Cloudinary vs Fastly Pricing (2026)
How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.
| Cloudinary | Fastly | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $99/mo | Custom |
| Number of plans | 4 | 3 |
| Free plan | ||
| Free trial | — | — |
| Pricing model | usage-based | usage-based |
Free
- Upload widget, API, and search
- Remote fetch, auto-backup, and revision tracking
- Image and video transformations
- Video transcoding and adaptive streaming
- High performance delivery through a CDN
- Support — forums, tickets, and email
- Access to free add-ons
- Access to MCP servers
Plus
Popular- Backup to your own S3 bucket
- Auto-tagging based search
- Access to free and paid add-ons
- Expedited support
- Allowlist/Blocklist asset access
- Role-based multi-user administration
Advanced
- Custom domain (CNAME) support
- Optional HTTPS SSL Certificate
- Authentication Options
Enterprise
- Security and compliance review
- Multi-CDN and enterprise grade infrastructure
- Enterprise SLAs and support
- Designated customer success manager
- Custom contracts and invoicing
- User management (SSO, provisioning API)
Free Tier
- Fast, reliable content delivery network
- TLS
- Image Optimizer
- Domain Research API
- AI Accelerator
- Compute
- Fanout
- Websockets
- DDoS Protection
- Object Storage
- Key Value Store
- Secret Store
Usage-based, volume discounts
- Full Site Delivery
- TLS
- Image Optimizer
- Domain Research API
- AI Accelerator
- Compute
- Fanout
- Websockets
- DDoS Protection
- Object Storage
- Key Value Store
- Secret Store
- Alerts
- Edge Observer
Enterprise solutions
Cloudinary vs Fastly FAQ
- Which one is cheaper?
- One or both use custom pricing, so it depends on your specific needs.
- Can I use either one for free?
- Both offer free plans, so you can try each without paying. Start with whichever fits your workflow better and upgrade when you hit the limits.
- How do they charge?
- Both use a usage-based model, so the comparison is straightforward — it comes down to features and limits at each price point.
- Which one is a better deal?
- Depends on what you need. Fastly: Fastly positions as the premium, developer-first CDN and edge compute platform — they're not trying to win on price against Cloudflare's free tier or commodity CDN players. They're going after engineering-led teams at mid-market and enterprise companies where performance, programmability, and support SLAs matter more than the lowest per-GB rate.
Keep tabs on both.
We'll monitor pricing changes for Cloudinary and Fastly and let you know when something moves.