Akamai vs Fastly comparison

Akamai and Fastly are both solutions in the CDN category. Akamai is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.3, while Fastly is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.3. Akamai holds a 11.6% mindshare in CDN, compared to Fastly’s 5.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Akamai users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Fastly users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

Akamai and Fastly are two competing products in the content delivery network category. Fastly seems to have the upper hand due to its speed and adaptability, while Akamai remains strong in security.

Features: Akamai is known for its extensive security solutions, a broad network presence with numerous PoPs globally, and effective threat intelligence platforms. Its vertical scaling and integration capabilities are also highly valued. Fastly offers a powerful VCL language for cache management, a seamless integration of Signal Sciences WAF, and real-time configuration capabilities. Fastly's strong CDN performance is complemented by Compute@Edge features.

Room for Improvement: Akamai could enhance its deployment flexibility and further optimize its real-time configuration capabilities. Additionally, simplifying its complex setup process would benefit users. Fastly could improve its zero-trust feature integration. Enhancing traditional support services and offering more comprehensive security features would provide additional value.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Akamai offers a thorough setup process with strong support suited for customers seeking reliability and guidance. Fastly provides a more agile deployment model, allowing for quicker integration and real-time updates, appealing to businesses requiring swift deployment and flexibility.

Pricing and ROI: Akamai's extensive infrastructure may involve higher setup costs but promises strong returns for companies prioritizing robust security and stability. Fastly presents a cost-effective alternative with its rapid deployment and scalability, offering potential for a higher ROI to organizations focused on efficiency and fast-paced operations.

To learn more, read our detailed Akamai vs. Fastly Report (Updated: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Akamai vs. Fastly

August 2026

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 15.0%, down from 21.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai is 11.6%, down from 16.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fastly is 5.2%, up from 4.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

CDN Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cloudflare	15.0%
Akamai	11.6%
Fastly	5.2%
Other	68.2%

CDN

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal

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.

Read full review

VinuThomas John

Sr. Strategic Accounts Manager at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees

Improved security and faster operations with a seamless integration

They are one of the top solution vendors in the market. Premium though, but they're the best. We've worked closely with digital-native customers, not so much from the media segment. Fintechs, financial organizations, banking segment, manufacturing, these are the ones we have worked with. Not much on media because most of the media houses are already covered by Akamai. 95% of media houses are already covered by Akamai. It gives a seamless view of how your infrastructure is, from an attack perspective, from a threat perspective, how your assets are behaving. It gives a very comprehensive view. It depends on the customer's environment. Wherever the customer wants, but mostly it is on the private cloud or public cloud because it's a cloud-based SaaS solution that Akamai has to offer. Implementation is feasible anywhere. The solution is aimed at Enterprise customers because it is on a premium side. On a scale of 1-10, this solution rates at 9.5.

Read full review

Pranay Jain

Senior software engineer 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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The technical support is good."

"Centralized, full-featured DNS."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."

"The solution is a great fit for customers who want unlimited bandwidth."

"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."

"CloudFlare provides an answer to a variety of issues, so it gives you very high value for your money."

"I didn’t have to pay anything for better website security and reduced server load."

"It's a great product because it's scalable, has great coverage, and is mature with good defenses against DDoS attacks."

More Cloudflare pros

"It's beneficial since it's one of the best solutions in the world for CDN."

"All the policies of the CDNs are very beneficial."

"We can see how much traffic can be downloaded on the portal."

"The worldwide reach of the Akamai CDN is one of the key values of this CDN and the agreements worldwide that they keep running."

"The solution's technical support is very good...The installation phase of Akamai was easy."

"The initial setup is simple, especially for SaaS solutions."

"Akamai provides low-latency throughput."

"Akamai support is excellent because they have great debugging tools, and they are highly competent, with proactive and responsive engineers whenever we have issues, so everything is pretty smooth."

More Akamai pros

"The product helps our organization to access sites located in different regions quickly."

"Fastly provides CDN, WAF, image optimization, and IP restriction."

"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."

"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."

"Fastly has positively impacted my organization by helping to obtain better solutions in less time and in a much more traceable way."

"Fastly uses configuration versioning, where you can deploy a new version in less than one minute."

"In summary, this solution is easy to manage, quick to deploy, and all of my customers are happy."

"Rate limiting is a good feature that protects from volumetric attacks."

More Fastly pros

Cons

"Eventually, things go sideways and require fixes when it would have been easier to prevent the issue initially."

"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."

