Wasmer
Wasmer is a Y Combinator-backed WebAssembly platform offering a Rust-built runtime, public package registry, and globally distributed edge cloud with sub-1ms cold starts. It serves individual developers, web agencies, and small businesses deploying PHP, Python, JavaScript, and Rust applications.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2018
- HeadquartersSan Francisco, United States
- Headcount1–10
- GTM typeB2B and B2C
- OfferingSoftware
What Wasmer does
Wasmer is a Y Combinator-backed WebAssembly platform company founded in 2018 and headquartered in San Francisco, with 1-10 employees. It operates a vertically integrated stack of three core products: the Wasmer Runtime, a WebAssembly execution engine built in Rust whose LLVM backend reaches within 5% of native performance; the Wasmer Registry, a public package manager and discovery platform for WebAssembly packages; and Wasmer Edge, a globally distributed serverless platform that deploys WebAssembly containers across 9+ regions with sub-1ms cold starts and usage-based pricing of $0.20 per million requests. Proprietary extensions include WASIX, which adds POSIX socket and multithreading support to standard WASI, and InstaBoot, a snapshot-based pre-warming technology that drastically reduces cold starts for interpreted languages such as PHP and Python.
The company monetizes through subscription-based managed cloud hosting (free tier plus Pro plan) and a usage-based edge platform, with product-led distribution via the wasmer CLI, GitHub integration, and a template library covering WordPress, Hugo, Astro, Next.js, Laravel, Django, and other major frameworks. The primary customer segments are individual software developers and web development agencies, with secondary use cases among PHP developers and small businesses seeking low-cost hosting. Wasmer claims a community of more than 20,000 users, 15,000 GitHub stars, and adoption or testing by Cloudflare, Vercel, Meta, and Kong. Differentiated technical work, including the first-known PHP opcode caching implementation in WebAssembly (yielding a 3x speedup for WordPress), positions the company in a niche where few competitors match the combination of near-native performance, POSIX-grade networking, and developer-friendly deployment without code changes.
Wasmer firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Wasmer
- Legal name
- Wasmer
- Website
- https://wasmer.io
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2018
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 1–10 employees
- Short description
- Wasmer is a Y Combinator-backed WebAssembly platform offering a Rust-built runtime, public package registry, and globally distributed edge cloud with sub-1ms cold starts. It serves individual developers, web agencies, and small businesses deploying PHP, Python, JavaScript, and Rust applications.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Wasmer industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Edge Computing Platform
- NAICS
- Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (5182), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (518), Computer Systems Design and Related Services (54151)
- SIC
- Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370), Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Load Balancing & Application Delivery (ADC, Global Load Balancing) (HDABAGAF)
- akta.pro secondary industries
- Hyperscale & OCP Server Designs (HDABADAB), API-First Backend Platforms (BaaS/mBaaS & Serverless Backends) (HDAEAKAH)
Keywords
Where Wasmer is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- San Francisco
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Markets served
Wasmer business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B and B2C
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Infrastructure, Technology or R&D, Personnel, Marketing or Sales, Operations
Revenue model
- Cloud Hosting / Managed Infrastructure: Revenue from hosting and scaling customer applications on Wasmer Edge infrastructure. Applications scale automatically from zero to high traffic, with pricing based on requests and CPU time. Free tier offered for hobby/personal projects; Pro tier for commercial use. Includes managed database provisioning (MySQL), persistent volumes, SSL certificates, and custom domain support.
- WebAssembly Package Registry: Community registry for discovering and publishing WebAssembly packages. Publishers can distribute packages while Wasmer may take a commission or drive adoption of the platform through ecosystem lock-in.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Freemium | Monthly | Free tier for hobby/personal projects |
| Subscription | Monthly | Pro plan for commercial projects |
| Usage-based | Pay-as-you-go | Edge platform cost efficiency |
Go-to-market motion1 record
Distribution channels5 records
Marketing channels7 records
Wasmer product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Wasmer builds and operates a WebAssembly-based universal application platform consisting of three core products: the Wasmer Runtime (a WebAssembly execution engine achieving near-native performance), the Wasmer Registry (a package manager and distribution system for WebAssembly packages), and Wasmer Edge (a globally distributed serverless edge computing platform for deploying WebAssembly containers). Supporting offerings include WASIX (an extended WASI specification), WinterJS JavaScript runtime, and specialized hosting services for PHP, static sites, and web applications.
Product overview
Wasmer is a WebAssembly-based universal application platform consisting of three core products: Wasmer Runtime (the WebAssembly execution engine achieving near-native performance), Wasmer Registry (the package manager and distribution system for WebAssembly packages), and Wasmer Edge (the serverless edge computing platform for deploying WebAssembly containers globally). Supporting products include WASIX (extended WASI for socket support), WinterJS (JavaScript runtime), and the static-web-server package. Wasmer also offers specialized hosting services including PHP Hosting, Static Site Hosting, and Free Web Hosting, all running on the Wasmer Edge infrastructure. The platform is Y Combinator-backed and used by companies like Cloudflare, Vercel, Meta, and Kong.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- Wasmer Runtime
- Wasmer Registry
- Wasmer Edge
- PHP Hosting
- Static Site Hosting
- Free Web Hosting
Quantifiable outcome
- 3x faster PHP workloads in WebAssembly (WordPress rendering reduced from ~620ms to ~205ms with opcode caching enabled)
- +4 more outcomes
Companies that use Wasmer
Customer profileSegments3 records
Ideal customer profiles3 records
Wasmer technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration1 record
Feature6 records
Wasmer partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
One partnership is on record.
