Cloudflare vs Fastly
Nine of fourteen models named Cloudflare first on the direct prompt; zero named Fastly. Both were named by all fourteen models and Cloudflare carries 72 labels and Fastly 61, so the shares are not directly comparable.
Named in seven categories this edition.
Named in four categories this edition.
Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts over all fourteen models, for a mid-market B2B company; rank is within the category; every quote names the model and the prompt it came from. Both figures come from the content delivery networks page.
By framing
CloudflareFirst choices, of fourteen modelsFastly
Across every category in the October 2026 Edition, Cloudflare and Fastly were named in the same answer 157 times, of the 480 answers naming Cloudflare and the 175 naming Fastly. In those answers Fastly took the first choice three times and Cloudflare ninety-eight.
Every model, every framing
| Model | Direct | Paraphrase | Comparative | Budget-constrained | Scale-constrained | Negative |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | | | | | | |
| GPT-5.4 mini | | | | | ||
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | | | | | | |
| Perplexity Sonar | | | | | ||
| Grok 4.20 | | | | | | |
| Mistral Small | | | ||||
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | | | | | | |
| Llama 4 Maverick | | | ||||
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | | | | | | |
| Kimi K2 | | | | | | |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | | | | | | |
| MiniMax M2.5 | | | | | ||
| GPT-6 Luna | | | | | ||
| Muse Glimmer 30B | | | | | |
Cloudflare Fastly first choice named as an alternative argued againstblank: not namedEach cell is one answer, Cloudflare on the left and Fastly on the right.The direct prompt
Cloudflare first, Fastly an alternative
9 of 14 modelsFastly was named in the answer but not as the choice, or not at all.Neither was the first choice, one was named
3 of 14 modelsThe answer put something else first and named one of the two as an alternative.Neither was named
2 of 14 modelsThe answer made no first choice from these two in this category.Bold names in an answer are the products the judge labeled a first choice; a model naming several gives each of them that label. The full answer text for every row is in the record.
By buyer segment
Cloudflare85%#1 of 7Fastly0%#5 of 7Cloudflare68%#1 of 8Fastly4%#5 of 8What the models said about Cloudflare
Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. Four of four in this category shown.
“Major outages (2024‑2025)... When to be cautious - If your application is mission‑critical, consider a multi‑CDN or fail‑over strategy.” GLM 4.7 FlashX · negative prompt · soft negative
“Cloudflare is a strong all-around CDN and security platform for organizations that want acceleration, DNS, DDoS mitigation, WAF, Zero Trust services, and edge computing features in one ecosystem” Claude Haiku 4.5 · comparative prompt · first choice
“Cloudflare: *The "All-in-One" Choice.* Excellent if you want a massive feature set ... Great developer experience, but enterprise pricing negotiations can sometimes feel rigid.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · scale prompt · first choice
“the best default choice is usually Cloudflare because it combines broad CDN performance, strong built-in security, and a relatively accessible business tier” Perplexity Sonar · direct prompt · first choice
What the models said about Fastly
Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. Six of seven in this category shown.
“Avoid enterprise ones (Akamai, Fastly) as they're pricier.” Grok 4.20 · budget prompt · hard negative
“Fastly’s VCL‑based cache logic is powerful but can be brittle; mis‑configuration can lead to cache‑invalidation issues or performance regressions.” GLM 4.7 FlashX · negative prompt · soft negative
“good option for development-heavy teams ... but it is more specialized than Cloudflare for a broad mid-market B2B use case” Perplexity Sonar · direct prompt · soft negative
“Fastly: *The "Developer-First" Choice.* Best-in-class real-time purging ... Ideal if your engineering team wants complete programmatic control.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · scale prompt · first choice
“I'd recommend evaluating Cloudflare, Fastly, Akamai, and CloudFront first” GLM 4.7 FlashX · scale prompt · first choice
“Fastly if your site or app needs very fast purging, high configurability, real-time control, or developer-heavy workflows” GPT-5.4 mini · paraphrase prompt · alternative
Comparisons are drawn for the top eight products in each category, each against each. The output is the models' output; nothing here is a recommendation by the index.