Fastly delivers web content from 70+ global PoPs with instant purging, VCL customization, and WebAssembly edge compute — but as a CDN platform it has no WCAG accessibility audit, no Core Web Vitals scoring, and no post-deployment front-end quality monitoring. PageGuard audits any Fastly-delivered website externally — free, no Fastly account access needed, results in 30 seconds.
ADA Title II Deadline: April 24, 2026
State and local government websites must meet WCAG 2.1 AA by April 24, 2026. Government agencies, nonprofits, and educational institutions hosting public-facing websites behind Fastly CDN face this compliance deadline. Fastly's instant purge (<150ms global invalidation) means CI/CD deployments can immediately serve HTML with accessibility regressions across all 70+ PoPs without any WCAG quality gate at the CDN layer. PageGuard monitors the live production URL continuously without requiring Fastly account access, API tokens, or VCL configuration changes.
| Feature | PageGuard | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| What is it? | External website health monitor — scans any deployed URL for performance, accessibility, SEO, and best practices | Fastly is an edge cloud platform and enterprise CDN headquartered in San Francisco, founded in 2011 and publicly traded (NYSE: FSLY); Fastly operates 70+ global PoPs (Points of Presence) processing over 3 trillion requests per day for high-traffic customers including The Guardian, Stripe, GitHub, GitHub Pages, Twitter, Spotify, Vimeo, and The New York Times; Fastly's core products include Fastly CDN (Varnish-based edge caching), Fastly Compute (WebAssembly-based serverless edge compute), Fastly Image Optimizer (on-the-fly image resizing, format conversion, and smart cropping at CDN edge), Fastly Next-Gen WAF (web application firewall with advanced threat detection), and Fastly Observability (real-time streaming log analytics); Fastly is known for instant purging (single object cache invalidation in <150ms globally), VCL (Varnish Configuration Language) for advanced cache customization, and real-time CDN analytics streaming to Splunk/Datadog/Sumo Logic; Fastly does not analyze the HTML accessibility quality, WCAG compliance, or front-end user experience quality of websites it delivers |
| Free tier | ✓ Yes — unlimited one-off scans, no signup required | Fastly offers a pay-as-you-go model with no free tier for production use; new accounts receive a trial credit; Fastly CDN pricing starts at $0.12/GB bandwidth in North America/Europe, $0.19/GB in Asia-Pacific, with volume discounts at 10 TB+/month; Fastly Compute pricing at $0.05 per million requests + $0.000015 per second of compute; at no spend level does Fastly include WCAG accessibility auditing, Core Web Vitals measurement, or ADA compliance monitoring for websites delivered through its CDN |
| Accessibility audit (WCAG / ADA) | ✓ Yes — WCAG 2.1 AA scored 0–100 with specific issue list | No — Fastly is an enterprise CDN and edge cloud platform that delivers cached HTTP responses at ultra-low latency without analyzing the HTML accessibility quality of the content it serves; Fastly has no built-in WCAG compliance checking, accessibility scoring, color contrast analysis, ARIA attribute validation, heading hierarchy auditing, or ADA compliance monitoring for web pages cached and delivered through its 70+ global PoPs; Fastly's Next-Gen WAF detects malicious traffic patterns but does not audit front-end accessibility quality; the WCAG accessibility quality of a Fastly-delivered website is determined entirely by the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in the origin server response — not by Fastly's CDN edge caching layer |
| Technical SEO audit | ✓ Yes — meta tags, headings, canonical, structured data | No — Fastly provides no SEO audit scores, meta tag validation, heading hierarchy analysis, canonical URL checking, or structured data (JSON-LD/schema.org) verification for HTML documents delivered through its CDN; Fastly CDN analytics provide real-time streaming logs with request counts, cache hit ratios, HTTP status codes, geographic traffic breakdown, and error rates — not the SEO quality of the HTML content being cached and delivered; Fastly's VCL cache control rules do not evaluate robots meta tags, Open Graph metadata, or structured data completeness of web pages |
| Performance audit (Core Web Vitals) | ✓ Yes — LCP, CLS, FCP scored 0–100 per scan | No — Fastly CDN analytics measure server-side and network-layer metrics such as requests per second, bandwidth throughput, time-to-first-byte at edge, cache hit ratio (typically 90–99%), and origin shield efficiency; Fastly does not measure browser-side Core Web Vitals (LCP, CLS, FCP, INP) as experienced by real users rendering the page in their browser; Fastly's instant purging and 70+ PoPs significantly reduce TTFB for cacheable content, but the actual Core Web Vitals scores experienced by end users depend on HTML structure, JavaScript bundle size, render-blocking resources, image dimensions, and web font loading — all factors not monitored by Fastly's CDN edge layer |
| Enterprise CDN with 70+ global PoPs | No — PageGuard is an external monitoring tool, not a CDN or content delivery service | ✓ Yes — Fastly's core value proposition: 70+ global PoPs delivering content in milliseconds with an industry-leading cache hit ratio; Fastly CDN uses Varnish Cache under the hood with VCL (Varnish Configuration Language) for highly customizable cache logic, header manipulation, request routing, and A/B testing at edge; Fastly's instant purge capability invalidates individual cache objects in <150ms across all PoPs globally (vs minutes for competitors); Fastly Shielding (origin shield) with 20+ locations reduces load on origin servers; Fastly CDN supports TLS termination, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 (QUIC), Brotli compression, and real-time streaming log analytics to Splunk/Datadog/Sumo Logic/Elasticsearch; Fastly Compute (WASM-based serverless at edge) enables custom business logic at 70+ PoPs; Fastly Image Optimizer provides on-the-fly image resizing, WebP/AVIF conversion, smart cropping, and quality optimization at CDN edge with zero origin changes |
