FastPix Vs AWS

How is FastPix different?

1. We’re an all-in-one platform for Video

FastPix brings all the tools and functionality you need in one place so you can build successful video-centric applications. This means:

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• Video-on-demand for fast uploading, encoding, formatting and delivering globally  

• Livestreaming in RTMP, SRT or LL-HLS, simulcasting, instant live clipping and more

• In-Video AI for subtitles, captions, categorization, key moments, NSFW moderation and more

• Video Data for monitoring behavior and experience, and diagnosing problems  

• Video Player for free, customizable and compatible playback across mediums.  

• Cloud Playout for live broadcasting linear channels instantly and globally  

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In other words, it’s everything you need in one platform with a single login and contract. A genuine single source to action the roadmap today and as it evolves quickly tomorrow. Customers who use FastPix launch 400% faster compared to AWS for video. 

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2. We build for developer success and velocity

This means you get support from engineers who actually build the product, extensively documented APIs, language SDKs, webhooks and migration tools.

Companies who use us get work done with 70% fewer resources, with no video expertise required. This frees up smaller teams to focus on other business logic, rather than video plumbing.

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3. We promise transparent and cheap pricing

We’re 65% cheaper than AWS for any video workflow. We default to charging as little as possible while still making a profit – we also have a generous free tier for our products. We do this because we want you to try risk-free, build, and get close to launch before you need to pay us. We also offer a generous start up program. You can also use FastPix and AWS together – FastPix for video and AWS for everything else – thereby building a more efficient and effective infrastructure.  

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Comparing FastPix and AWS

As an all-in-platform, FastPix isn’t just an alternative to any one AWS media product, we replace 10+ different AWS products across its media spectrum. 

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To explore differences in FastPix’ and AWS’ video functionality, let’s consider how they make sense in a video-centric application.  

In this example, we focus on a video-on-demand application.  

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Now let’s break down the core video loop in this example

• Here we’re illustrating an example of a content creator or a publisher pushing their video file(s) to your platform, where it is handled by a video API, say FastPix, and then viewers watch the output stream. On the input side, FastPix handles all the nitty gritty like ingest, encoding and storage.  

• On the output side, towards the right, we have stream going to your content viewers wherever they may be globally. Now, this includes your video, audio, captions, timeline GIFs etc.  

• Now the piece that touches every user is the Video Player. You need a player to render the content and view it. And you want to customize it for how it fits into your workflow and UI design. All that and more you can do with FastPix Video Player which is free for anyone using FastPix Video.  

• Now, who is watching and what? That is where a data product like FastPix Video Data comes in. It is built-in integrated with FastPix Video Player and many other open-source players. AWS has no alternative product for this; you need to for a 3^rd party and handle all the integrations.  

• Now with that core video loop established, you may wonder how all this links to your backend so you can make requests. In this illustration we show a simplified representation with a database, functions, queues and a CMS. We also show how you can subscribe to our webhooks and asynchronous notifications so you can know what’s happening and then set up other actions in your environment.  

• The video world keeps evolving, so we also have folks who want content analysis and content moderation. So, we have also covered this kind of functionality in this illustration. You may not need everything today and can keep it simple. But keep in mind products evolve and you might need more of this in future. We offer that flexibility and extensibility for your content libraries with a couple of API calls.  

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Now with a reference use case established, let’s dive into different sections for differences between FastPix and AWS in more detail. We will explore 7 pieces of the video workflow.

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1. Uploads

Upload is among the first functionality creators or publishers experience when trying your platform. It creates or alternately extinguishes the quintessential first impression. Much of what makes uploads work, as modern users expect, lies under the hood.  We share many features with AWS, but some places we distinguish ourselves are:  

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• FastPix Accelerated Uploads are built for the pace of modern workflows—where waiting isn’t an option. Videos ingest instantly, cutting friction and boosting efficiency. Powered by our global edge network, uploads are routed to the nearest node and optimized for speed, even on weak connections. Available by default for every FastPix client.

• Real-time encoding to compress and convert videos into a streaming-ready format instantly as it’s being uploaded or broadcast, with no noticeable delay between input and output.

• Context-aware encoding, so your videos stream in the best quality at the lowest possible size. Instead of forcing every video through a fixed bitrate ladder, our encoder adapts intelligently to the content itself, the device it’s viewed on, and the viewer’s network conditions—delivering a seamless experience while cutting storage and bandwidth costs.  

• Resumable uploads so your users never have to start over—uploads pick up right where they left off if interrupted, saving time and bandwidth. We SDKs for web, android and iOS handle chunking, retries, and recovery automatically across web and mobile, so large video files upload reliably even on weak connections.

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*Dotted line separates VOD and Livestreaming features. Features listed illustrative, not exhaustive.

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All these features are built-in and available to all users of FastPix Video-on Demand, whereas you need additional AWS products (on top of baseline 10 products shown earlier) like AWS EventBridge Pipes for Webhooks. Oh, and you need to write all the connecting logic spread over a few sprints. Consequently, it takes a large team and 400% more time to build high-quality video products and experience using AWS in place of FastPix.

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2. Video transformation and formatting

FastPix and AWS offer broadly similar video formatting features, but we do extra things like watermarking and timeline GIFs in-house from our base platform itself. Whereas AWS asks customers to use a service provider for Watermarking and AWS Chime SDK products (on top of baseline 10 products shown earlier) for things like adding intro/ outro (bumpers) or for video stitching (concatenating different video segments into one).

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*Dotted line separates VOD and Livestreaming features. Features listed illustrative, not exhaustive.

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We consider video playback elements like watermarks, thumbnails, timeline GIFs almost basic features in the modern viewing experience across all video use cases. You can use $25.00 free credit you get upon sign up to upload a video and see all these created automatically from our dashboard before using via our APIs.

