Fastly vs Shopify
Edge cloud platform — CDN + compute + security + observability
vs. Dominant SaaS commerce platform — Online Store + Hydrogen headless
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
Shopify
Starter
$5/mo. Sell via social/chat links. No checkout site. Basic.
$5/mo
Basic
$29/mo ($19 annual). Full store. 2.9% + 30¢ online. 2 staff.
$29/mo
Shopify
$79/mo ($49 annual). 2.7% online. 5 staff.
$79/mo
Advanced
$299/mo ($229 annual). 2.5% online. Custom reports. 15 staff.
$299/mo
Plus
$2,300/mo (starting). Enterprise features, checkout customization, unlimited staff.
$2300/mo
Enterprise
Custom. For $1M+ GMV merchants. Dedicated support, Checkout Extensibility.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing free on Fastly vs starter on Shopify.
| Metric | Fastly | Shopify |
|---|---|---|
| No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers. | ||
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.
Shopify · 22 features
- Admin APIs — REST + GraphQL for management.
- App Store — 8,000+ apps.
- B2B (Plus) — Company accounts + catalogs.
- Checkout — Shopify-managed checkout (PCI-compliant).
- Checkout Extensibility — UI extensions in checkout (Plus).
- Collections — Manual + smart grouping.
- Customers — CRM-lite + B2B (Plus).
- Discounts — Automatic + code-based.
- Hydrogen — React/Remix headless framework.
- Inventory — Multi-location stock.
- Markets — Multi-region selling (currency, language).
- Online Store — Default Liquid-based storefront.
- Orders + Fulfillment — Multi-location fulfillment.
- Oxygen — Edge hosting for Hydrogen (Plus).
- Products + Variants — Full PIM.
- Shipping + Rates — Carrier integrations.
- Shopify Functions — Rust/WASM backend extensions.
- Shopify Payments — First-party payment processor.
- Shop Pay — Accelerated checkout with saved payment.
- Storefront API — GraphQL for custom storefronts.
- Theme Store — First-party + paid themes.
- Webhooks — Event subscriptions.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Fastly | Shopify |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | Fastly CLI | shopify CLI |
| SDK | compute-go-starter, compute-js-starter, compute-rust-starter | @shopify/admin-api-client, @shopify/hydrogen |
| REST | Fastly API | Admin REST API |
| GRAPHQL | — | Admin GraphQL API, Storefront API |
| MCP | — | Shopify MCP (unofficial) |
| OTHER | Compute@Edge (Wasm), VCL (Varnish) | Liquid Templates, Shopify Admin, Shopify Webhooks |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Fastly and Shopify are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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