Fastly Pricing Explained: Regional Rates, Requests, and Commitments

A CDN estimate can look harmless until traffic shifts into a more expensive region, a video player multiplies request volume, or the workload does not qualify for the package you modeled. Fastly pricing is transparent enough to estimate, but the headline bandwidth rate is only one input.

Fastly currently offers a free tier, usage-based Full Site Delivery, fixed-price packages, and custom enterprise terms. A usage-based CDN bill combines bandwidth charged by billing region and volume tier with request fees; TLS, image optimization, compute, security, support upgrades, and other products may add separate charges.

This guide uses Fastly's public US pricing and documentation as checked on August 8, 2026. Treat every calculation as a planning estimate, not a quote: traffic routing, contract terms, product entitlements, and future rate changes can alter the invoice.

Full disclosure on where this is written from: we run ZeroBuffer, a CDN that charges one flat $0.0049/GB in every region. That is the bias, and it is also the comparison — the sections below model Fastly's pricing on its own terms first, then show what the same traffic costs without regional tiers.

Fastly pricing at a glance

The fastest way to understand the current buying model is to separate four paths that are often mixed together in older comparisons.

These figures come from Fastly's current pricing page. The page says customers can start free, pay according to usage with built-in volume discounts, or request a tailored enterprise quote.

One stale detail deserves immediate correction. Articles that say every Fastly account has a $50 monthly minimum are describing an older commercial model. Fastly's legacy pricing page limits that $50 monthly fee plus usage charges to customers who opened paid online accounts before November 4, 2025; new buyers should model the current free and usage tiers instead.

How Fastly pricing changes by region

Fastly bills Full Site Delivery bandwidth per GB, per region, per month. The public table lists the following rates:

The difference is material. At the first paid tier, a GB delivered from India, Africa, or South Korea has a public list rate 2.33 times the North America or Europe rate. A forecast built from total global transfer therefore misses the information that matters most: where Fastly records delivery.

Start with a region matrix, not a single TB figure. Export at least 30 days of actual delivery by country or edge region, then create a separate row for North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, India, Africa, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South America, and South Korea. Apply the relevant band to each region rather than assuming that global volume unlocks one universal rate.

Routing can make this less deterministic than a geography spreadsheet suggests. Fastly's documentation for using anycast with apex domains says global anycast prioritizes the nearest network POP without regard to billing region. Limited-availability Maximum Billing Zone options can constrain routing toward groups of lower-cost regions, but Fastly also says availability takes priority and traffic can arrive in a higher billing zone without an invoice credit in specified circumstances.

That does not make the rate card unusable. It means a serious forecast needs a range:

• Expected case: the last 30–90 days of traffic by billing region.
• Growth case: regional mix held constant while total transfer rises.
• Shift case: more audience share moves into premium regions.
• Failure case: routing or origin failover changes where traffic is served.

If India, Africa, or South Korea is strategically important, put the permitted region mix and any routing controls in writing before comparing a package with usage pricing.

Fastly CDN pricing includes request charges

Bandwidth is usually the largest line for large objects, but request fees matter when payloads are small or segmented. Fastly's current Full Site Delivery schedule includes 1 million requests, then charges $0.01 per 10,000 requests from 1 million through 100 million and $0.0095 per 10,000 for the next 100 million.

The practical unit is requests per delivered GB:

• A 5 MB software object requires roughly 200 successful object requests to deliver 1 GB.
• A page composed of many small assets can generate thousands of requests per delivered GB.
• HLS or DASH playback can request a manifest plus hundreds of short media segments during one session.
• APIs can produce enormous request volume with little bandwidth.

Do not estimate requests from page views alone. Pull request counts from existing CDN logs, separate cache hits from origin traffic for operational analysis, and retain peak-hour data. The public delivery meter is based on requests served through the platform, while your origin provider may separately bill cache misses, storage reads, or egress.

A usable monthly formula is:

estimated CDN cost = regional bandwidth charges + delivery request charges + product add-ons + support or commitment charges

Then add origin and observability costs outside Fastly to get total delivery cost. That distinction prevents a favorable CDN rate from hiding expensive origin egress or log ingestion.