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3. Video AI

FastPix’ built-in In-Video AI functions focus on processing and distribution spectrum of video (not creation). They include auto-generated subtitles (another key video playback element for user engagement), summaries, chapters, named entity recognition metadata tagging and categorization which are being used in emergent agentic video workflows.

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NSFW video moderation endpoints make it easy for creator, social and other user-generated content platforms to check visual and audio content for compliance with platform and community policies. These platforms and others like gaming are also using our auto-generated key moments feature for auto generating highlights and clips for their volume content. Many of these features are not built-in or supported by AWS; or they give guidance on how you can build them yourself using (guess) other AWS products or partner products. For example, for subtitles, you will need a different product AWS Transcribe or for video moderation, AWS Rekognition. If you have a large team, large budget (even with all those credits) and no hard launch deadlines then this might be a good fit for your tech stack.

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4. Video Playback and Security

Video playback features set the stage for the experience you create for users globally. In this regard, our differentiating features are built-in adaptive bitrate streaming (ABR), multi-CDN and Video Player. For instance, adaptive bitrate streaming empowers you to deliver flawless, high-quality video experience by automatically adjusting playback to user’s varying network speeds, reducing buffering and ensuring engagement.

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ABR is built-in and automatically part of every video playback, whereas with AWS you will need video expertise to configure and maintain your own ABR ladder, and they charge separately for every rendition.

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5. Video Data & Analytics

The moment you ship your product’s first version, data and analytics become top of mind. They become important because they enable you to make thoughtful and well-informed decisions about changes to products. They also enable you to measure success (or failure) when needed, so you will know if you need to roll back or double down of any changes. Consequently, they become top of mind for both business owners and developers of video products. Good examples of video data and analytics in action are information around how many users are watching and from where OR are viewers having issues somewhere and why. It's possible to get by without video data analytics, but then it's impossible to know if changes are having a beneficial impact, or even if you are solving the right problems to start with. Video product development without data and analytics is like stumbling around in a dark room, trying to find the way out. You might find the way out, but you might also fall down a hole!

FastPix Video Data gives you end-to-end data around your video streaming services so you can build successful video products faster. AWS has no directly comparable product.    

FastPix Video Data is a set of client-side SDKs that sit on your video player and capture all critical metrics crucial to both developers and business owners. Things like playback failures, startup time, rebuffering, and video quality among 50 other developer helpful metrics. Things like where your viewers are joining from, how many are watching, playing time, what content is trending and at what times etc. All this is accessible via our online dashboard for immediate insight or via APIs for custom workflows.  

We track and offer 100K monthly views for free for your product, be it that you’re using FastPix APIs under the hood or another streaming set up.

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6. Developer friendly

Both AWS and FastPix offer server-side language SDKs so you can easily start building. FastPix presently offers Python, Java, Node.js, PHP, C#, Go and Ruby SDKs to get you started.  

That said, where we clearly stand out in this area is our SDKs for Video Data and Resumable Uploads which cover web, mobile and CTV.  These SDKs are critical in 2025 to build modern and successful video product and experiences.

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7. Pricing transparency and simplicity

10 different products, each with their own billing metric, make life at AWS Media complicated. Some of AWS products are billed by minutes, others by GB and others by TB.  

And you must keep shifting between them in the technology value chain. Intentional or not, it is confusing to understand and makes it hard to plan, and budget. And then, surprise hidden fees lurk everywhere from data transfer costs, reserved instance penalties, region-based pricing, bandwidth costs, API request charges etc. At times it does feel like nickel-and-dimed for every service.

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With FastPix, our approach is centered on minutes as a core billing metric and usage-based pricing, whereby we charge only for what you use, ensuring that costs align with your growth and needs. 1 billing metric like minutes and reduced SKUs (encoding, storage and streaming) make estimating and checking your costs easy.  

You can also easily calculate costs for a base scenario using our calculator for VOD and livestreaming use cases. It will take seconds. We would wager that if you are new to AWS, doing likewise for end-to-end on AWS will take hours if not days.  

New to FastPix? Sign up and receive $25.00 in free credits to explore our services without any upfront commitment. This includes access to all capabilities, allowing you to experiment with our platform hassle free.

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FAQs

1. How to migrate from AWS to FastPix?

Use the AWS to FastPix migration tool.

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2. What kind of businesses are best suited for FastPix over AWS?

FastPix is ideal for growth-focused businesses that want a simple, efficient, and comprehensive video solution without the overhead of managing multiple complex services. If your priority is speed to market, reduced complexity, and predictable costs, FastPix is a better fit.

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3. What kind of video editing capabilities does FastPix offer?

FastPix provides editing features like clipping, watermarking, thumbnail & GIF generation, video stitching, and audio overlay directly in its platform. For advanced editing, FastPix integrates easily with third-party tools via APIs.

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4. How does FastPix handle video content localization?

FastPix supports automatic subtitle generation, multi-audio tracks, and regional video encoding for localized content. This allows developers to create a tailored viewing experience for global audiences.

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5. How does FastPix protect my content from piracy?

FastPix prioritizes the security of your valuable content. They employ robust security measures, including Digital Rights Management (DRM), to encrypt and protect your videos from unauthorized access and piracy. You can also add watermarks to deter unauthorized copying and identify the source if necessary. Additionally, access controls allow you to manage who can view your videos and limit their rights based on specific criteria.

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6. How can FastPix help as we scale video and user volume?

FastPix scales effortlessly with your growing video library and user base. Its robust infrastructure ensures smooth playback with minimal buffering, efficient video processing reduces storage costs, and a global CDN delivers videos reliably to audiences worldwide.

Advanced analytics provide insights into viewer behavior and content performance, helping you refine your strategy.

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