Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Arbor DDoS vs Fastly comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Arbor DDoS
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fastly
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
10th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
CDN (8th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (18th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Arbor DDoS is 9.8%, down from 13.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fastly is 2.7%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Arbor DDoS9.8%
Fastly2.7%
Other87.5%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

SZ
Team Lead Network Engineer at Artco Group d.o.o Sarajevo
Reliable protection ensures robust network defense and simplifies DDoS management
I am not sure if we plan to use additional features because we have many vendors and platforms that we support. We use the main function and that is it. The prices for Arbor DDoS are expensive. The licensing is subscription-based. From our sales department, they discuss that prices are very high. A potential improvement could be establishing a contract with Cisco to sell via their channel. This could be beneficial because we work extensively with Cisco. If you are a Cisco partner, you can sell Arbor DDoS. That would be good for customers that are Cisco-based because many customers in Bosnia are Cisco-based customers. BH Telecom, our main customer, sells Arbor DDoS to other customers for protection. They buy Arbor and sell the product services to others via Internet links. They sell add-on DDoS protection via Arbor DDoS. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Arbor DDoS is not present in many customers. Some customers try to sell it, but they sell other vendors such as F5. Arbor DDoS is mainly seen in telecom operators but not much in other customers.
PP
Technical support engineer at Adobe
Optimized ecommerce performance and improved access control through image handling and IP filtering
I believe that Fastly should provide guidelines for their WAF blocking rules. It should be public what the rules are that are blocking their contents. I believe Fastly should provide regional IP addresses instead of POP IPs. Fastly should provide features similar to Cloudflare regarding a block list. Additionally, a POP address should be there with a wide range of IP addresses provided, public static IP addresses, so customers can integrate egress IPs. Fastly should provide WebP image processing on the backend instead of on the fly. It would be a very useful feature to avoid unnecessary time for browser to browser and local cookies. I believe that Fastly service has a few gaps. We are not getting quick responses from Fastly technical support engineers. Sometimes they depend on their D3 developers. There should be transparency.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The AI capabilities and anomaly detection using machine learning modules like isolation forests and auto-encoders are the most effective in mitigating DDoS attacks."
"We use it not only for DDoS detection and protection, but we also use it for traffic analysis and capacity planning as well. We've also been able to extend the use of it to other security measures within our company, the front-line defense, not only for DDoS, but for any kind of scanning malware that may be picked up. It's also used for outbound attacks, which has helped us mitigate those and lower our bandwidth costs..."
"Reporting is quite good. There are several pages of reporting on DDoS attacks, and you can find all the details that you need."
"I like all the features together as a whole."
"The most valuable features include the traffic categorization and control of the traffic. The filtering of the traffic is very precise. When you want to stop some traffic, you precisely stop that traffic."
"Inside this product, there are many different configurations for protection, and we have one of the best experiences with it, specifically with the Atlas product."
"The solution is flexible, easy to implement and has an efficient technical support team."
"Arbor DDoS is easy to use, provides effective blocking of DDoS attacks, and can be used for DNS, web, and main servers. Additionally, this solution is far easier to operate than others solutions, such as Fortinet DDoS."
"Fastly provides CDN, WAF, image optimization, and IP restriction."
"Its initial setup process is straightforward."
"The product helps our organization to access sites located in different regions quickly."
"Compute@Edge features are valuable to me."
"Rate limiting is a good feature that protects from volumetric attacks."
"Support is good; the product works as advertised. We have a Slack connection with them. So we can basically ask for help, live, engage, and ring when they respond. Very quickly."
"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."
"Fastly combines both the CDN side and the Signal Sciences next-generation WAF, which is closely integrated with the CDN, allowing us to use both products seamlessly."
 

Cons

"The prices for Arbor DDoS are expensive. The licensing is subscription-based."
"An improvement to Arbor DDoS would be to make evaluation licenses and virtual machines available."
"Arbor DDoS could improve out-of-the-box reporting, it could be better."
"Based on my experience and feedback from colleagues, Arbor can make better use of the product because you have to spend a lot of time finding information in a huge number of papers."
"The upgrade process is mildly complex requiring treatment of the custom embedded OS separately from the application. The correlation of the underling OS to the application version can be easily missed."
"The following areas need improvement: opening and tracking support tickets, online support resources, software upgrades/updates and replacement media, and event management guidelines."
"The support got worse after NETSCOUT acquired Arbor."
"Auto mitigation is a feature provided when DDoS is observed on any of link/customer (configured under auto mitigation). It automatically starts mitigation with default filters. In default filter mode, there could be an impact on the customer’s link,"
"Support is not that great."
"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"We are not getting quick responses from Fastly technical support engineers. Sometimes they depend on their D3 developers."
"What I don't like about Fastly is that they charge a heavy price."
"The product should provide improved bot detection and management."
"It is missing a "staging" platform to deploy a test configuration with all of the real settings, which would allow us to properly test before putting it into production."
"Stronger analytics would be helpful, like showing configurations that haven't served a certain amount of traffic in a while. With many properties, things can get lost track of - duplicates or unused configurations not properly decommissioned."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You need to find a way to get a good offering from Arbor by negotiating a price. That is the challenge."
"Arbor DDoS is quite expensive, but all these solutions are expensive because they deal with confidential information."
"I don't know about the pricing details as our company's service provider offers us the solution as an inbuilt feature within the internet bandwidth they provide us."
"The licensing of a complete Arbor solution, including fire-walling and unified site management, can get expensive."
"I don't deal with the pricing, but it seems that you need to get basic support in order to upgrade the software and implement some patches."
"Regarding pricing, I would rate it as average. Arbor DDoS offers good value for money with our DDoS filter device. For higher protection needs, Arbor’s CloudMeter’s DDoS mitigation or hardware devices might be more expensive, but customers who need them are usually prepared for the cost and the additional resources required."
"I believe that the price of Arbor DDoS falls under the bracket of medium to high price."
"We do not use the Arbor Cloud DDoS solution because it is too costly."
"The pricing has been very competitive."
"It is an expensive solution."
"You need to pay a premium price for the tool."
"The solution is cheaper than other products in the market."
"I've generally found Fastly to be very competitive in pricing, especially around Compute@Edge."
"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."
"Fastly is less expensive than one of its competitors."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection solutions are best for your needs.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Retailer
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
I would say if it’s an ISP that will build a scrubbing center, Netscout/Arbor is a good solution. In all other solutions, Imperva is a great choice.
Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Arbor would be the best bid, apart from Arbor, Palo Alto and Fortinet have good solutions. As this is an ISP, I would prefer Arbor.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Arbor DDoS?
The prices for Arbor DDoS are expensive. The licensing is subscription-based. From our sales department, they discuss that prices are very high.
What do you like most about Fastly?
Support is good; the product works as advertised. We have a Slack connection with them. So we can basically ask for help, live, engage, and ring when they respond. Very quickly.
What needs improvement with Fastly?
I believe that Fastly should provide guidelines for their WAF blocking rules. It should be public what the rules are that are blocking their contents. I believe Fastly should provide regional IP ad...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Arbor Networks SP, Arbor Networks TMS, Arbor Cloud for ENT
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Xtel Communications
Twitter, Airbnb, Alaska Airlines, Pinterest, Vimeo, The Guardian, The New York Times, Ticketmaster, The Drupal Association, Opera, about.com, imgur, Etsy, Foursquare, GitHub, New Relic, shopify, Shazam, Firebase
Find out what your peers are saying about Arbor DDoS vs. Fastly and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.