No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Akamai vs Fastly comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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

Akamai
Ranking in CDN
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fastly
Ranking in CDN
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (25th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Akamai is 11.3%, down from 16.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fastly is 5.0%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Akamai11.3%
Fastly5.0%
Other83.7%
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

JV
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.
Pranay Jain - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior software engineer at Simplify vms
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

"Akamai provides low-latency throughput."
"The solution's technical support is very prompt and good."
"Akamai has a very established network of PoPs globally."
"This solution can be used for web , video and media caching and streaming."
"Our primary use case for this solution is data transfer, and we deploy the solution on private cloud."
"With 300 servers deployed worldwide, it's highly scalable and is the best web application firewall on the market."
"The stability and efficiency of Akamai have enhanced our network's performance significantly."
"It's a scalable and reliable solution."
"Support is good; the product works as advertised. We have a Slack connection with them. So we can basically ask for help, live, engage, and ring when they respond. Very quickly."
"The product helps our organization to access sites located in different regions quickly."
"Rate limiting is a good feature that protects from volumetric attacks."
"In summary, this solution is easy to manage, quick to deploy, and all of my customers are happy."
"Its initial setup process is straightforward."
"Fastly uses configuration versioning, where you can deploy a new version in less than one minute."
"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."
"Fastly has positively impacted my organization by helping to obtain better solutions in less time and in a much more traceable way."
 

Cons

"Their support is very slow. If you file a support ticket, it takes a long time before it gets resolved."
"One area for improvement with Akamai could be pricing."
"Local connectivity would be great linked to our own telecom/Cablevision CDN, as we are a key player for Internet access in Argentina for final users of mobile, DSL, cable, and FTTH users."
"Costing-wise and integration with other tools need improvement, especially API security."
"On the commercials and pricing based on the region, they might have to work a bit because sometimes we lose on commercials."
"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."
"Sometimes a little hard to navigate around the user console."
"When we open tickets, we have a delay in response times."
"It's not easy to start with Fastly if you don't have VCL knowledge, so it appears very complex at the beginning."
"Fastly can be improved in certain areas such as VCL, which is powerful but has a steep learning curve for normal users."
"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."
"We are not getting quick responses from Fastly technical support engineers. Sometimes they depend on their D3 developers."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"Another downside of Fastly is that when we wanted to migrate our API domains, it's lacking the WebSocket protocol."
"Support is not that great."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."
"Quite high in price, but equivalent to other enterprise products on the market"
"The solution can be one of the more expensive options, reflecting their established market position."
"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."
"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."
"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 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."
"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The pricing has been very competitive."
"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."
"Fastly is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"The solution is cheaper than other products in the market."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which CDN solutions are best for your needs.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
University
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

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 could make some cases less complex to set up. There could be improvements in ho...
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 where AWS is one of the targets. We are building up websites that we are pointing to...
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.
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 due to the learning curve.
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 developers, since at the beginning it becomes a bit complicated.
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 example of how Fastly has helped improve my customers' access to the application...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai vs. Fastly and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.