"It would be beneficial for us if Cloudflare could offer a scrubbing solution. This would involve taking a snapshot of my website and keeping it live during a DDoS attack, ensuring uninterrupted service for our users. DDoS attacks are typically short in duration, and having Cloudflare maintain the site's availability from its secure network would enhance the overall user experience. I would appreciate it if Cloudflare could consider implementing this feature. Many organizations already utilize similar capabilities in their CDN platforms, where a static snapshot of the web page is displayed during DDoS attacks. In terms of features, Cloudflare needs to enhance its resilience and stay more focused on adopting new technologies. For instance, solutions like F5 XC Box, Access Solution, and Distributed Cloud Solution have impressive features, and Cloudflare should strive to match and exceed those capabilities. There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features. Cloudflare should prioritize enhancements in areas such as behavioral DDoS and protection against SQL injection attacks, considering the prevalent trend of public exposure to the internet for business reasons. Overall, Cloudflare needs to invest more in advancing its feature set."

"We experienced some downtime in the fall of 2013, causing us to switch to Incapsula."

"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."

"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."

"However, what I still fail to understand is that why aren't they offering domains themselves."

"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."

More Cloudflare cons

"The user console is quite overloaded, sometimes it's hard to find your way around."

"Other solutions are probably easier to set up, but you have more capability in Akamai."

"Sometimes a little hard to navigate around the user console."

"Akamai should improve its integrations."

"I would like to see improvements in the security aspect. The web application firewall needs to be enhanced and offers more customization options."

"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."

"The solution could offer more integrations."

"The solution can be improved by creating a communication pathway with technical engineers because when we open tickets, we have a delay in response times."

More Akamai cons

"Fastly can be improved in certain areas such as VCL, which is powerful but has a steep learning curve for normal users."

"The product should provide improved bot detection and management."

"Another downside of Fastly is that when we wanted to migrate our API domains, it's lacking the WebSocket protocol."

"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."

"I think Fastly could improve by improving the documentation and having some code examples so that it is easier for developers, since at the beginning it becomes a bit complicated."

"The solution's pricing could be better."

"Support is not that great."

"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."

More Fastly cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

"A free version of the solution is available."

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."

"We are using the free version."

"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."

"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The solution can be one of the more expensive options, reflecting their established market position."

"Quite high in price, but equivalent to other enterprise products on the market"

"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."

"From the resource component, it's very costly, and Akamai's charges are also high. So, any organization with a high-tech budget can definitely afford it, but companies with 10-15% of their revenue as a technical budget probably won't be able to. That's where they have a lot of room for improvement if they want to onboard those early users."

"Price-wise, I find Akamai's pricing model's inclination to be more towards the expensive side of the spectrum, though I can't say that it is a very expensive product."

"It is an expensive product. The licensing costs for the solution are based on the usage. If we need premium support, we need to buy it from Akamai."

"The solution's pricing is based on bandwidth."

"The pricing of Akamai is moderate, in my opinion. My company makes yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to Akamai. There are no additional costs besides the licensing costs for the solution."

More Akamai pricing and cost advice

"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."

"Fastly is less expensive than one of its competitors."

"The pricing has been very competitive."

"It is an expensive solution."

"The solution is cheaper than other products in the market."

"I've generally found Fastly to be very competitive in pricing, especially around Compute@Edge."

"You need to pay a premium price for the tool."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Outsourcing Company

Comms Service Provider

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Outsourcing Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	26

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	14

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	7

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...

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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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare DNS?

The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cloudflare are a bit on the higher side overall.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Akamai?

Other solutions are probably easier to set up, but you have more capability in Akamai. It would be beneficial if they...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Akamai?

We are using many of the solutions from Akamai, with the WAF in front of it and distribution to multiple targets wher...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai?

The pricing is good, with no complaints about costs, which is essential when deciding to have Akamai in your network.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fastly?

In terms of price, I find it good, and as I mentioned, the implementation cost had some difficulty at the beginning d...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Fastly?

I think Fastly could improve by improving the documentation and having some code examples so that it is easier for de...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Fastly?

My primary use case for Fastly is using it as a CDN to speed up my customers' access to the applications. A specific ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 31% of the time

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Wiz vs Cloudflare

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Imperva Application Security Platform vs Akamai

Compared 9% of the time

Uplynk vs Akamai

Compared 5% of the time

Windows Azure CDN vs Akamai

Compared 5% of the time

F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs Akamai

Compared 4% of the time

EdgeNext CDN vs Akamai

Compared 4% of the time

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Imperva Application Security Platform vs Fastly

Compared 10% of the time

Uplynk vs Fastly

Compared 5% of the time

CDN77 vs Fastly

Compared 4% of the time

AWS WAF vs Fastly

Compared 3% of the time

Amazon CloudFront vs Fastly

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

August 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Akamai

August 2026

Download Akamai product report

Buyer's Guide

Fastly

August 2026

Download Fastly product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

Overview

Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.

Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.

What are Cloudflare's key features?

CDN Caching: Enhances website speed through content delivery network caching.
Web Application Firewall: Protects websites from online threats.
DDoS Mitigation: Shields against distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DNS Management: Offers easy-to-use and flexible domain management.
SSL Certificates: Ensures secure connections between users and servers.
Analytics: Provides insights with robust analytics tools.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Enhanced Security: Strengthening web security with DDoS and firewall protection.
Speed Improvement: Faster content delivery with CDN caching.
Operational Simplicity: Simplifies website optimization through a user-friendly interface.
Scalable Solutions: Scales with global reach, lowering latency for improved performance.
Cost Efficiency: Offers layers of valuable functionality with pricing options.

Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.

Cloudflare

Akamai enhances performance and security for web applications with features such as a robust CDN and web application firewall. It supports traffic management and improving content delivery speed through a global data center network.

Akamai, known for its web application firewall and CDN, provides comprehensive solutions catering to enterprises with advanced needs like traffic offloading, logging, security, and scalability. Its global Points of Presence network and threat intelligence capabilities, incorporating AI and machine learning, ensure strong security and traffic management. Users appreciate the ease of integration and management, despite the complexity and navigation challenges of the Akamai console. The potential improvements in API security, caching strategies, and migration processes alongside competitive pricing could broaden its appeal. Akamai primarily focuses on content delivery, video streaming, and caching, supporting sectors such as streaming, gaming, and businesses requiring rapid content delivery and cyber threat protection.

What are Akamai's key features?

Web Application Firewall: Protects against common vulnerabilities and threats.
CDN: Enhances website performance by reducing load times.
Security: Includes DDoS protection and threat intelligence.
Traffic Management: Efficient handling and scaling of web traffic.
Global Presence: Extensive data centers for faster content delivery.
Automatic Updates: Ensures security features are up-to-date.

What benefits do users find with Akamai?

Improved Performance: Faster content delivery enhances user experience.
Enhanced Security: Robust protection against cyber threats.
Scalability: Accommodates growing traffic demands seamlessly.
Integration Ease: Simplifies operational workflows.
Reliability: Ensures consistent uptime and performance quality.

In streaming and gaming industries, Akamai optimizes content delivery and security measures, meeting the demands for rapid, secure, and reliable services. Businesses leverage its CDN and monitoring capabilities to reduce load times and enhance application performance, whilst increasing protection against cyber threats.

Akamai

Fastly is a leading provider of content delivery network services that enhances website performance through efficient caching and real-time architecture capabilities.

Fastly integrates CDN technology with advanced web application firewall for comprehensive security. Its global infrastructure supports performance enhancement, rapid deployment, and rollback capabilities. Utilizing the VCL language allows custom caching solutions. Compute@Edge provides extensive architectural flexibility, aiding in HTML manipulation and script execution. Users benefit from its stability and reliability features for seamless network protection, log management, image optimization, and A/B testing. Challenges include limited support in mainland China, inadequate WebSocket protocol implementation, and complex pricing structures.

What are the key features of Fastly?

CDN Integration: Delivers content quickly across global Points of Presence.
Signal Sciences’ WAF: Manages security threats effectively.
VCL Language: Offers customizable caching solutions.
Compute@Edge: Enables flexible architecture for HTML manipulation.
Image Optimization: Enhances performance with dynamic image delivery.

What benefits should users consider in reviews?

Performance Enhancement: Boosts website speed and response time.
Rapid Deployment: Allows for swift implementation and rollback.
Real-Time Visibility: Provides insights into cached content management.
Security and Stability: Ensures reliability against DDoS attacks and other threats.
Flexibility: Offers diverse network protection and infrastructure capabilities.

Fastly is widely implemented in industries needing robust content delivery and security capabilities. Companies use it as a reverse proxy for media delivery, ensuring availability and optimized performance. Its rapid deployment and rollback features are particularly beneficial in technology sectors requiring agile responses to demand shifts.

Fastly

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Bank of America, Capital One, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, Disney, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Home Depot, HP, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, LinkedIn, McDonald's, Microsoft, Netflix, Nike, Oracle, PayPal, Pinterest, Qualcomm, Rakuten, SAP, Spotify, Tesla, Toyota, Visa, Walmart, WeWork

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

Buyer's Guide

Akamai vs. Fastly

August 2026

Free Report: Akamai vs. Fastly

Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai vs. Fastly and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.

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