token validation | |
| Geo blocking | ||
| Hotlink protectionThird parties cannot deeplink to your content | Creating and using Edge Dictionaries | |
| Basic authenticationUser logs in on the CDN to get content | Authenticating before returning a request | |
| IP white/blacklisting | About Edge ACLs |
Support
| Customer support | Fastly | Akamai |
|---|---|---|
| Documentation | Yes, public | Akamai techdocs |
| Humans | Email support during business hours is free. Pay extra if you need more/better. Two paid plans available |