Fastly pricing examples for real workloads

The following examples use decimal units, so 5 TB equals 5,000 GB. They apply the public Full Site Delivery allowance and first paid tier to traffic in one region, plus the published request allowance. They exclude taxes, contracts, other Fastly products, origin charges, and any negotiated discount.

The last two rows describe the same transfer and request volume, yet the regional bandwidth rate creates a $784 monthly difference. That is why “Fastly costs $0.12 per GB” is not a complete answer.

Tier boundaries matter too. Once paid traffic moves into the next published 10 TB band, North America and Europe fall to $0.08/GB, while India, Africa, and South Korea fall to $0.24/GB. For traffic beyond the public bands, Fastly directs buyers to contact the company for high-volume pricing.

For a mixed workload, calculate each region independently. A simple worksheet should contain these columns:

1. Billing region.
2. Monthly delivered GB.
3. Applicable free allowance.
4. GB in each paid volume band.
5. Rate for each band.
6. Monthly requests and applicable request band.
7. Add-ons or contract allocation.
8. Expected, peak, and failover totals.

Fastly provides billing views rather than forcing teams to reconcile only at month end. Its billing documentation describes usage metrics broken down by product and region, monthly invoice detail, and configurable spend alerts. Compare that month-to-date data with your forecast early enough to catch a region or request assumption before it becomes an invoice surprise.

Packages, commitments, and streaming exclusions

Usage pricing is not the only Fastly CDN price. The public Network Services packages bundle entitlements into a fixed monthly price:

A package can make budgeting easier when its bundled services match the workload. It can also be poor value when you pay for image optimization, WebSockets, domains, or support capacity you do not need. Normalize the package to the same units as usage pricing, but do not divide the package price by bandwidth alone—the bundle is selling a collection of entitlements.

The eligibility note is especially important. Fastly says Network Services packages are intended for web pages, including HTML, and web APIs; they are not intended for streaming services. It also caps traffic from the Africa, India, and South Korea billing regions at 10% for those packages.

Video teams should therefore request streaming-specific commercial terms rather than assuming the Basic or Starter package covers HLS, DASH, or large-scale VOD. The CDN for video guide explains the delivery metrics to include beside price, while the Akamai versus Fastly comparison covers the broader platform decision.

For any negotiated offer, ask for an ordering document that answers:

• What minimum spend or committed volume applies each month and over the full term?
• Which regions, products, domains, and request types count toward the commitment?
• Are unused commitments lost, pooled, or carried forward?
• What rate applies above the commitment and during a traffic spike?
• Can traffic shift between billing regions without repricing?
• Are streaming, shielding, midgress, logs, TLS, WAF, DDoS, and support included?
• What renewal uplift, termination terms, and professional services apply?

Costs beyond bandwidth and requests

The public pricing page makes several additional meters visible. Managed TLS from a nonprofit CA or customer-provided certificates includes five domains, then lists $20 per additional domain per month. Commercial-CA managed TLS is listed at $275 per domain, while mutual TLS includes two domains and lists a $500 flat charge beyond that allowance.

Image Optimizer has its own request ladder after 100,000 free image requests. Compute has separate request and vCPU-millisecond allowances and rates. DDoS Protection is metered by requests after its allowance, while products such as Next-Gen WAF, Bot Management, API Security, and several observability features direct buyers to sales.

Support is another commercial dimension. Fastly's support plan comparison says Standard support is included for all users; Gold adds prioritized, hour-based responses and 24/7 incident response, while Enterprise adds phone support, a private Slack channel, compliance services, and faster severity-one response targets. A lower network estimate is not a saving if the required incident-response model sits in a higher plan that was omitted from the quote.

Finally, include the costs Fastly does not control:

• Origin egress and storage operations on cache misses.
• Log storage, analytics, and SIEM ingestion.
• Engineering time for VCL, configuration, testing, and migration.
• Multi-CDN steering and duplicated security controls.
• Tax, currency conversion, and procurement overhead.

How to compare Fastly pricing with a flat global rate

The fair comparison is a matched workload, not one vendor's best region against another vendor's entire bill. Keep delivered GB, geography, requests, TLS, support, security, cache behavior, and origin offload constant, then compare expected and peak months.

