Fastly CDN

Overview

Fastly is a cloud-based CDN and edge computing platform known for real-time log streaming and instant content purging. Founded in 2011 by Matthew Prince (later founded Cloudflare) and others, Fastly focuses on performance and developer experience.

Key Facts

  • Founded: 2011 by Matthew Prince and others
  • Headquarters: San Francisco, California, USA
  • Status: Public company (NASDAQ: FSLY)
  • CEO: Thomas John
  • Data centers: 40+ Points of Presence (PoPs) globally
  • Key differentiator: Real-time log streaming and instant content purging

Core Services

Fastly CDN

  • Instant Purging — Real-time content invalidation (fastest in the industry)
  • Real-time Log Streaming — Push logs to S3, Kafka, Datadog, etc. in real-time
  • HTTP/3 support — QUIC protocol for improved performance
  • Edge dictionary — Store and retrieve data at the edge
  • VCL (Varnish Configuration Language) — Custom edge logic

Fastly Compute@Edge

  • WebAssembly-based serverless compute platform
  • Vroom — Fastly’s VCL runtime for compute
  • Rust and JavaScript support for edge functions
  • Edge dictionary — Key-value store at the edge
  • Streaming — Real-time data processing at the edge

Pricing Model

  • Legacy online pricing — $50/month base + usage-based fees (for pre-Nov 2025 signups)
  • New pricing — Usage-based with custom tiers
  • Compute pricing — Based on memory, CPU time, and requests
  • Enterprise custom — Volume discounts for large deployments

Competitive Position

  • Strengths: Fastest purging, real-time log streaming, developer-friendly VCL, HTTP/3 support
  • Weaknesses: Smaller network than Cloudflare/Akamai, complex pricing, limited free tier
  • Main competitors: Cloudflare, Akamai, Amazon CloudFront
  • Best for: Developers and teams needing real-time cache control and log streaming
  • Cloudflare Cdn | Fastly logs can be visualized in Grafana dashboards

References

Field Value
Founded 2011
HQ San Francisco, CA, USA
Type Commercial (Public: NASDAQ: FSLY)
Data Centers 40+ PoPs globally
Pricing $50/month base + usage (legacy); custom (new)
Open Source No (proprietary CDN platform)