Cloudflare Workers vs Fly Machines
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Cloudflare Workers and Fly Machines.
Cloudflare Workers Deploy serverless code globally on Cloudflare's edge network | Fly Machines Fast-starting VMs for containerised apps at the edge | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.6 (437 reviews) | 4.8 (336 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | freemium | freemium |
| Starting price | Free tier available | Free tier available |
| Best for | Teams building latency-sensitive APIs, middleware, and dynamic content serving that need global distribution without provisioning servers. | Developers who want fast-starting containers that scale to zero between requests at the edge |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | 0 vCPU | — |
| RAM | 0 GB | — |
| Storage | 0 GB | — |
| Bandwidth | 0 TB/mo | — |
| SLA uptime | 99.99% | — |
| Data-center count | 300 | — |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ✓ | |
| DDoS protection | ✓ | |
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ||
| Free tier | ✓ | |
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | Global — 300+ cities | — |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tierddos protectionipv6eu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenterapi accessopen source | free tiermanaged optioneu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenter |
| Visit Cloudflare Workers → | Visit Fly Machines → | |
Cloudflare Workers
Pros
- + Execute code in sub-50ms globally across Cloudflare's network
- + Eliminate cold starts with always-hot edge execution
- + Integrate directly with Cloudflare's DDoS protection and caching
- + Support multiple languages including JavaScript, Python, and Rust
- + Scale automatically without managing infrastructure
Cons
- - CPU time limits (10ms free tier) restrict computation-heavy workloads
- - Learning curve for developers unfamiliar with edge computing paradigms
- - Vendor lock-in with proprietary APIs like Durable Objects
Fly Machines
Pros
- + 300ms start time
- + Stop when idle — no idle charges
- + Edge locations globally
Cons
- - Fly.io dependency
- - CLI-focused — less visual management
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