AI Traffic Grew 6.5x Faster Than Human Traffic This Year

Fastly has reported a significant increase in AI-generated traffic on its network, with AI requests growing approximately 30% from January to May 2026, outpacing human traffic growth by 6.5 times. This surge is largely driven by two categories: AI crawlers, which methodically scan the web for data to train large language models, and AI fetchers, which execute user-directed tasks such as answering questions or checking availability. While AI crawlers maintain a consistent activity level around the clock, fetchers align more closely with human actions, pointing to an evolving internet layer characterized by intelligent, automated agents. As a result, AI traffic requires more frequent interactions with origin infrastructure, with over 51% of AI requests necessitating direct data retrieval from origin servers compared to less than 9% of human requests. This shift demands smarter web infrastructure strategies to efficiently manage cached content, intelligently route requests for fresh data, and protect origin systems from the high frequency of live information requests. The report highlights the need for businesses to adapt to these changes and leverage them for competitive advantage, with further insights and strategies to be discussed in a subsequent analysis by Fastly's CMO.