Cloud · head to head
Fastly vs OpenEBS
The short version
- Each has a real cost: Fastly bandwidth is priced per region, and delivery to India, Africa and South Korea is $0.28 per GB against $0.12 in North America and Europe; OpenEBS there is no vendor on the other end of an incident unless you separately contract DataCore, so an outage at three in the morning is resolved by your own team and a public Slack channel.
- They diverge on capability: Fastly covers Edge Compute, OpenEBS covers Replicated engine.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Fastly and OpenEBS actually diverge.
Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Cloud).
What each one covers
Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.
Only in Fastly
- Edge Compute
- CDN
- DDoS Protection
- Real-time Analytics
- Image Optimization
- Video Streaming
- API
- Instant Purge
Only in OpenEBS
- Replicated engine
- Local PV engines
- Kubernetes-native management
- Snapshots and clones
- No licence fee
- Hardware independence
What people use each for
The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.
Fastly
- Serving static and dynamic content through a global CDNnot OpenEBS
- Running edge logic and caching in front of an origin applicationnot OpenEBS
OpenEBS
- Running Cassandra or Kafka on Kubernetes where the application already replicates and node-local volumes are sufficientnot Fastly
- A platform team that needs persistent volumes on bare metal Kubernetes without a per node subscriptionnot Fastly
- An edge or lab deployment where a commercial storage licence cannot be justifiednot Fastly
- Replacing hostpath volumes with something that has snapshots and a Container Storage Interface drivernot Fastly
Where each one falls short
Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.
Fastly
- Bandwidth is priced per region, and delivery to India, Africa and South Korea is $0.28 per GB against $0.12 in North America and Europe
- The same traffic therefore costs more than twice as much depending on where the audience is, which is invisible until the bill arrives
- The free allowance is 100 GB of bandwidth and 1M requests a month
- Requests are billed separately from bandwidth, at $0.01 per 10,000 above the first million
- High volume rates past 50 TB are not published and require contacting sales
OpenEBS
- There is no vendor on the other end of an incident unless you separately contract DataCore, so an outage at three in the morning is resolved by your own team and a public Slack channel.
- The project has several storage engines with different maturity and different operational characteristics, and choosing the wrong one for your workload produces poor results that look like a product failure.
- Documentation and upgrade guidance assume real Kubernetes storage knowledge, so teams without that expertise underestimate the operational load they are taking on.
- Project governance shifted after DataCore acquired MayaData in 2021, which means the direction of a supposedly neutral project is influenced by one commercial sponsor.
- Disaster recovery, cross-cluster replication and policy-driven data services are thinner than in the commercial alternatives, so organisations with those requirements end up building them or buying a product anyway.
Pricing, plan by plan
Fastly
Free- Free TrialFree
- CDN
- DDoS protection
- Real-time analytics
- Pay-As-You-GoFree
- Usage-based pricing
- Advanced features
- Priority support
OpenEBS
Free- OpenEBSFree
- Apache 2.0 licensed
- All storage engines included
- No node or capacity limits
Which should you pick?
Choose Fastly if
- You need edge compute.
- You want to start without paying.
- You work on Web, Api.
- You also want cdn.
Choose OpenEBS if
- You need replicated engine.
- You want to start without paying.
- You work on Linux.
- You also want local pv engines.
Questions people ask
- Is Fastly or OpenEBS better?
- Neither clearly leads. Fastly starts at Free and OpenEBS at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Fastly or OpenEBS?
- Fastly starts at Free and OpenEBS at Free.
- Does Fastly or OpenEBS run on more platforms?
- Fastly runs on Web, Api. OpenEBS runs on Linux.
- Can I use Fastly for free?
- Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
- What is Fastly best used for?
- Fastly is most often used for serving static and dynamic content through a global cdn, running edge logic and caching in front of an origin application. Of those, serving static and dynamic content through a global cdn and running edge logic and caching in front of an origin application are not what OpenEBS is typically brought in for.
- What can Fastly do that OpenEBS cannot?
- Fastly covers Edge Compute, CDN, DDoS Protection, Real-time Analytics. OpenEBS covers Replicated engine, Local PV engines, Kubernetes-native management, Snapshots and clones.
Answered from the vendors’ own pages
Fastly: Does Fastly charge based on usage or a flat monthly fee?
Fastly operates on a usage-based model with volume discounts. They offer a free tier with 100 GB bandwidth and 1M requests for experimentation, then customers pay per unit consumed with tiered discounts as consumption increases.
SourceOpenEBS: Who supports it in production?
The project is community supported. Commercial support is available from DataCore, which acquired the original sponsor MayaData in 2021. Establish that relationship before production, not during an incident.
Fastly: What are Fastly's main service packages and their costs?
Fastly offers Network Services Packages ($1,500-$6,000/month baseline), Security Packages (custom pricing), Compute Packages ($500/month entry level), and Observability Packages ($1,500/month entry level). Enterprise solutions include custom quotes for high-volume deployments.
SourceOpenEBS: Which engine should we use?
If your application replicates its own data, use a Local engine and avoid replicating twice. If it does not, such as with PostgreSQL, use the Replicated engine.
Fastly: Can I start using Fastly for free?
Yes, Fastly offers a free tier with generous allowances for experimentation including 100 GB bandwidth and 1M requests. You can start building free and only pay when you use additional resources.
SourceOpenEBS: Does it cost anything?
No licence fee. The cost is operational, and a support contract if you want someone accountable.
Fastly: Are there surprise overage charges with Fastly?
Fastly advertises predictable pricing with no surprise overages. The pricing structure is designed to be transparent as consumption grows.
SourceRelated pages
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