Staxly

Perplexity vs Fastly

AI answer engine + Comet browser + Sonar API
vs. Edge cloud platform — CDN + compute + security + observability

Perplexity website ↗Fastly website ↗

Pricing tiers

Perplexity

Sonar API (PAYG)
Pay-as-you-go per request. Buy credits or set auto top-off.
$0 base (usage-based)
Free
5-10 Pro searches/day. Basic models. File uploads limited. No Comet.
Free
Education Pro
$10/month for verified students + educators (or 12 months free via promos).
$10/mo
Pro
$20/month. Unlimited Pro searches, full model selection (Claude, GPT, Gemini), unlimited file uploads, $5/mo API credits.
$20/mo
Enterprise Pro
$40/user/month. Team features + SSO + 500 daily research queries + compliance.
$40/mo
Max
$200/month. Everything in Pro + Comet agent browser, 10k credits, unlimited Labs, Sora 2 Pro video, GPT-5.2, Claude Opus 4.6.
$200/mo
Enterprise Max
$325/user/month. Audit logs, SCIM, configurable retention, expanded file storage.
$325/mo
Perplexity website ↗

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
Fastly website ↗

Free-tier quotas head-to-head

Comparing free on Perplexity vs free on Fastly.

MetricPerplexityFastly
No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers.

Features

Perplexity · 16 features

  • Agent Mode (Max) — Autonomous multi-step agents (browse, act, finish tasks).
  • Answer Engine — Ask → source-cited AI answers from live web.
  • Async Sonar API — Submit jobs async — receive webhook when done.
  • Collections — Save threads + share with team.
  • Comet Browser — Chromium-based AI-native browser. Sidebar assistant, agentic actions.
  • Deep Research — Multi-step research task — compiles report with many sources.
  • Discover Feed — Curated news + trending topics feed.
  • File + Image Analysis — Upload PDFs, images, CSVs → ask questions.
  • Finance Mode — Stocks + earnings + fundamentals mode.
  • Labs — Build interactive apps/reports — generate visualizations, code.
  • Pro Search — Multi-source + clarifying follow-ups.
  • Shopping — AI-guided product research + comparison.
  • Sonar API — Programmatic web-grounded chat completions endpoint.
  • Sora 2 Pro (Max) — Generate video via OpenAI Sora 2.
  • Spaces — Persistent workspaces with custom instructions + knowledge files.
  • Voice Mode — Talk to Perplexity (mobile apps).

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.

Developer interfaces

KindPerplexityFastly
CLI—Fastly CLI
SDK—compute-go-starter, compute-js-starter, compute-rust-starter
RESTSonar APIFastly API
MCPPerplexity MCP—
OTHERComet AI Browser, iOS + Android Apps, Perplexity Labs, Perplexity Web App, Spaces (context)Compute@Edge (Wasm), VCL (Varnish)
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Perplexity and Fastly are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.

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