Fastly lets publishers bill each AI crawler by company, chasing Cloudflare's pay-per-crawl
Supertab Connect, live on Fastly Compute, lets publishers allow, block or bill each AI crawler by company, weeks after Cloudflare began blocking mixed-use crawlers by default on its own network. The new products have earned nothing yet, and the first revenue reading lands November 4.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
A toll booth per crawler, live in three hours
A publisher on Fastly's+4.76% — Fastly, up 4.76 percent today network can now quote one price to OpenAI's$1.18T — OpenAI, private, latest valuation $1.18T crawler, block Anthropic's$350B — Anthropic, private, latest valuation $350B and let Google's through, decided at the edge before the request reaches the publisher's own servers. Supertab Connect, from Supertab, a startup that meters and bills machine consumption of content, went live on Fastly Compute, Fastly's edge cloud platform, on October 12, 2026 1.
It names the company behind each bot, checks its license token under the Crawler Authorization Protocol, and posts machine-readable terms under RSL 1.0, the open Really Simple Licensing standard; setup takes two to three hours and no DNS changes 1. A day later, Fastly announced the enterprise half of the same thesis, AI Runtime Control, AI Firewall and API Security for agent traffic, which reached general availability in September, plus an expanded JioCDN partnership in India 234.
The meter rides on sunk capital
Bots make up more than 49% of all traffic, Fastly's Threat Insights 2026 report finds, and on Fastly's own network machine-generated traffic crossed half in July and August; AI traffic grew 6.5 times faster than human traffic from January through May 12. The 622 Tbps network already handles more than five trillion requests a day, and Fastly charges largely on traffic volume, so agent requests that used to be pure cost now carry a price 25.
Oppenheimer analyst Param Singh upgraded the stock to Outperform on October 9, 2026, with a $35 target; the shares rose almost 16% to $29.30 45. His call rests on products that reached general availability in September and had yet to contribute significant revenue 5. The third-quarter guide of $184–190M follows a Q2 beat: revenue of $183.32M, up 23.3% and 5.4% above consensus, with the 2026 outlook raised to $732–746M 6.
Fastly's revenue run steepened into the AI launches, and guidance extends it
- Revenue
- Estimate
Data
| Revenue | |
|---|---|
| Q3 '24 | $137.21M |
| Q4 '24 | $140.58M |
| Q1 '25 | $144.47M |
| Q2 '25 | $148.71M |
| Q3 '25 | $158.22M |
| Q4 '25 | $172.61M |
| Q1 '26 | $173.02M |
| Q2 '26 | $183.32M |
| Q3 '26E (estimate) | $187M ($184–190M) |
Cloudflare set this market's rules first
Cloudflare+6.28% — Cloudflare, up 6.28 percent today, the larger rival, has run a pay-per-crawl marketplace, and from September 15, 2026, its defaults block mixed-use crawlers, the ones blending search, agent use and training, from any page that hosts ads; Pay Per Crawl is also evolving into Pay Per Use 7. Supertab's launch FAQ courts "publishers who aren't on Cloudflare" 1. Fastly serves a large share of the world's media companies and publishers 1.
Losses and insider selling sit under the rally
Fastly has posted a GAAP net loss in every quarter since late 2023, even as operating cash flow has stayed positive for eight straight quarters, reaching $39.3M+1.83% — 3M, up 1.83 percent today in Q2 2026 8. Insiders sold $89.7M of stock over the past year with no buying; GuruFocus, a stock-research site, puts fair value at $10.71 against a $22.47 close after a 10.4% drop on October 16, and Wall Street stands at six buys, six holds and one sell 94.
Positive cash for eight quarters, but the GAAP loss never closed
- Operating cash flow
- Net income
Data
| Operating cash flow | Net income | |
|---|---|---|
| Q3 '24 | $5M | -$38.02M |
| Q4 '24 | $5.22M | -$32.89M |
| Q1 '25 | $17.29M | -$39.15M |
| Q2 '25 | $25.8M | -$37.54M |
| Q3 '25 | $28.92M | -$29.48M |
| Q4 '25 | $22.43M | -$15.5M |
| Q1 '26 | $28.87M | -$20.52M |
| Q2 '26 | $39.33M | -$15.59M |
November 4 is the first reading
Singh expects revenue at the top of the guide, a raised 2026 outlook, and almost $10M from Grand Theft Auto VI downloads due November 19 4. The stock is up 188% this year against an average analyst target of $28.55, below the last close 4. Fastly reports on November 4 4; that report is the first chance to see whether crawler tolls show up as revenue.
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