Fastly vs. Akamai Comparison

Why select Fastly over Akamai?

• Instant performance Fastly's software-defined network and powerful, concentrated POPs cache more at the edge, meaning faster web and app performance. Instant Purge serves real-time content to your visitors, while simultaneously reducing traffic to origin. Websites migrating from Akamai to Fastly enjoy a 17% improvement in Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) - one of Google’s Core Web Vitals.

• Application Security Striking the perfect balance between enterprise-grade security and end-user experience, Fastly’s Next-Gen WAF, API Security, Bot Management, DDoS Protection, and Client-Side Protection provide a multi-layered defense that’s highly performant with instant insights to keep ahead of app and API threats.

• Customization and configuration Built for DevSecOps, Fastly’s API-first architecture satisfies admins and developers alike - CDN and security services effortlessly integrate into existing CI/CD workflows, yielding faster innovation and deployment cycles.

• Real-time visibility Visibility is smarter security. With an unprecedented choice of 30+ logging endpoint integrations, teams can now access granular details at every stage of the request path: from origin to edge, from CDN to WAF. Incorporating Signals offers a powerful way to tag anomalous traffic behavior, helping quickly identify, understand, and respond to potential threats.

• Lower TCO Fastly’s intuitive Control Panel allows users to make their own changes, removing reliance on costly Professional Services. And as the only 3rd-party CDN on both the AWS Marketplace and Google Cloud Marketplace, selecting Fastly simplifies billing and procurement, meaning lower costs and less friction.

• Superior support Setting the customer experience standard, Fastly maintains a 98% Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) score and a market-leading 9.4 rating for ‘Quality of Support’ on G2—well ahead of Akamai’s 8.1. These results reflect Fastly’s unwavering commitment to excellence and customer-centric innovation.

“When Akamai found out we wanted to switch, they offered us a price 10% lower. But we didn’t want to play that game. We wanted a better platform, and we find Fastly superior to Akamai in all aspects.”

David Pedranz

Platform Engineer

How Fastly compares with Akamai

“When we think about the other CDNs, like Cloudflare and Akamai, we feel they’re much more like a bundle of features loosely tied together, whereas Fastly is very stable and scalable, which is a great thing for us to build upon.”

Dr. Felix Gessert

CEO