Easily compare Lumen 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 | Lumen | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| Short profile | Lumen (formerly known as Centurylink or Level 3) owns and operates a global Tier-1 network and - logically - their CDN runs on top of it. Lumen CDN has POPs on many continents and their product focus is on video, large object delivery and edge computing. | 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 | Lumen | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| Dynamic content deliveryNon-cacheable content delivery. User login, shopping cart ... | CDN Edge Compute | |
| Small file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of small files (file size <1 MB) | CDN and/or CDN Edge Compute | |
| Large file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of large files (file size >1 MB) | ||
| Live videoDelivery of live video. RTMP? Transcoding/transmuxing? | CDN and/or CDN Mesh Delivery | |
| Video on demandDelivery of on demand video | CDN and/or CDN Mesh Delivery | Video on Demand |
| Image OptimizationAutomatic image transformation/compression/optimization | part of CDN Edge Compute | Image Optimizer |
| DNSAuthoritative DNS for customer domain | ||
| WAFWeb Application Firewall | WAF | Web application firewall |
| Anti-DDoSDDoS attack protection. Specific product(s) for this. | Lumen DDoS Hyper (on-demand) and DDoS Mitigation Service | DDoS Mitigation |
| Private CDNDedicated edge resources & custom configs | CDN Mesh Delivery for Enterprise | Fastly Managed CDN |
| Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers | Edge Compute | Compute@Edge |
Network
How many POP locations do Lumen and Fastly have in different parts of the world?
| Region | Lumen | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| North America | 28 | 25 |
| Latin America | 11 | 8 |
| Europe | 35 | 20 |
| Russia & CIS | 0 | 0 |
| Asia excl. China | 7 | 13 |
| China | 0 | 0 |
| Oceania | 5 | 8 |
| Middle East | 4 | 2 |
| Africa | 3 | 3 |
Pricing
| Pricing & contract duration | Lumen | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum contract term | Unknown | 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 | Lumen | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| Instant setupSign up, configure, start testing. | Not yet, but coming soon. | |
| Change propagation delayHow fast do config changes propagate to all POPs? | No longer than 15 minutes - Often instant | Instant! |
Apex/root domain OK  No performance degradation when using http(s)://domain.com |
Available with Section product for an additional fee | Global anycast IPs are available |
| HTTP/2 | ||
| HTTP/3 | Enabling HTTP/3 | |
| WebSockets | 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? |
Configure specific other Host header
CDN can also forward client request Host header to origin
|
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 | |
| Push / uploadStore your content directly on CDN, no customer origin | FTP, SFTP, rsync. Storage costs apply | |
| 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 | Instant! |
| Purge - capabilities | Purge all but not purge by directory or tag or header | Purge all and by key |
| Analytics | Real-time! | |
| Log files | Real-time streaming of logs to your server | |
| API | Purge, analytics, configuration | Purge, analytics, configuration |
| HTTPS & Content Protection | Lumen | 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 | Lumen | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| Documentation | Yes, but not public | Yes, public |
| Humans | Email support during business hours is free. Pay extra if you need more/better. Two paid plans available |