Our Load Balancer is built on the Fastly edge cloud platform and lets you define content-aware routing decisions while ensuring instant convergence & failover.
A load balancer distributes incoming traffic across multiple backend servers to optimize performance, availability, and reliability. By intelligently routing requests, load balancers prevent any single server from becoming overloaded and help ensure consistent application delivery at scale.
How does server load balancing improve application performance?
Server load balancing improves performance by: - Distributing traffic across healthy origins - Reducing latency through intelligent request routing - Preventing bottlenecks during traffic spikes - Increasing fault tolerance and uptime
Fastly performs load balancing at the edge, allowing traffic decisions to be made closer to users, before requests reach origin infrastructure.
What is a global load balancer?
A global load balancer routes traffic across geographically distributed data centers or regions. It uses health checks, latency signals, and availability data to direct users to the optimal origin, improving resilience and performance for globally distributed applications.
Fastly’s global load balancing runs on its edge network, enabling real-time, worldwide traffic steering without centralized bottlenecks.
What is a Layer 7 load balancer?
A Layer 7 load balancer operates at the application layer (HTTP/HTTPS) and makes routing decisions based on request attributes such as: - URLs and paths - Headers and cookies - HTTP methods - Application logic
Layer 7 load balancing provides finer control than Layer 4 approaches and is ideal for modern, API-driven and microservices-based architectures.
How does Layer 7 load balancing work at the edge?
With Layer 7 load balancing at the edge, Fastly evaluates requests in real time as they enter the network. Traffic can be routed dynamically based on application context, backend health, or custom logic—without adding latency or requiring origin changes.
How does Fastly’s load balancing differ from traditional load balancers?
Traditional load balancers are often centralized or region-bound, which can introduce latency and single points of failure. Fastly’s load balancing is: - Edge-native and globally distributed - Fully programmable via VCL and APIs - Integrated with real-time health checks - Designed for instant traffic failover
This enables faster, more resilient server load balancing at internet scale.
Can Fastly route traffic based on backend health?
Yes. Fastly continuously monitors backend health and automatically routes traffic away from unhealthy origins. This ensures high availability and minimizes user impact during outages or degraded performance.
Does Fastly support multi-cloud and hybrid architectures?
Absolutely. Fastly’s global load balancer can distribute traffic across: - Multiple cloud providers - On-premise data centers - Hybrid and multi-region environments
This flexibility helps organizations avoid vendor lock-in and design for resilience.
How does load balancing integrate with Fastly’s edge platform?
Together, these capabilities allow teams to control, secure, and optimize traffic flows from the edge to the origin.
Is Fastly load balancing suitable for high-traffic applications?
Yes. Fastly’s load balancing is built for high-volume, latency-sensitive workloads, making it well suited for: - Media and streaming platforms - SaaS and API-driven applications - E-commerce and global digital services
Its edge-based architecture enables predictable performance even during sudden traffic spikes.
How quickly can teams deploy Fastly load balancing?
Fastly load balancing can be deployed quickly using configuration-based setup and APIs, with no application code changes required. Teams can begin managing traffic distribution and failover within minutes, while maintaining full control over routing logic.
