Cloudflare vs Fastly
Cloudflare is the world's most popular CDN with a generous free tier and edge computing platform. Fastly is a developer-focused CDN used by high-traffic sites like GitHub and Stripe, known for real-time purging and edge logic.
🎓 Why Students Should Care
Cloudflare's free plan includes unlimited CDN bandwidth, DDoS protection, SSL, and DNS. Open source projects get the Pro plan free. Fastly has a developer trial but no permanent free tier.
| Feature | Cloudflare | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| Free Tier | Yes — unlimited CDN bandwidth | Trial only — no permanent free tier |
| Student/OSS Deal | Pro free for open source projects | No student/OSS program |
| Edge Functions | Workers (100K req/day free) | Compute@Edge (paid) |
| DDoS Protection | Included on all plans | Advanced protection (paid add-on) |
| Best For | All projects — free and feature-rich | Enterprise, high-performance apps |
Our Verdict for Students
Cloudflare wins for students and startups — the free tier covers most use cases and the Pro plan is free for open source. Fastly is for enterprise-scale performance at high traffic.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is Cloudflare or Fastly better for students?
Cloudflare wins for students and startups — the free tier covers most use cases and the Pro plan is free for open source. Fastly is for enterprise-scale performance at high traffic.
Can students get Cloudflare for free?
Cloudflare's free plan includes unlimited CDN bandwidth, DDoS protection, SSL, and DNS. Open source projects get the Pro plan free. Fastly has a developer trial but no permanent free tier.