Fastly alternative
An alternative to Fastly: Orbit Shield
Orbit Shield: an anycast edge in front of your hostname with rules, cache, automatic certificates and a hidden origin, included with DNS Hosting.
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What Fastly does well
Fastly reports 622 Tbps of connected global capacity, a mean purge time under 150 ms with Instant Purge, and a free tier that covers delivery, edge compute and more with monthly allowances.
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At a glance
| Item | Orbit Shield | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | An anycast edge in front of your hostname: rules, cache, automatic certificates, hidden origin | An edge cloud platform for delivery, compute and security |
| Who runs it | Hosted on the Orbit anycast network; turned on per hostname | Hosted by Fastly |
| Free option | Included with DNS Hosting, free for non-commercial use | Free tier with monthly allowances, including 100 GB of delivery bandwidth and 1 million requests |
Fastly details are from Fastly's own page 1, Fastly's own page 2 as of 2026-09; terms change, so check there for the current ones.
03
Where Orbit fits
For programmable delivery at large scale and fast purges, Fastly is the stronger choice. Shield is for sites that want their edge rules, certificates and DNS in the same console as the rest of their Orbit services, with a free tier for non-commercial use.