Cloudflare CDN vs Fastly
Cloudflare CDN is cheaper across every workload modelled here.
List prices checked
Rate cards side by side
Only the axes at least one of them bills on. A dash means that provider does not charge for it.
| Billing axis | Cloudflare CDN | Fastly | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | $20.00/mo | — | — |
| Data transfer out | Free | $0.120/GB | — |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes | — |
Source: Cloudflare pricing (May 2026) · Fastly pricing (August 2026). Published list prices only — committed-use discounts, regional variation, and per-request charges are not included. Not yet independently re-checked against the vendor’s page.
Monthly cost for three real workloads
The rate cards applied to identical usage. This is where the winner changes.
| Workload | Cloudflare CDN | Fastly | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Side projectA personal site or small app with modest traffic, a few gigabytes of assets, and one small always-on process. | $0 | $0 | Not comparable |
| Growing SaaSA funded product serving a few thousand daily users, with an image-heavy frontend and two application servers. | $0 | $108 | Cloudflare CDNsaves $108/mo (100%) |
| Media-heavy siteA publisher or video product where delivery dominates the bill and compute is almost an afterthought. | $0 | $1,188 | Cloudflare CDNsaves $1,188/mo (100%) |
Workload definitions are identical on every comparison page, so figures here can be read against any other pair in the same category.
What each one is for
Cloudflare CDN
by Cloudflare
Bandwidth is not metered on any Cloudflare plan, so the CDN bill is a flat plan fee regardless of volume. That makes cost prediction trivial and makes it the default choice for bandwidth-heavy static sites.
Free tier: Unmetered CDN bandwidth on every plan including free
Fastly
by Fastly
A programmable CDN with instant global purge and edge compute. Priced at the top of the market per gigabyte and sold on control rather than cost, with a permanent 100 GB monthly free allowance.
Free tier: 100 GB of bandwidth per month, permanently free
Common questions
- Is Cloudflare CDN or Fastly cheaper in 2026?
- Cloudflare CDN is cheaper in all 2 modelled workloads.
- What is the difference in egress cost between Cloudflare CDN and Fastly?
- Cloudflare CDN does not charge for data transfer out at all, while Fastly charges $0.120 per GB. On a read-heavy workload that difference is the entire comparison.
- Which has the better free tier, Cloudflare CDN or Fastly?
- Both publish one. Cloudflare CDN: Unmetered CDN bandwidth on every plan including free. Fastly: 100 GB of bandwidth per month, permanently free.
- What do these estimates not include?
- Committed-use and reserved discounts, regional price variation, per-request API charges, support plans, and minimum retention periods. All of those move real invoices, sometimes by a lot. These figures compare published list prices for the same workload, which is the comparison the rate cards alone cannot give you.