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Akamai Adaptive Media Delivery (AMD) vs Fastly comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Ranking in CDN
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
WAN Optimization (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (3rd), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (18th)
Akamai Adaptive Media Deliv...
Ranking in CDN
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.2
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fastly
Ranking in CDN
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (20th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 16.4%, down from 21.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai Adaptive Media Delivery (AMD) is 0.7%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fastly is 5.6%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare16.4%
Fastly5.6%
Akamai Adaptive Media Delivery (AMD)0.7%
Other77.3%
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager at bKash Limited
Advanced protection has secured critical web workloads and provides clear traffic visibility
From a security perspective, there remains a security loophole, as some browsers in the market can bypass the Turnstile solution, which requires approximately 40 seconds to do so. From a performance perspective, this is acceptable. We also tried Google reCAPTCHA, and that can also be bypassed. From a security perspective, I would say neither solution is completely secured. Regarding uptime, we have faced a couple of incidents due to Cloudflare in recent years, so I cannot say we receive 100% uptime for our region. We sometimes face challenges, including downtime and other issues. As a result, we are not receiving 100% uptime from Cloudflare's solution. Since most of our customers are in this region, we need alternatives. We need something more competitive than Cloudflare. Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, Cloudflare has three points of presence already, and we cannot find any other solution provider in Bangladesh as an alternative, which presents another challenge. Competitor solutions have more attack signatures, which ensure better security compared to Cloudflare's predefined configurations. Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements. Cloudflare could improve in this area. Additionally, regarding visibility, Cloudflare has static visibility, but they could adopt dynamic graph features for their customers.
Jibin Thomas - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Engineer at HCLtech
Streaming has delivered global live events smoothly and improves viewer engagement and retention
The standout feature of Akamai Adaptive Media Delivery (AMD) for me is its adaptive bitrate streaming, which is seamless and ensures quality for everyone, and also, the global reach and real-time analytics stand out as they give us both scale and insight. For those live events, we leverage adaptive bitrate streaming heavily, as it dynamically adjusts based on user bandwidth, and we also tap into real-time analytics to spot any delivery issues fast. This combination ensures viewers get smooth, high-quality streams. Akamai Adaptive Media Delivery (AMD) integrates smoothly with our existing cloud setup, and it's scalable, helping us maintain reliable media delivery as our audience grows.
Pranay Jain - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior software developer at Simplifyvms
Edge caching has transformed response times and delivers faster candidate data globally
Fastly can be improved in certain areas such as VCL, which is powerful but has a steep learning curve for normal users. A more user-friendly, UI-based configuration could simplify the experience, alongside better templates for common use cases and dashboard improvements, as the current dashboard feels complex for beginners, and pricing can be hard to predict for smaller companies. I chose 8 out of 10 because it has excellent performance and low latency delivery, making it suitable for larger applications, with strong Edge Caching and instant purging capabilities. However, VCL complexity and pricing predictability, especially for smaller companies, along with a user-friendly dashboard are areas impacting my score.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations."
"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."
"Cloudflare improves performance on my websites and is a great partner for cloud infrastructure for anyone who wants to use the security service and other features."
"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage applications and monitor traffic."
"The tool is user-friendly."
"DDoS protection is this product’s most valuable feature."
"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules."
"The last-mile delivery, which is happening, is great."
"We have seen reduced buffering and smoother playback with Akamai Adaptive Media Delivery (AMD), especially during peak events, and uptime is solid while audience engagement improved, as more viewers stick around."
"Fastly provides CDN, WAF, image optimization, and IP restriction."
"Compute@Edge features are valuable to me."
"Fastly combines both the CDN side and the Signal Sciences next-generation WAF, which is closely integrated with the CDN, allowing us to use both products seamlessly."
"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."
"In summary, this solution is easy to manage, quick to deploy, and all of my customers are happy."
"Initially, we faced load time issues, but after deploying Fastly and optimizing our queries, we achieved a response time cut to less than 1 millisecond from an initial 3 to 4 seconds."
"Rate limiting is a good feature that protects from volumetric attacks."
"Its initial setup process is straightforward."
 

Cons

"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."
"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."
"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."
"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."
"It looks like they don't support as many TLDs as other registrars, but since they are very new as a registrar, I expect this may improve soon."
"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."
"However, what I still fail to understand is that why aren't they offering domains themselves."
"I would like to not need a separate server for non-www redirection under the CNAME setup option."
"The logging and transparency in the logs and what they are logging could be improved."
"I would say that even more granular analytics would help Akamai Adaptive Media Delivery (AMD), such as viewer behavior breakdowns, and also easier self-serve configuration could streamline onboarding, but overall, it's already strong."
"Stronger analytics would be helpful, like showing configurations that haven't served a certain amount of traffic in a while. With many properties, things can get lost track of - duplicates or unused configurations not properly decommissioned."
"The product should provide improved bot detection and management."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"Support is not that great."
"What I don't like about Fastly is that they charge a heavy price."
"It is missing a "staging" platform to deploy a test configuration with all of the real settings, which would allow us to properly test before putting it into production."
"We are not getting quick responses from Fastly technical support engineers. Sometimes they depend on their D3 developers."
"It's not easy to start with Fastly if you don't have VCL knowledge, so it appears very complex at the beginning."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."
"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
Information not available
"You need to pay a premium price for the tool."
"Fastly is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"It is an expensive solution."
"I've generally found Fastly to be very competitive in pricing, especially around Compute@Edge."
"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."
"The solution is cheaper than other products in the market."
"The pricing has been very competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
No data available
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise26
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare?
The tool's pricing is moderate. I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expens...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai Adaptive Media Delivery (AMD)?
Pricing was fair but could be clearer upfront, while setup costs were manageable and licensing was straightforward wi...
What needs improvement with Akamai Adaptive Media Delivery (AMD)?
I would say that even more granular analytics would help Akamai Adaptive Media Delivery (AMD), such as viewer behavio...
What is your primary use case for Akamai Adaptive Media Delivery (AMD)?
Our primary use case for Akamai Adaptive Media Delivery (AMD) is streaming video to a global audience, and we deliver...
What needs improvement with Fastly?
I believe that Fastly should provide guidelines for their WAF blocking rules. It should be public what the rules are ...
What is your primary use case for Fastly?
I am using Fastly in the Adobe Commerce Cloud project. In this project, it is working as a reverse proxy for CDN and ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Information Not Available
Twitter, Airbnb, Alaska Airlines, Pinterest, Vimeo, The Guardian, The New York Times, Ticketmaster, The Drupal Association, Opera, about.com, imgur, Etsy, Foursquare, GitHub, New Relic, shopify, Shazam, Firebase
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Adaptive Media Delivery (AMD) vs. Fastly and other solutions. Updated: May 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.