Edge function vs. origin redirect: a Paris store fixes a redirect tax

Edge function vs. origin redirect: a Paris store fixes a redirect tax
An apparel site geo-redirected visitors to localized URLs at origin. A shopper in Lisbon hit the edge, missed cache on the bare path, traveled to the Paris origin, got a 302, then came back across the edge again for the real page.
That round trip added 240ms before anything rendered.
They moved the geo-redirect into an edge function that read the country header and issued the 302 right at the Lisbon PoP — origin never involved.
Redirect latency dropped from 240ms to 11ms. Origin saw 100% fewer redirect requests.
Origin redirects are fine when logic needs database state. Edge functions win when the decision depends only on request headers — geo, device, A/B cookie.
The number that mattered: redirect latency from 240ms to 11ms.