Edge
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Getting Started 8 min read

Terminology

Every platform has its own vocabulary. Here's Edge's, in plain English — the words you'll meet in the docs, in Control, and around the network, each defined in a sentence or two.

Products

CDN

Edge's content delivery network. Caches and serves your sites and assets from nodes close to your users, with zero egress fees. More →

Compute

Virtual machines on the Edge network. Deploy apps, containers, and full VMs to locations near your users. More →

DNS

Authoritative DNS hosting on a global anycast network. Free, fast, and API-first. More →

Storage

S3-compatible object storage with zero egress. Files live in buckets and can be served directly or through the CDN. More →

Shield

Privacy-first bot protection without puzzles. Scores each visitor's humanity and verifies legitimate AI agents rather than blocking everything non-human. More →

Assist

Conversational agents for your website. Answers questions using your own content, embedded with one line of code. More →

Control

The Edge customer console at /account — where you create and manage deployments, billing, and account settings. More →

Agent API

The machine-facing interface that lets AI agents discover, deploy, and manage Edge resources autonomously — the "agentic cloud". More →

The network

Node

Any machine contributing capacity to the network — from a Raspberry Pi in an attic to rack hardware in a data centre — running the Edge node software. More →

Relay

An infrastructure node that routes traffic and coordinates work across the nodes around it, connecting them to the wider network.

PoP

Point of presence — a network location that serves traffic. Edge's PoPs include both strategic data-centre sites and contributed devices. More →

Explorer

The public view of the network: every online node on a live map, with per-node detail. More →

Reputation

A node's earned trust score, built through uptime and successful jobs. Higher reputation brings more and better work.

Stake

A refundable security deposit that unlocks trust-sensitive work for a node, or voting rights in governance. Returned when you leave; forfeited only for abuse.

Billing

Prepaid balance

Money you've added to your account up front. Usage draws down from it before anything touches your card.

Pay as you go

Usage-based billing with a card on file — you pay for what you use, topped up automatically.

Monthly cap

An optional hard limit on monthly spend. When the cap is reached, paid usage stops rather than billing past it.

Free tier

The allowance included with every product before any payment is needed — e.g. 500k CDN requests or 250 Assist questions a month.

Zero egress

Edge doesn't charge for data transfer out, on any product, at any scale. Bills are based on what you use or store, never on bytes moved. More →

Governance

Governance

How network changes are decided: proposals raised, debated, and voted on in the open by governance stakeholders. More →

DAO

The organisation that stewards the network — founders, core developers, and advisors — holding a collective veto over governance proposals.

Now put the words to work

Create a free account and see the terminology in its natural habitat — no card required.