Is Fastly or Google Cloud CDN cheaper in 2026?

It depends on volume — Fastly wins 1 of the 3 modelled workloads and Google Cloud CDN wins 2. The scenario table above shows where the crossover falls.

What is the difference in egress cost between Fastly and Google Cloud CDN?

Google Cloud CDN charges $0.080 per GB against Fastly's $0.120, roughly 1.5× cheaper. Egress usually dominates the bill once traffic is measured in terabytes.

Which has the better free tier, Fastly or Google Cloud CDN?

Fastly does — 100 GB of bandwidth per month, permanently free. Google Cloud CDN bills from the first unit of usage.

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.

Fastly vs Google Cloud CDN

Neither wins outright: Fastly is cheaper for 1 of 3 workloads and Google Cloud CDN for the rest.

List prices checked May 2026

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	Fastly	Google Cloud CDN	Difference
Data transfer out	$0.120/GB	$0.080/GB	1.5× Google Cloud CDN
Free tier	Yes	No	—

Source: Fastly pricing (August 2026) · Google 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	Fastly	Google Cloud CDN	Cheaper
Side projectA personal site or small app with modest traffic, a few gigabytes of assets, and one small always-on process.	$0	$8.00	Fastlysaves $8.00/mo (100%)
Growing SaaSA funded product serving a few thousand daily users, with an image-heavy frontend and two application servers.	$108	$80	Google Cloud CDNsaves $28/mo (26%)
Media-heavy siteA publisher or video product where delivery dominates the bill and compute is almost an afterthought.	$1,188	$800	Google Cloud CDNsaves $388/mo (33%)

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

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

Google Cloud CDN

by Google

Caching in front of Google Cloud load balancers, billed on cache egress plus cache-fill from origin. Only sensible when the origin already runs on Google Cloud.

Common questions

Is Fastly or Google Cloud CDN cheaper in 2026?: It depends on volume — Fastly wins 1 of the 3 modelled workloads and Google Cloud CDN wins 2. The scenario table above shows where the crossover falls.
What is the difference in egress cost between Fastly and Google Cloud CDN?: Google Cloud CDN charges $0.080 per GB against Fastly's $0.120, roughly 1.5× cheaper. Egress usually dominates the bill once traffic is measured in terabytes.
Which has the better free tier, Fastly or Google Cloud CDN?: Fastly does — 100 GB of bandwidth per month, permanently free. Google Cloud CDN bills from the first unit of usage.
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.