Fastly Platform

Fastly vs Akamai: A CDN/Compute Competitive Comparison

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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.

43%

Faster time to first byte (TTFB) than using Akamai CDN*

30x

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 (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

Granular caching

Performance

Real-time communication

Cache purge

Origin shielding/mid-tier caching

Video streaming

Image optimization

Control and Configurability

Flexibility

Configuration speed

DevOps and CI/CD friendly

Programmable API-first

Serverless development

Language support

Runtime execution

Developer experience

Security

Key value stores

Real-Time Visibility

Origin metrics

Log integrations

Log streaming

Live event monitoring

Custom data visualizations

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

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Fastly Named a Leader by Independent Research Firm

See why independent experts gave our vision, innovation, and roadmap a 5/5 score.

Download the report

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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.

Download study


*Blog: Fastly is faster at time to first byte. It makes a difference.

** Based on the 318 ms median global key-value replication of an updated 12,883 Byte value, tested on 1/13/2024, compared to ‘within 10 seconds’ for EdgeKV according to Akamai” or equivalent. Learn more about the Fastly Research Methodology Glossary.

eBook
Guide to the Modern CDN

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.

Web Page
Don’t let your current CDN slow you down
eBook
5 Reasons to rethink your CDN approach
Blog Post
Don’t let your CDN get in the way of your CI/CD

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.

353 Tbps

Edge network capacity1

150 ms

Mean purge time2

>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).

Ready to get started?

Get in touch.