--- title: "Alternatives to Fastly | Agent Ready Crawlers" description: "Alternatives to Fastly: 14 bot management and agent identity vendors on one rubric, with the sourced difference for each head-to-head. Read 2026-11-04." canonical: https://agentreadycrawlers.com/vendors/fastly/alternatives site: "Agent Ready Crawlers" last_updated: 2026-11-04 section: "Vendors" --- # Alternatives to Fastly | Agent Ready Crawlers > Alternatives to Fastly: 14 bot management and agent identity vendors on one rubric, with the sourced difference for each head-to-head. Read 2026-11-04. Source: https://agentreadycrawlers.com/vendors/fastly/alternatives Site: Agent Ready Crawlers Last reviewed: 2026-11-04 # Alternatives to Fastly In short Fastly ranks 10th of 15 on 4 of 10 points, with Arcjet the nearest on points, and head-to-head pages set it against Cloudflare and Akamai. Four questions grade partial for Fastly. It gives no price for Bot Management, which Essential-tier Next-Gen WAF customers cannot use. ## Head-to-head, with the sourced difference - [**Fastly vs Cloudflare**](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/compare/fastly-vs-cloudflare/). Fastly exposes separate signals for suspected and verified AI crawlers and AI fetchers and redirects to a TollBit paywall; Cloudflare runs its own pay per crawl and per-purpose Search, Training and Agent controls. [Source](https://www.fastly.com/blog/how-to-control-and-monetize-ai-bot-traffic-using-fastly-and-tollbit), read 2026-11-04. - [**Fastly vs Akamai**](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/compare/fastly-vs-akamai/). Both route AI bot charging to TollBit, and both partner with Skyfire (Fastly 2026-06-10, Akamai 2026-06-15); Akamai documents Web Bot Auth verification and Visa TAP, Fastly docs read did not. [Source](https://investors.fastly.com/news-releases/news-release-details/fastly-and-skyfire-partner-enable-trusted-agentic-commerce), read 2026-11-04. ## All other vendors on the rubric "Stronger" and "weaker" compare each vendor's grade with Fastly's on the five graded questions. Cost is quoted as read on 2026-11-04. | Vendor | Points | Stronger than Fastly on | Weaker on | Cost | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Akamai | 8 | verifies agents, commerce agents, reporting | nothing | No public price; sales-led | | AWS WAF Bot Control | 8 | verifies agents, per-purpose policy, charging, reporting | commerce agents | USD 10/month per web ACL plus USD 1 or USD 10 per million requests after free allowance | | Cloudflare | 8 | verifies agents, per-purpose policy, reporting | nothing | Free tier covers AI Crawl Control; Pro from USD 20/month; Bot Management and BotBase are Enterprise and sales-led | | DataDome | 8 | verifies agents, charging, reporting | nothing | From USD 3,830/month | | HUMAN Security | 7 | verifies agents, per-purpose policy, reporting | commerce agents | No public price; sales-led | | Skyfire | 6 | verifies agents, charging, commerce agents | per-purpose policy | Not published (checked 2026-11-04) | | TollBit | 6 | charging, reporting | commerce agents | Free for publishers to start | | Vercel | 6 | verifies agents, per-purpose policy, reporting | charging, commerce agents | Basic free; Deep Analysis USD 1 per 1,000 checks on Pro | | Kasada | 5 | verifies agents, reporting | charging, commerce agents | No public price; sales-led | | Arcjet | 3 | reporting | charging, commerce agents | From USD 25/month plus USD 5 per 1M web requests | | Auth0 for AI Agents | 3 | reporting | verifies agents, charging | AI Agents add-on at 50 percent of base plan, from USD 18/month; free plan (checked 2026-11-05) | | Imperva | 3 | reporting | per-purpose policy, charging, commerce agents | No public price; sales-led | | Stytch IsAgent | 2 | reporting | per-purpose policy, charging, commerce agents | IsAgent free to 10,000 calls/month; fingerprints USD 0.005 each beyond 10,000 | | Netlify | 1 | nothing | verifies agents, charging, commerce agents | Platform plans from USD 0; extension price not stated | ## Where Fastly is not the fit - Bot Management is not available on the Essential platform for Next-Gen WAF (Bot Management docs). - No native per-crawl billing; charging relies on TollBit (Fastly-TollBit blog). - No public price for bot products (pricing page). ## Sources - [fastly.com: pricing](https://www.fastly.com/pricing) read 2026-11-04 - [fastly.com: how to control and monetize ai bot traffic using fastly and tollbit](https://www.fastly.com/blog/how-to-control-and-monetize-ai-bot-traffic-using-fastly-and-tollbit) read 2026-11-04 - [investors.fastly.com: fastly and skyfire partner enable trusted agentic commerce](https://investors.fastly.com/news-releases/news-release-details/fastly-and-skyfire-partner-enable-trusted-agentic-commerce) read 2026-11-04 - [akamai.com: akamai unveils agentic security framework to power trusted ai driven interactions and commerce](https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-unveils-agentic-security-framework-to-power-trusted-ai-driven-interactions-and-commerce) read 2026-11-04 - [aws.amazon.com: pricing](https://aws.amazon.com/waf/pricing/) read 2026-11-04 - [cloudflare.com: network cdn.md](https://www.cloudflare.com/plans/network-cdn.md) read 2026-11-04 - [datadome.co: pricing](https://datadome.co/pricing/) read 2026-11-04 - [humansecurity.com: package plans](https://www.humansecurity.com/platform/package-plans) read 2026-11-04 - [skyfire.xyz: skyfire.xyz](https://skyfire.xyz/) read 2026-11-04 - [tollbit.com: tollbit.com](https://tollbit.com/) read 2026-11-04 - [vercel.com: botid](https://vercel.com/docs/botid) read 2026-11-04 Last reviewed 2026-11-04