What is Fastly used for?

Fastly is an edge cloud platform that combines a programmable CDN with security, serverless compute and observability for delivering and protecting web content. It is a good fit for delivering streaming and media at scale, protecting apps and APIs at the edge, and running custom logic close to users.

Yes. Fastly has a free plan. Usage-based pricing with free monthly allowances on most products. Examples: delivery requests at $0.01 per 10,000, Compute at $0.50 per million requests, object storage at $0.02 per GB; security products are quoted.

Is Fastly open source?

No. Fastly is proprietary (closed-source) software. Open-source alternatives to Fastly include NGINX, SafeLine and CrowdSec.

What are some alternatives to Fastly?

Fastly competes with Cloudflare, Amazon CloudFront and Akamai. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Fastly alternatives.

Fastly: features, pricing and alternatives

About Fastly

Fastly is a commercial edge cloud platform. Its content delivery network caches and serves web content close to users, and the same programmable platform adds security, serverless compute and observability so teams can control behavior at the edge rather than only at their origin servers.

The product areas are Deliver for CDN and real-time experiences, Secure for protecting apps and APIs, Deploy for running code near users, and Observe for visibility from origin to edge. Fastly also sells professional services, a managed CDN deployed inside a customer's own network, managed WAF, bot and DDoS protection, and live event support, and it has introduced controls for AI and agent traffic.

Fastly is a hosted service with a free way to try it, a published pricing page and sales-led plans. The vendor highlights retail and ecommerce, media and entertainment, gaming, financial services and online education, and it suits engineering teams that want programmable control over delivery.

Key features

Programmable CDN for global content delivery
WAF, bot and DDoS protection
Serverless compute at the edge
Observability from origin to edge
Managed CDN deployed inside customer networks
Managed security services

Good fit for

→Delivering streaming and media at scale
→Protecting apps and APIs at the edge
→Running custom logic close to users

Tags: cdn; edge-computing; waf; ddos-protection; serverless; observability; networking

Fastly: questions and answers

What is Fastly used for?: Fastly is an edge cloud platform that combines a programmable CDN with security, serverless compute and observability for delivering and protecting web content. It is a good fit for delivering streaming and media at scale, protecting apps and APIs at the edge, and running custom logic close to users.
Is Fastly free?: Yes. Fastly has a free plan. Usage-based pricing with free monthly allowances on most products. Examples: delivery requests at $0.01 per 10,000, Compute at $0.50 per million requests, object storage at $0.02 per GB; security products are quoted.
Is Fastly open source?: No. Fastly is proprietary (closed-source) software. Open-source alternatives to Fastly include NGINX, SafeLine and CrowdSec.
What are some alternatives to Fastly?: Fastly competes with Cloudflare, Amazon CloudFront and Akamai. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Fastly alternatives.