Fastly vs Courier
Edge cloud platform — CDN + compute + security + observability
vs. Notification API with multi-channel orchestration, templates, and preferences
Pricing tiers
Fastly
Free Trial
Free allowances: 100 GB bandwidth, 1M CDN requests, 10M Edge Compute requests, 100M vCPU-ms, 500K DDoS requests.
Free
Pay-as-you-go
Usage-based rates with volume discounts. No minimum commitment.
$0 base (usage-based)
Basic Package
$1,500/month. 100M requests. Standard support.
$1500/mo
Starter Package
$6,000/month. 500M requests. Gold support.
$6000/mo
Advantage
Custom. 2B requests. Gold support.
Custom
Ultimate
Custom. 5B+ requests. Enterprise support.
Custom
Courier
Free
Up to 10,000 notifications/month. All channels. Community support.
Free
Business
From $99/mo. Higher volumes, advanced routing, preference center, branding removal.
$99/mo
Enterprise
Custom. SOC 2, SSO, dedicated support, volume discounts, SLA.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing free on Fastly vs free on Courier.
| Metric | Fastly | Courier |
|---|---|---|
| notifications monthly | — | 10000 notifications/mo |
Features
Fastly · 16 features
- API Security — Schema validation + rate limiting.
- Bot Management — Behavioral bot detection + mitigation.
- CDN — Global Varnish-based CDN with VCL customization.
- Compute@Edge — Wasm-based serverless at 200+ POPs. Rust, JS, Go.
- DDoS Protection — Included on all plans.
- Fanout (WebSockets) — Persistent connection fan-out at edge.
- Image Optimization — On-the-fly resize/format/quality.
- Instant Purge — <150ms global cache invalidation.
- KV Store (Config) — Edge key-value store for config.
- Live Streaming — HLS + DASH live video delivery.
- Log Streaming — Real-time logs to S3, Datadog, Splunk, Azure, GCS, Kafka.
- Managed TLS — Automated cert issuance + renewal.
- Next-Gen WAF — Signal Sciences acquired — runtime app protection.
- Real-Time Analytics — Sub-second log streaming + metrics.
- Secret Store — Encrypted secrets at edge.
- Shield POP — Origin shield to reduce origin load.
Courier · 13 features
- Chat — Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Mattermost.
- Email — SendGrid, Postmark, Mailgun, AWS SES, Resend, SMTP.
- Inbox (In-App) — React/JS drop-in in-app inbox component.
- Lists — Segment recipients for bulk notification sends.
- Logs + Analytics — Per-message delivery timeline + engagement.
- Multi-channel Routing — Provider failover + preferred channel per user.
- Notification Designer — Visual editor for templates across channels.
- Preferences — Per-user notification preferences hub.
- Push — APNs, FCM, Expo, OneSignal.
- Send API — POST /send with template + recipients + data.
- SMS — Twilio, MessageBird, Vonage, Plivo, Telnyx.
- Templates + Versioning — Template brands, variants, localization, version history.
- Webhooks — Delivery + engagement event webhooks.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Fastly | Courier |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | Fastly CLI | Courier CLI |
| SDK | compute-go-starter, compute-js-starter, compute-rust-starter | courier-go, courier-java, @trycourier/courier, trycourier (Python), @trycourier/react-inbox, trycourier (Ruby) |
| REST | Fastly API | Courier REST API |
| OTHER | Compute@Edge (Wasm), VCL (Varnish) | Courier Studio, Outbound Webhooks |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Some links to Fastly and Courier may be affiliate links — Staxly may earn a commission if you sign up through them, at no extra cost to you. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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