Cloudinary vs Fastly

A detailed comparison to help you choose between Cloudinary and Fastly.

Cloudinary

Cloudinary

Image and video management with built-in CDN and automation

Fastly

Fastly

Programmable CDN used by GitHub, New York Times

Overview
Rating4.9 (190 reviews)4.3 (18 reviews)
Pricing modelfreemiumfreemium
Starting priceFree tier availableFree tier available
Best forWeb and mobile developers needing optimized media delivery without building custom pipelines.Enterprises with complex CDN requirements needing instant cache purge and edge computing capabilities
Tags
Tags
free tierapi access
free tierapi accesseu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenter
Visit Cloudinary →Visit Fastly →

Cloudinary

Pros

  • + Automate image optimization and responsive delivery without manual processing
  • + Transform images on-demand via URL parameters without backend processing
  • + Handle video encoding, streaming, and adaptive bitrate automatically
  • + Reduce bandwidth costs through intelligent compression and formatting

Cons

  • - Pricing scales with usage; high-volume media can become expensive
  • - Learning curve for transformation API; URL-based approach differs from traditional image processing
View full Cloudinaryreview →

Fastly

Pros

  • + Instant global cache purge
  • + Compute@Edge serverless integration
  • + Advanced VCL configuration

Cons

  • - Complex for simple use cases
  • - Enterprise pricing model
View full Fastlyreview →

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