Easily compare Akamai 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.
Company
| Company | Akamai | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| Short profile | 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. | 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
| Product | Akamai | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| 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 & Video Manager | Image Optimizer |
| DNSAuthoritative DNS for customer domain | Edge DNS | |
| WAFWeb Application Firewall | Web Application Protector | Web application firewall |
| Anti-DDoSDDoS attack protection. Specific product(s) for this. | Kona DDoS Defender | DDoS Mitigation |
| Private CDNDedicated edge resources & custom configs | Fastly Managed CDN | |
| Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers | EdgeWorkers | Compute@Edge |
Network
How many POP locations do Akamai and Fastly have in different parts of the world?
| Region | Akamai | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | Akamai | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum contract term | 12 months | None |
| Minimum monthly costs | Unknown | $50 |
| Requests costsCustomers pay for client to CDN requests | Unknown | $0.0075 - $0.016 per 10k requests |
| Ingress costsCustomers pay for origin-to-CDN bytes transferred | Unknown | None |
| NA/EU traffic (low volume) | Unknown | $0.12 per GB |
| APAC traffic (low volume) | Unknown | $0.19 per GB |
| LATAM traffic (low volume) | Unknown | $0.28 per GB |
Features
| Web acceleration | Akamai | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
If you also use their Fast DNS for your domain | Global anycast IPs are available |
| HTTP/2 | ||
| HTTP/3 | HTTP/3 announcement | Enabling HTTP/3 |
| WebSockets | WebSockets docs | Limited availability |
| IPv6Do the edge servers have IPv6? | IPv6 at Fastly | |
| Compression Reduce file size for faster delivery |
Resend from origin, or compress on edge | Resend from origin, or compress on edge. Brotli! |
| 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 | Virtual Waiting Room | Stateful waiting room with Compute@Edge |
| 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 | Akamai | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | Akamai | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| Documentation | Akamai techdocs | Yes, public |
| Humans | Email support during business hours is free. Pay extra if you need more/better. Two paid plans available |