- WinterJS (by Wasmer)coreWinterJS is Wasmer's JavaScript runtime that brings JavaScript to Wasmer Edge. It is published as a package (wasmer/winterjs) on the Wasmer registry and used as the runtime for JavaScript Workers on the platform. Enables running JS service workers on edge infrastructure.
Scale indicators4 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights6 records
Wasmer competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- Cloudflare Workers: Cloudflare's serverless edge compute platform runs JavaScript and increasingly WebAssembly at 300+ cities globally. Most direct competitor to Wasmer Edge, with Wasm support, cold-start benchmarks, and a usage-based pricing model that Wasmer explicitly compares itself against.
- Fastly Compute@Edge: Fastly's edge compute product was an early Wasm-on-the-edge pioneer (originally built on Lucet, now Wasmtime) and serves similar developer personas with isolate-based isolation. Competes on cold-start latency and language support — directly comparable to Wasmer's value proposition.
- Akamai EdgeWorkers: Akamai's edge compute platform runs JavaScript and WASM-based functions at the edge of its CDN. Targets similar serverless-at-the-edge use cases with a large incumbent distribution network — directly competes with Wasmer Edge for enterprise edge workloads.
- Vercel Edge Functions: Vercel's edge runtime deploys JavaScript and Wasm-based functions globally, tightly integrated with Next.js. Wasmer's homepage explicitly features Vercel as a benchmark user/competitor — directly comparable in targeting web developers deploying frontend frameworks at the edge.
- Deno Deploy: Deno's edge platform runs TypeScript/JavaScript and WebAssembly globally with isolate-based isolation. Targets the same developer audience as Wasmer with a strong open-source runtime (Deno) and edge hosting, comparable on isolation, cold starts, and developer experience.
- Fermyon: Fermyon builds the Spin framework and Fermyon Cloud for WebAssembly-based serverless applications. Most directly comparable pure-play Wasm serverless competitor to Wasmer, with similar focus on portable Wasm workloads, multi-language SDKs, and cloud-hosted execution.
- Cosmonic: Cosmonic provides a WebAssembly-based distributed application platform (built on wasmCloud) targeting microservices and edge workloads. Comparable to Wasmer in being a Wasm-native platform serving developers who want to run Wasm workloads in production across distributed infrastructure.
- Fly.io: Fly.io runs application containers on a global edge network with focus on simplicity and developer experience. Wasmer benchmarks itself against Fly.io on cold starts and pricing — comparable in targeting developers wanting globally distributed applications without cloud complexity.
- Netlify Edge Functions: Netlify's edge functions run JavaScript and Wasm at the edge of its CDN, deeply integrated with the Netlify frontend platform. Comparable to Wasmer for web developers deploying static sites and Jamstack applications with edge logic — same target persona and pricing model.
Broad incumbents
- AWS Lambda@Edge: AWS Lambda@Edge runs Lambda functions at CloudFront edge locations as part of the broader AWS ecosystem. Wasmer explicitly benchmarks against Lambda on cold starts (300ms vs sub-1ms) and pricing — a broad incumbent with massive distribution rather than a direct Wasm-native specialist.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Wasmer social profiles
Digital presenceWasmer financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Wasmer leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles1 record
Wasmer funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds2 records
Investors6 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Wasmer M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Wasmer
What does Wasmer do?
Wasmer builds and operates a WebAssembly-based universal application platform consisting of three core products: the Wasmer Runtime (a WebAssembly execution engine achieving near-native performance), the Wasmer Registry (a package manager and distribution system for WebAssembly packages), and Wasmer Edge (a globally distributed serverless edge computing platform for deploying WebAssembly containers). Supporting offerings include WASIX (an extended WASI specification), WinterJS JavaScript runtime, and specialized hosting services for PHP, static sites, and web applications.
Is Wasmer a public or private company?
Wasmer is a private company. It is classified as venture growth investor backed and is currently operating.
When was Wasmer founded?
Wasmer was founded in 2018. It employs 1 to 10 people.
Where is Wasmer based?
Wasmer is headquartered in San Francisco, United States, in the North America region.
How does Wasmer make money?
Two revenue lines are on record. Cloud Hosting / Managed Infrastructure is the primary driver. The others are webAssembly Package Registry.
Who are Wasmer's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are Cloudflare Workers, Fastly Compute@Edge, Akamai EdgeWorkers, Vercel Edge Functions, Deno Deploy, Fermyon, Cosmonic, Fly.io and Netlify Edge Functions. AWS Lambda@Edge is listed as a broad incumbent.
Does Wasmer have an API?
Yes. Wasmer provides a GraphQL API for the registry at https://registry.wasmer.io/graphql. The CLI interacts with this API for package publishing and management. Commands like 'wasmer config set registry.url' point to the GraphQL endpoint. Developer documentation is at docs.wasmer.io/graphql-api.
What industry is Wasmer in?
Wasmer's product category is Edge Computing Platform. Its primary akta.pro industry code is HDABAGAF, Load Balancing & Application Delivery (ADC, Global Load Balancing), with a secondary code of HDABADAB, Hyperscale & OCP Server Designs. Its NAICS code is 5182 and its SIC code is 7370.