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.
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
| 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
| 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  No performance degradation when using http(s)://domain.com |
Global anycast IPs are available |
Must purchase dedicated IP
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 Reduce 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
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 serves cached but expired content in case origin is in trouble |
Cache-Control extensions support | CacheFly support team can activate this edge behaviour |
| Purge Invalidate 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
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 |