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Fastly versus CacheFly

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

Fastly logo CacheFly logo

Company

Company Fastly CacheFly
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. 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'.

Products

Yes
Sort of/partially
No
Extra costs
Unknown
Product Fastly CacheFly
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 Video on Demand VoD
Image OptimizationAutomatic image transformation/compression/optimization Image Optimizer Smart Image Optimization
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 Fastly Managed CDN Fully custom solution
Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers Compute@Edge Custom solutions available for edge scripting

Network

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

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

Pricing

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

Features

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

Support

Customer support Fastly CacheFly
Documentation Yes, public Yes, public
Humans Email support during business hours is free. Pay extra if you need more/better. Two paid plans available 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