| Automated website monitoring | ✓ Yes — weekly or daily scans with email alerts on score drop | No — Fastly does not perform automated quality monitoring of WCAG compliance, Core Web Vitals, or SEO quality for websites delivered through its CDN; Fastly provides real-time streaming CDN analytics (requests, bandwidth, cache efficiency, error rates, latency percentiles) delivered to log aggregation platforms — not front-end accessibility regressions, Core Web Vitals degradation alerts, or SEO issues in the HTML being cached and served; automated front-end quality monitoring of Fastly-delivered websites requires a separate external monitoring tool |
| AI-generated plain-English report | ✓ Yes — explains issues in non-technical language | No — Fastly provides no AI-generated health report or plain-English explanation of front-end accessibility, SEO, or Core Web Vitals issues; the Fastly dashboard and real-time log streaming show CDN performance metrics, cache analytics, WAF event data, and billing usage — not front-end quality analysis of the HTML content being delivered through the CDN edge network |
| ADA Title II compliance monitoring | ✓ Yes — WCAG audit + alert on accessibility regression | No — Fastly does not audit or alert on WCAG compliance for HTML documents delivered through its CDN; government agencies, nonprofits, and educational institutions hosting public-facing websites on Fastly CDN face ADA Title II compliance requirements with an April 24, 2026 deadline; Fastly's instant purging capability means that CI/CD deployments can push new HTML with accessibility regressions to origin and Fastly's instant cache invalidation immediately serves the regressed content globally across all 70+ PoPs to end users without any WCAG quality gate at the CDN layer; continuous WCAG monitoring of the live production URL requires a separate external tool like PageGuard |
| Works on any deployed platform | ✓ Yes — scans any URL on any hosting or platform | Fastly CDN delivers content from origins configured in Fastly services (AWS S3, GCS, custom origin servers, multi-cloud origins); Fastly does not scan or monitor the front-end quality of websites hosted on competing CDNs or platforms outside Fastly's network; Fastly focuses exclusively on its own CDN delivery operations and edge compute without cross-platform front-end quality monitoring capability |
| Independent external audit | ✓ Yes — third-party scan, shareable URL for clients/stakeholders | No — Fastly provides no built-in tool to generate a shareable external front-end health report for websites it delivers; Fastly's dashboard, Observability streaming logs, and API show CDN bandwidth metrics, cache hit ratios, WAF events, and billing data — not WCAG accessibility scores or Core Web Vitals quality scores shareable with clients, procurement teams, or ADA compliance auditors |
| Instant on-demand scan | ✓ Yes — results in 30 seconds, no code changes needed | No — no on-demand front-end health scan of websites delivered through Fastly CDN; auditing a Fastly-cached website for WCAG accessibility, Core Web Vitals, or SEO quality requires running third-party tools against the public domain; Fastly has no concept of scanning the HTML accessibility or performance quality of the content cached at its 70+ global edge PoPs |
| Multi-site dashboard | ✓ Yes — 1–50 sites depending on plan | Fastly's web console and API manage multiple Fastly services (CDN configurations), each associated with a domain; the Fastly dashboard shows CDN analytics, VCL configurations, and billing per service — there is no cross-website front-end health dashboard showing WCAG compliance, SEO quality, or Core Web Vitals for websites delivered through Fastly CDN services |
| Pricing for health monitoring | ✓ Free + from $9/mo for automated monitoring | Front-end health monitoring not available — Fastly CDN from $0.12/GB bandwidth (North America/Europe), Fastly Compute from $0.05/million requests, Fastly WAF enterprise pricing; no front-end quality monitoring at any spend level |
Get WCAG accessibility scores and Core Web Vitals for any website delivered through Fastly CDN. Results in 30 seconds. No Fastly account access, API tokens, VCL configuration, or Fastly service changes required.
Results in ~30 seconds. 4 scores: Performance, Accessibility, SEO, Best Practices.
Yes — PageGuard scans any public URL regardless of whether the website is delivered through Fastly CDN, Cloudflare, or any other CDN. Paste your Fastly website URL into PageGuard for a full health report covering WCAG accessibility, Core Web Vitals, SEO, and best practices in ~30 seconds. No Fastly account, API tokens, or VCL configuration required.
No — Fastly is an enterprise CDN and edge cloud platform that delivers cached HTTP responses without analyzing front-end accessibility quality. Fastly has no WCAG compliance checking, accessibility scoring, or ADA compliance monitoring. Fastly's Next-Gen WAF detects security threats; Fastly CDN analytics show cache hit ratios, bandwidth, and latency — not browser-side user experience quality metrics. PageGuard audits the live rendered URL and provides WCAG 2.1 AA scoring with specific issues to fix.
Yes — Fastly's instant purge capability (<150ms global cache invalidation) means CI/CD deployments pushing new HTML to origin immediately serve updated content across all 70+ PoPs globally. If the new HTML contains WCAG accessibility regressions — missing alt text, broken heading hierarchy, insufficient color contrast, removed ARIA landmarks — Fastly's instant purge makes these regressions live globally without any WCAG quality gate at the CDN layer. PageGuard's automated monitoring detects these front-end regressions in the live production URL after each deployment.
No — they serve completely different purposes. Fastly is an enterprise CDN and edge cloud platform with 70+ global PoPs, Varnish-based edge caching with VCL customization, instant purging (<150ms), Fastly Compute (WebAssembly edge runtime), Image Optimizer, and Next-Gen WAF. PageGuard is an external quality monitoring tool that audits the front-end HTML delivered to users for WCAG compliance, Core Web Vitals, and SEO quality. High-traffic organizations using Fastly CDN should add PageGuard to continuously verify front-end health at the production URL after each deployment and cache purge.