Cloudflare vs Fastly

Cloudflare and Fastly are both edge platforms, but they target different segments. Cloudflare is a comprehensive security and performance platform accessible to everyone. Fastly is an engineering-focused CDN with best-in-class cache control and purge speed.

Different Strengths

Cloudflare — The All-in-One Platform

Cloudflare bundles CDN, DNS, DDoS protection, WAF, bot management, and edge compute (Workers) into a single platform. Its free tier includes unlimited bandwidth, SSL, and DDoS protection — an unbeatable value proposition. Cloudflare Workers has evolved into a full edge computing platform with KV storage, D1 (SQLite), R2 (S3-compatible storage), and Queues.

Fastly — The Engineering CDN

Fastly focuses on giving engineers maximum control. Its VCL (Varnish Configuration Language) allows programmatic cache configuration. Its 150ms global purge is the fastest in the industry. Compute@Edge uses WebAssembly for edge compute, supporting Rust, Go, and other compiled languages alongside JavaScript.

Cache Purge: The Key Differentiator

Fastly's 150ms global purge is its strongest selling point. For news organizations, e-commerce sites, and any platform publishing rapidly changing content, the ability to instantly update cached content globally is transformative. Cloudflare's purge takes seconds — fast by most standards, but not instant.

Edge Compute Comparison

Cloudflare Workers have a richer ecosystem: KV for key-value storage, D1 for relational queries, R2 for object storage, Durable Objects for stateful edge compute, and Queues for async processing. Fastly's Compute@Edge is newer and has a smaller ecosystem but offers the performance advantages of WebAssembly.

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