What is Fastly?
Fastly is a cloud edge platform founded in March 2011 and headquartered in San Francisco, California. Its services include a CDN for caching and delivery, Compute (a WebAssembly-based edge runtime), and a security stack covering WAF, bot management, API security and DDoS protection. Fastly's own pricing page lists a Free tier, usage-based Growth pricing, and custom Enterprise packages alongside flat-rate Network Services, Compute, Observability and Security packages.
Read the full overview
Sources checked 27 September 2026: Fastly, Fastly documentation, Fastly pricing.
Key capabilities
- CDN and caching: global content delivery with configurable cache rules.
- Compute: WebAssembly-based edge compute for application logic close to users.
- Security: WAF, bot management, API security and DDoS protection as separately configurable services.
- Observability: real-time logging and metrics for traffic through the platform.
Test cache hit ratios, origin shielding and WAF false-positive rates on representative traffic before cutover. Compare the free tier and usage-based pricing against flat-rate packages for your expected volume, and confirm which security features require a separate package from the base CDN.
Fastly is relevant when a team needs a CDN with programmable edge logic (via Compute or VCL) alongside application-layer security controls, rather than DNS management alone. Compare the free tier and usage-based Growth pricing against flat-rate packages, which start around $1,500/month for Network Services, depending on actual traffic and rule complexity.
Fastly's edge platform can combine delivery and security, but the benefit depends on correctly configured caching and security rules for your specific traffic. Pricing and scope are drawn from Fastly's own pricing page, checked 27 September 2026.
Technical details
- Access
- See vendor
- Source model
- Other license
- Founded
- 2011
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, California, USA
- Pricing model
- Freemium
- API
- Not specified
- Website
- www.fastly.com ↗
Official resources
What to verify for your environment
Start from the users, systems and operating responsibilities the tool needs to support.
- Confirm current features, licensing and support terms with the publisher.
- Validate deployment, data location, access control, backup and recovery requirements.
- Test integrations, export paths and a representative operational workflow before committing.
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