Fastly
Edge cloud platform providing CDN with programmable caching (VCL), edge compute (Compute@Edge via Wasm), WAF, and DDoS protection via REST API.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
TLS 1.2+ enforced at edge. API tokens support service-level and permission-level scoping at creation. WAF provides OWASP rule sets. PCI-DSS compliant infrastructure for payment data flows.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
You need programmable, high-performance edge delivery with instant purging, Compute@Edge logic, and enterprise WAF at global scale.
Avoid When
Your CDN needs are simple and do not require VCL programming, edge compute, or instant cache purging — simpler CDNs cost less.
Use Cases
- • Purge CDN cache programmatically by URL, surrogate key, or service when an agent updates backend content that must be immediately reflected
- • Configure edge caching rules and TTLs via the Fastly Config API as part of a deployment pipeline managed by an agent
- • Deploy and manage Compute@Edge functions (WebAssembly) for edge-side request processing, A/B testing, or bot mitigation
- • Query real-time CDN traffic analytics and cache hit ratios to detect anomalies or confirm content delivery health
- • Manage WAF rules programmatically to respond to emerging threats by adding IP blocklists or adjusting rule thresholds
Not For
- • Simple static site hosting at small scale where a free CDN tier (Cloudflare, GitHub Pages) eliminates the billing complexity
- • Application-layer logic beyond edge compute — backend application servers remain necessary for complex business logic
- • Teams without VCL or Wasm knowledge who need quick CDN setup without learning Fastly's configuration model
Interface
Authentication
API tokens passed as Fastly-Key header. Tokens can be scoped to specific services and permissions (read, write, purge) at creation time. No OAuth2. Tokens are long-lived; rotation is manual.
Pricing
No persistent free tier — trial credit available for new accounts. Pricing is usage-based with significant enterprise discounts at volume. WAF is an add-on with separate pricing.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ All Fastly service configuration changes must go through a version workflow: create version, modify version, validate, activate — agents cannot apply config changes directly to the active version
- ⚠ Instant purge (single URL or surrogate key) and full service purge are different operations with vastly different blast radius — agents must use surrogate key purging to avoid purging unintended content
- ⚠ The real-time analytics API has a 1 request/second rate limit and returns data with up to 30-second delay — agents must not poll faster than this or use it for sub-minute alerting
- ⚠ VCL custom logic errors (syntax errors, runtime panics) cause the entire service to fall back to default behavior silently in some cases — agents deploying VCL changes should always validate before activating
- ⚠ Service cloning copies configuration but not TLS certificate associations — agents automating service setup must handle TLS domain activation separately after cloning
Alternatives
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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-06.