There is a shorter path to a predictable number. ZeroBuffer delivers at a flat $0.0049/GB across every region, with no contract, no minimum, and no regional surcharge — the estimate is your monthly gigabytes times one rate, and it stays correct when your audience mix shifts.

That is the structural difference, not just a cheaper cell: a regional rate card means your bill changes when your growth changes shape, and every calculation above has to be redone. Validate coverage, cache-hit ratio, latency, and support the same way you would for Fastly — but do it knowing the price will not move underneath you.

Use a decision table that finance and engineering can both audit:

Do not select a CDN from this spreadsheet alone. Run a canary with the same objects, cache keys, TLS, origin, logging, and audience regions. Price is only comparable after the configurations deliver equivalent reliability and performance.

How to evaluate a Fastly quote

A procurement-ready Fastly evaluation can be done in five steps.

1. Build a traffic baseline

Use at least one normal month and one peak event. Record delivered GB and requests by geography, object type, service, cache status, and hour. If the product is new, construct low, expected, and high scenarios from user sessions and payload sizes.

2. Price the public usage path

Apply the free allowance, regional bandwidth bands, and request bands exactly once in the worksheet. Keep every assumption visible. This creates a baseline against which a package or custom quote can be tested.

3. Map every required product

List delivery, TLS, image optimization, Compute, WAF, DDoS, bot controls, logs, and support. Mark each as included, separately metered, sales-quoted, or unnecessary. “Fastly” is a platform; the product mix determines the bill.

4. Normalize the commercial offer

Convert commitments and packages into expected, peak, and downside cost. Include unused commitment, overage, premium-region exposure, implementation services, renewal uplift, and termination liability. Compare the full contract term, not just month one.

5. Measure before signing

Canary real traffic and watch regional usage, request count, cache-hit ratio, origin egress, errors, and user performance. Reconcile Fastly's month-to-date billing view with your own telemetry. If the numbers differ, resolve the definition before expanding traffic.

For a wider shortlist after the pricing model is complete, use the top CDN providers guide. It separates delivery networks from managed video platforms and helps avoid paying for a category that does not match the workload.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Fastly cost per GB?

Fastly's current Full Site Delivery list rates after the free allowance start at $0.12/GB in North America and Europe, $0.16 in Mexico, $0.19 in Asia, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and South America, and $0.28 in Africa, India, and South Korea. The next published 10 TB band is cheaper, and higher-volume or enterprise pricing requires a quote.

Does Fastly have a free tier?

Yes. The current pricing page lists 100 GB of Full Site Delivery bandwidth and 1 million delivery requests free, with separate free allowances for some other products. Confirm which allowances apply to your account and product mix before moving production traffic.

Does Fastly charge per request?

Yes. Full Site Delivery includes 1 million requests, then lists $0.01 per 10,000 requests through 100 million and $0.0095 per 10,000 for the next 100 million. Products such as Image Optimizer, Compute, and DDoS Protection have their own request meters.

Is there a $50 Fastly monthly minimum?

Only for the legacy online paid-account model described by Fastly. The legacy page says the $50 monthly fee plus usage applies to customers who signed up for paid online accounts before November 4, 2025; current new-account pricing presents a free tier and usage-based rates.

Can Fastly's Network Services packages be used for video streaming?

Fastly says those packages are intended for web pages and web APIs and are not intended for streaming services. A streaming buyer should request workload-specific terms and verify bandwidth, request, shielding, support, and regional conditions in the quote.

Model it, then ask what the modelling is costing you

Fastly pricing is modelable once you stop treating it as one per-GB number. Build the estimate from regional bandwidth tiers and requests, add the exact products and support you need, then test usage pricing against packages or negotiated commitments under normal, peak, and regional-shift scenarios.

Export a month of traffic by region and request type, reproduce the three example calculations with your numbers, and ask Fastly to correct or confirm every assumption in writing.

Then ask a blunter question: how much engineering time goes into forecasting a bill that a flat rate would make trivial? Run your same monthly volume through ZeroBuffer's pricing page — $0.0049/GB everywhere, $0.0035/GB above 750 TB, encoding included, free to start with no card. If the number is materially lower, the modelling exercise was the product you were paying for.