DevVersus

Fastly vs Akamai(2026)

Fastly is better for teams that need excellent performance. Akamai is the stronger choice if most reliable cdn for enterprise. Fastly is paid (from $0.12/GB) and Akamai is paid (from Custom enterprise pricing).

Full feature breakdown, pricing details, and pros & cons below.

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Fastly logo

Fastly

paid

Fastly is an edge cloud platform with CDN, streaming delivery, and compute@edge capabilities used by Shopify and GitHub.

Starting at $0.12/GB

Visit Fastly
Akamai logo

Akamai

paid

Akamai is the world's largest and most reliable CDN and cloud security platform, serving enterprise customers globally.

Starting at Custom enterprise pricing

Visit Akamai

How Do Fastly and Akamai Compare on Features?

FeatureFastlyAkamai
Pricing modelpaidpaid
Starting price$0.12/GBCustom enterprise pricing
CDN
Compute@Edge (WebAssembly)
Image optimization
Streaming
Security (WAF)
Real-time analytics
Largest edge network (350,000+ servers)
DDoS protection
Web application firewall
Media delivery
API security
Bot mitigation

Fastly Pros and Cons vs Akamai

F

Fastly

+Excellent performance
+Compute@Edge is powerful
+Real-time config changes
+Used by major companies
No real free tier
Complex VCL configuration
Expensive compared to Cloudflare
A

Akamai

+Most reliable CDN for enterprise
+Largest PoP network
+Best DDoS protection
+Enterprise SLA
Very expensive
Complex setup
Not for small teams
Contract-based pricing

Should You Use Fastly or Akamai?

Choose Fastly if…

  • Excellent performance
  • Compute@Edge is powerful
  • Real-time config changes

Choose Akamai if…

  • Most reliable CDN for enterprise
  • Largest PoP network
  • Best DDoS protection

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