Fastly
Edge cloud platform with instant purging and WebAssembly compute at the edge.
why this verdict
Downgrade — pay for the workflow, not the AI
Cloudflare covers the headline feature free, so the $50/mo is now paying for the workflow around it.
- A named launch, not a vibe named, unlinked
- Cloudflare bundling CDN, edge compute and AI inference at prices Fastly cannot match. OpenAI, June 3, 2025 — no announcement link recorded yet.
- How much of the job it covers headline only editorial call
- The headline feature, but not the workflow, data or integrations around it.
- Is there a free way to do it? yes
- 1 of 3 listed replacements have a usable free tier: Cloudflare.
- What the call is worth $600/yr
- $50/mo at the entry paid tier — $600 a year per seat.
- Threatened by
- OpenAI
- Since
- June 3, 2025
- List price
- $50/mo
- Per year
- $600
The backstory
Fastly built the CDN engineers respected, with real-time config purging and edge compute running WebAssembly in microseconds. Its problem is a competitor that gives away most of a comparable product: Cloudflare's free tier, Workers and bundled AI inference reset customer expectations of what a CDN should cost. Fastly keeps media and commerce customers who need its performance ceiling and support, but usage-based revenue concentrated in a few large accounts is a fragile shape.
Escape hatches
switching could free up $600/yrLarger network with a free tier and bundled compute
cloudflare.com open_in_newVery cheap CDN with a good developer experience
bunny.net open_in_new
Native choice if the origin is already on AWS
aws.amazon.com open_in_new1 of 3 replacements have a usable free tier.