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Fastly versus BelugaCDN

Easily compare Fastly and BelugaCDN 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 BelugaCDN logo

Company

Company Fastly BelugaCDN
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. BelugaCDN launched their services in 2015 and is a pay-as-you-go, low-cost CDN provider. They have a full-featured IPv4+IPv6 network and POPs on 5 continents.

Products

Yes
Sort of/partially
No
Extra costs
Unknown
Product Fastly BelugaCDN
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? Only delivery of the HTTP video streams, no transcoding or transmuxing
Video on demandDelivery of on demand video Video on Demand Pseudo-streaming (progressive streaming), byte range requests support
Image OptimizationAutomatic image transformation/compression/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 Fastly Managed CDN Available upon request. Extra costs apply
Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers Compute@Edge

Network

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

Region Fastly BelugaCDN
North America 25 13
Latin America 8 1
Europe 20 4
Russia & CIS 0 0
Asia excl. China 13 5
China 0 0
Oceania 8 1
Middle East 2 0
Africa 3 0

Pricing

Pricing & contract duration Fastly BelugaCDN
Minimum contract term None None
Minimum monthly costs $50 $5
Requests costsCustomers pay for client to CDN requests $0.0075 - $0.016 per 10k requests 5000 requests per GB included. Overages $0.0035 per 10k requests
Ingress costsCustomers pay for origin-to-CDN bytes transferred None None
NA/EU traffic (low volume) $0.12 per GB $0.01 per GB
APAC traffic (low volume) $0.19 per GB Unknown
LATAM traffic (low volume) $0.28 per GB Unknown

Features

Yes
Sort of/partially
No
Extra costs
Unknown
Web acceleration Fastly BelugaCDN
Instant setupSign up, configure, start testing.
Change propagation delayHow fast do config changes propagate to all POPs? Instant! Often instant, sometimes a few minutes
Apex/root domain OK Blog: Root domain on CDN and performanceNo performance degradation when using http(s)://domain.com Global anycast IPs are available Global Anycasted IP available, but Beluga recommends against it
HTTP/2
HTTP/3 Enabling HTTP/3
WebSockets Limited availability
IPv6Do the edge servers have IPv6? IPv6 at Fastly
Compression CDN Guide: CompressionReduce file size for faster delivery Resend from origin, or compress on edge. Brotli! Compress on the fly
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) Available upon request
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 Available upon request
Cache control - CDN caching Full and granular control Honor origin sent headers or configure overrides
Cache control - client caching Full and granular control
Serve Stale CDN Guide: Serve StaleCDN serves cached but expired content in case origin is in trouble Cache-Control extensions support
Purge CDN Guide: PurgeInvalidate or delete cached objects on CDN Instant! Instant
Purge - capabilities Purge all and by key Purge all and purge using regex
Analytics Real-time! All metrics are aggregated every 10 seconds, exported in real-time
Log files Real-time streaming of logs to your server Real-time export to Elastic Search or Redis. FTP.
tooltip 10 million requests/month free, $0.50/million events exported overage
API Purge, analytics, configuration Purge, analytics, configuration
HTTPS & Content Protection Fastly BelugaCDN
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. Free (SNI)
tooltip TLS support includes full TLS Dynamic Record Sizing and ECDSA support per Q1 2017
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 BelugaCDN
Documentation Yes, public Yes, public
Humans Email support during business hours is free. Pay extra if you need more/better. Two paid plans available Basic support (setup & troubleshooting: M-F, 9AM-5PM EST) is included for all accounts. Platinum (monthly spend more than $500) accounts receive priority. Enterprise customers receive phone support (w/ custom SLA).