Fastly vs Imgix
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Fastly and Imgix.
Quick Verdict
3.7/5
Fastly
0 reviews
3.7/5
Imgix
0 reviews
Both Fastly and Imgix are equally rated at 3.7/5. Fastly is a high-performance programmable CDN used by GitHub, Spotify, and the New York Times. Compute@Edge for serverless. Real-time log streaming, advanced VCL configuration, and instant cache purge. CDN and image processing platform that optimizes, transforms, and delivers images globally. For developers and teams needing dynamic image resizing, format conversion, and fast delivery.
 Fastly Programmable CDN used by GitHub, New York Times |  Imgix Real-time image optimization and delivery at scale | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.7 (0 reviews) | 3.7 (0 reviews) |
| Pricing model | freemium | paid |
| Starting price | Free tier available✓ | From $20.83/mo |
| Best for | Engineering-led content, media, e-commerce and API platforms that need programmable caching, instant purge and real-time logs on a global edge network | E-commerce, media, and product teams serving high volumes of images who need dynamic resizing and a mature delivery stack without maintaining image-processing infrastructure |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ✓ | |
| DDoS protection | ✓ | |
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ||
| Free tier | ✓ | |
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | 100+ city-level PoPs across North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia/NZ | — |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tierapi accesseu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenter | api access |
| Visit Fastly → | Visit Imgix → | |
Fastly
Pros
- + Instant Purge with mean global purge under 150 ms and real-time log streaming into your own observability stack
- + Deep programmability: VCL plus Fastly Compute on the same edge network
- + Real free tier: 100 GB bandwidth, 500,000 requests and five TLS domains free every month
- + Large, high-density PoP footprint (100+ cities, 622 Tbps) with strong coverage in Europe and India
- + Unlimited layer 3/4 DDoS mitigation included, HTTP/3 and QUIC, full IPv6 dual-stack support
Cons
- - VCL and cache architecture have a real learning curve — overkill for simple caching needs
- - Regional bandwidth skew: $0.28/GB in Africa, India and South Korea versus $0.12/GB in NA/EU
- - Request pricing table and reviewer-quoted rates disagree; WAF pricing is unpublished
- - Free tier requires a credit card; first Compute deploy starts a limited trial
- - Legacy pre-November-2025 accounts sit on different ($50/month) terms than new sign-ups
Imgix
Pros
- + Own global CDN with 96 points of presence and a published 99.99% uptime figure
- + Fifteen years of image-processing depth — long-tail edge cases are handled well
- + Sources stay in your own storage (S3, GCS, web folders); no asset migration required
- + Clear plan ladder with credit allowances and media/delivery caps spelled out per tier
- + SOC 2 compliant, TLS included, public status page, Enterprise SLAs and SSO
Cons
- - Credit-based metering obscures real per-GB costs and punishes viral traffic twice
- - No free tier — only a 30-day trial; month-to-month costs about 17% more
- - Light on DAM and collaboration features compared with ImageKit and Cloudinary
- - Parallel media and delivery caps force tier jumps when you grow in one dimension
- - URL-parameter adoption creates real switching costs despite portable sources
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