Cloudflare Workers vs Fastly Compute
Cloudflare Workers 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 Workers | Fastly Compute | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | $5.00/mo | $50.00/mo | 10× Cloudflare Workers |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes | — |
Source: Cloudflare pricing (May 2026) · Fastly pricing (May 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 Workers | Fastly Compute | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Side projectA personal site or small app with modest traffic, a few gigabytes of assets, and one small always-on process. | $5.00 | $50 | Cloudflare Workerssaves $45/mo (90%) |
| Growing SaaSA funded product serving a few thousand daily users, with an image-heavy frontend and two application servers. | $5.00 | $50 | Cloudflare Workerssaves $45/mo (90%) |
| Media-heavy siteA publisher or video product where delivery dominates the bill and compute is almost an afterthought. | $5.00 | $50 | Cloudflare Workerssaves $45/mo (90%) |
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 Workers
by Cloudflare
V8 isolates rather than containers, which removes cold starts and caps memory at 128 MB. Billed on requests and CPU time actually consumed, not wall-clock duration.
Free tier: 100,000 requests per day, always free
Fastly Compute
by Fastly
WebAssembly at the edge with sub-millisecond startup, aimed at request manipulation and personalisation rather than at general application hosting.
Free tier: Trial credit only
Common questions
- Is Cloudflare Workers or Fastly Compute cheaper in 2026?
- Cloudflare Workers is cheaper in all 3 modelled workloads.
- Which has the better free tier, Cloudflare Workers or Fastly Compute?
- Both publish one. Cloudflare Workers: 100,000 requests per day, always free. Fastly Compute: Trial credit only.
- 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.