Fastly, Inc. FSLY

Competitive advantage analysis · technology

Software & SaaS Specialized
Overall moat score
58/100
Moderate

About Fastly, Inc.

Fastly, Inc. operates an edge cloud platform for processing, serving, and securing its customer's applications in the United States, the Asia Pacific, Europe, and internationally. The edge cloud is a category of Infrastructure as a Service that enables developers to build, secure, and deliver digital experiences at the edge of the internet. The company offers network services to speed up … Full FSLY analysis →

Competitive advantage assessment

Key strengths

  • Consistent Subscription Growth Revenue consistency is strong (score 0.88), pointing to a sticky customer base.
  • Debt Covered by Cash Generation Debt capacity is solid (score 0.65), supporting resilience through cycles.

Key risks

  • Margin Compression Risk Margin quality is below peer norms (score 0.37), suggesting pricing pressure.
  • Returns Trail Peers Return profile is weak (score 0.35), pointing to limited capital efficiency.

The dashed ring is the peer median. Defense scores are percentile ranks against peers, so 50 is roughly the typical company in this group.

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Pricing Power

Developing
40

Where FSLY ranks in Software - Application

Fastly, Inc. ranks #83 of 264 scored companies in Software - Application by moat score — the top 31%. The widest moat in the group is Dave Inc. (DAVE) at 80/100.

Moat scores for companies ranked near FSLY in Software - Application
# Company Moat score Rating
79 Procore Technologies, Inc. PCOR 59/100 Moderate
80 Sprinklr, Inc. CXM 59/100 Moderate
81 Intapp, Inc. INTA 59/100 Moderate
82 PagerDuty, Inc. PD 59/100 Moderate
83 Fastly, Inc. FSLY 58/100 Moderate
84 Ringcentral, Inc. RNG 58/100 Moderate
85 MIND C.T.I. Ltd. MNDO 58/100 Moderate
86 Donnelley Financial Solutions, DFIN 58/100 Moderate
87 Viant Technology Inc. DSP 58/100 Moderate

See every Software & SaaS company ranked by moat score →

How FSLY scores on the Software & SaaS Specialized defenses

Pricing Power

Score 40 · 20% of the moat score

In software, pricing power is visible in gross margin: a vendor that has to discount in order to renew gives it up first.

Recurring Revenue Stickiness

Score 80 · 18% of the moat score

Recurring revenue is the model's central claim, and it is a moat only when customers renew and expand without being re-sold each year.

Innovation Engine

Score 49 · 16% of the moat score

Software is competed away rather than depreciated, so a vendor that stops investing loses its category.

Cash Scalability

Score 66 · 18% of the moat score

The test of a software business is whether growth eventually stops consuming cash.

Capital Efficiency

Score 51 · 16% of the moat score

A software platform employs very little capital, so a genuine franchise should produce high returns on it without leverage.

Balance Sheet Resilience

Score 69 · 12% of the moat score

Software companies fund years of customer acquisition before those customers pay back, which makes access to capital a strategic variable rather than a treasury detail.

How each Software & SaaS Specialized defense is measured, in full →

Understanding FSLY's moat

What is Fastly, Inc.'s moat score?

Fastly, Inc. (FSLY) scores 58 out of 100 on the StatsAlpha Moat Map, which rates its competitive advantage as moderate. It ranks #83 of 264 scored companies in Software - Application, the top 31%. The score is a weighted composite of 6 competitive defenses, each measured against industry peers of 263 companies in Software - Application. Its strongest defense is Recurring Revenue Stickiness (80/100) and its weakest is Pricing Power (40/100).

How does Fastly, Inc. compare with other Software - Application companies?

Fastly, Inc. ranks #83 of 264 scored companies in Software - Application by moat score. The widest moat in Software - Application is Dave Inc. (DAVE) at 80/100. The companies ranked closest are PagerDuty, Inc. (PD) at 59 just above it and Ringcentral, Inc. (RNG) at 58 just below it.

How is the moat score calculated?

Each company is scored with an industry-specific template — Software & SaaS Specialized in this case, chosen because the defenses that matter to a bank are not the ones that matter to a software company. Every defense combines several financial signals, and each signal is measured as a percentile against a peer group of 263 companies in Software - Application. The defenses are then weighted to produce the overall score out of 100.

Why is Fastly, Inc. scored with the Software & SaaS Specialized template?

Software costs almost nothing to reproduce, so the entire economic question is whether customers keep paying. Revenue is a subscription rather than a sale, the cost of winning a customer is paid years before that customer becomes profitable, and margins arrive only if renewals hold. The Software & SaaS template scores retention, reinvestment, and the point at which growth turns into cash.

Which competitive defenses are measured for Fastly, Inc.?

The Software & SaaS Specialized template measures 6 defenses, and FSLY scores: Pricing Power (40), Recurring Revenue Stickiness (80), Innovation Engine (49), Cash Scalability (66), Capital Efficiency (51), Balance Sheet Resilience (69). Each is scored independently as a percentile against peers, so a company can be strong on one and weak on another — the overall score reflects how those defenses are weighted for this industry.

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