Fastly vs Akamai: A CDN/Compute Competitive Comparison
Fastly is quantifiably better than other platforms. Get real-time content control, boost performance, and develop modern applications - all faster at the edge and all on our global network. Learn how Fastly stacks up against Akamai below.
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Why move to Fastly?
See the methodology behind how we got these numbers.
Faster time to first byte (TTFB) than using Akamai CDN*
Faster global key-value distribution than Akamai**
Architecture: Fastly is differentiated from legacy CDNs by being built for the modern internet. We have powerful POPs on one network to cache more and deliver faster.
Performance: A better network accelerates your web and app performance and delivers true real-time features. Deliver faster, cache more, and purge instantly with Instant Purge™ (150ms Mean Purge Time) by doing more from the edge and less from your origin.
Control and Configurability: Full configurability gives you control over your content, caching, and roll-backs. Fastly is DevOps and CI/CD friendly, and always API-first.
Marketplace: Fastly is the only external CDN on the AWS Marketplace and Google Cloud Marketplace, providing simplified billing and procurement.
Real-Time Visibility: Our real-time log streaming, to a provider of choice, provides instant visibility into traffic, performance, potential threats, and troubleshooting. Eliminate black boxes and access granular visibility at every stage of the request path, from origin to edge.
Superior Support: Fastly delivers superior customer support with a CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) score of 95%, and a G2 ‘Quality of Support’ rating of 9.4, compared to Akamai’s 8.1 (as of January 2024) .
Secure: Fastly minimizes the attack surface area present in most multi-tenant serverless platforms through our isolation technology, which creates/destroys a sandbox in microseconds for each individual request our platform processes–unlike with V8 instances.
Accessing distributed data instantaneously - Read local, distribute key-value pairs globally in 320 ms with the Fastly KV Store.
How Fastly stacks up to other providers
Fastly Rating | Akamai Rating | |
|---|---|---|
Architecture | ||
Unified infrastructure | ||
Single network | ||
Performance | ||
Control and Configurability | ||
Configuration speed | ||
Programmable API-first | ||
Serverless development | ||
Runtime execution | ||
Developer experience | ||
Real-Time Visibility | ||
We offer industry leading value
Move to a better network. We are committed to making the switch as seamless as possible.
Hear what our customers have to say
“With Fastly, we can configure and tweak our platform continuously. We continue to see performance improvements and saw an 18% performance improvement in time to first byte (TTFB), which is impressive.HTTP/3 combined with Brotli, a new compression system, gives our customers better performance and a much faster experience.”
David Annez, Head of Engineering, Loveholidays
“Because I'm an engineer, if I have questions they are usually pretty technical. It's a joy to work with support people that get the technical questions I have. And anytime I open a support ticket with Fastly, I get a response that same day from the right person with the technical proficiency to help me figure out my problem.”
Brian Benns, Senior Site Reliability Engineer, GIPHY
“We chose Fastly because of its flexibility. Fastly opens up the entire configuration to us; we can do whatever we want and then push it out. You can’t do that with any other CDN. Most CDNs have a complex UI that you have to mess with, and you have to access an engineer to make config changes. Fastly saves us time and energy.”
Alan Schaaf, Founder and CEO of Imgur
Hear what analysts have to say
Fastly Named a Leader by Independent Research Firm
See why independent experts gave our vision, innovation, and roadmap a 5/5 score.
The Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) Of Fastly Network Services
Fastly delivered 189% ROI over 3 years. Learn about the cost savings and business benefits of Fastly CDN.
*Blog: Fastly is faster at time to first byte. It makes a difference.
Related resources
Traditional CDNs may be stifling your online experience, download the Guide to Modern CDN ebook to understand the importance of control and how a modern CDN puts you back in charge.
Meet a more powerful global network.
Our network is all about greater efficiency. With our strategically placed points of presence (POPs), you can scale on-demand and deliver seamlessly during major events and traffic spikes. Get the peace of mind that comes with truly reliable performance — wherever users may be browsing, watching, shopping, or doing business.
377 Tbps
Edge network capacity1
150 ms
Mean purge time with Instant Purge™
>1.8 trillion
Daily requests served4
~90% of customers
Run Next-Gen WAF in blocking mode3
As of March 31, 2024
As of December 31, 2019
As of March 31, 2021
As of July 31, 2023
Support plans
Fastly offers several support plans to meet your needs: standard, gold and enterprise.
Standard
Free of charge and available as soon as you sign up with Fastly.
Gold
Proactive alerts for high-impact events, expedited 24/7 incident response times, and a 100% uptime Service Level Agreement (SLA) guarantee.
Enterprise
Gives you the added benefits of emergency escalation for support cases and 24/7 responses for inquiries (not just incidents).