Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs Fastly comparison

Barracuda Networks and Fastly are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Barracuda Networks is ranked #17 with an average rating of 7.8, while Fastly is ranked #20 with an average rating of 9.0. Barracuda Networks holds a 1.9% mindshare in WAF, compared to Fastly’s 1.7% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Barracuda Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Fastly users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Barracuda Web Application Firewall and Fastly are competing in the web application security space. Barracuda has an edge in pricing and support, making it attractive for budget-conscious users, while Fastly stands out with its advanced features and customer satisfaction, appealing to those seeking robust capabilities.

Features: Barracuda offers comprehensive security layers, easy integration with existing systems, and reliable DDoS attack protection. Fastly distinguishes itself with real-time threat detection, a global content delivery network, and highly customizable configuration.

Room for Improvement: Barracuda could improve by enhancing its real-time threat detection, expanding its global content delivery network capabilities, and offering more customization options. Fastly could focus on simplifying deployment, enhancing ease of use, and offering more competitive pricing for their features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Barracuda emphasizes simplicity with straightforward deployment and responsive customer support. Fastly features a cloud-native architecture for flexible deployment, praised for its customer service, though it might require more technical expertise initially.

Pricing and ROI: Barracuda offers competitive setup costs with a focus on long-term ROI, appealing to those seeking cost-effective solutions. Fastly has premium pricing that reflects its advanced features and scalability, promising substantial ROI for businesses needing comprehensive performance and security.

To learn more, read our detailed Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. Fastly Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. Fastly

April 2026

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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

Cloudflare Web Application ...

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 4.7%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda Web Application Firewall is 1.9%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fastly is 1.7%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall	4.7%
Barracuda Web Application Firewall	1.9%
Fastly	1.7%
Other	91.7%

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Featured Reviews

Dean Barisic

CTO at PlayNirvana

Advanced security reporting has protected high-traffic betting platforms from constant attacks

I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we have a dedicated IT team for that, and I'm not involved with Cloudflare much anymore. But if I were to compare them to F5, I would like to see more features that F5 offers. F5 has an option to bring the whole infrastructure, the whole WAF and all their packages, Bot Management, and everything else on your infrastructure. You need to install certain services from their side, and then you can choose if you would like requests to hit your servers immediately or if requests need to be proxied through F5 backbone. That would be a nice addition because we have 90% of the traffic as legit traffic coming from whitelisted servers. If it comes from whitelisted servers, I don't need to go every request through the backbone; I could easily just IP whitelist everything. Then I could maybe have Bot Management on my infrastructure that drastically reduces the price of Cloudflare. I would like to see Push CDN more improved in the next release of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. And maybe something similar to Pushpin that Fastly has, which is an option where you can push messages that then can be scaled globally over the network. From our perspective, if we have a listener that listens for stock updates, I would just need to have one processor that pushes those updates to the Cloudflare API, and then Cloudflare would broadcast that message to all listeners. Cloudflare will check the order of the message, and if you, as a customer, are not connected or have some kind of network issue, when you reconnect, you will receive the latest state and missing updates.

Read full review

Shahzad Abid

Director Information Technology at College of Physicians & Surgeons Pakistan

Has protected our legacy applications effectively but has required constant manual filtering due to false positives

I assess the effectiveness of the machine learning-driven threat detection in Barracuda Web Application Firewall as sometimes behaving abnormally, often showing me false positive attacks, so I have to fix these attacks from time to time. From a stability point of view, I would definitely rate Barracuda Web Application Firewall a seven out of ten. There is definitely some room for improvement; nothing is perfect in the world. I am not satisfied with the technical support from Barracuda. I am somewhat disappointed with the technical support that I have received so far. Whenever I generate a ticket for my problem, it goes to the Indian support team, and they all the time start with the most junior team member, consuming all my precious time. At the end, I have to close that ticket without any satisfactory solution. I have complained that they should shift my support to any other region because I don't need Indian support; they are simply pathetic and not up to mark. To improve Barracuda Web Application Firewall, customers should be given ongoing training opportunities regarding the product and its features. I am not familiar with many features that are available, only using those which are necessary for my applications. I believe Barracuda must provide clearer product information or training sessions to make it more user-friendly, as sometimes its interface can be rigid and lacking in helpful resources or user tutorials about its features. For it to get closer to a ten, I think advanced reporting is missing because, as I mentioned earlier, there are many false positive events being recorded. Often, when I analyze these attacks, they turn out to be genuine customers or users interacting with my product, but Barracuda tags them as attackers. Reducing false positives must be a priority.

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Pranay Jain

Senior software developer at Simplifyvms

Edge caching has transformed response times and delivers faster candidate data globally

Fastly can be improved in certain areas such as VCL, which is powerful but has a steep learning curve for normal users. A more user-friendly, UI-based configuration could simplify the experience, alongside better templates for common use cases and dashboard improvements, as the current dashboard feels complex for beginners, and pricing can be hard to predict for smaller companies. I chose 8 out of 10 because it has excellent performance and low latency delivery, making it suitable for larger applications, with strong Edge Caching and instant purging capabilities. However, VCL complexity and pricing predictability, especially for smaller companies, along with a user-friendly dashboard are areas impacting my score.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."

"Technical support has a very fast response time and they are helpful."

"For us, the key feature of Cloudflare is DDoS protection and IP hiding, especially since we are a crypto company."

"The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10."

"Cloudflare WAF provides protection through rules and functionalities like Cloudflare's SDRAP."

"Very glad the WAF rulesets works out of box, and requires very little tuning or maintenance."

"Cloudflare has positively impacted my organization by making it easier for me to handle and set up DNS for multiple clients; I can easily go in and access their accounts, make changes they need, and it's a one-stop shop."

"It protects web applications efficiently."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

"The availability and stability are very high."

"The solution ensures layer seven is secure from attacks."

"What I like most about Barracuda Web Application Firewall is its availability. I also like that it's an easy-to-use solution."

"Barracuda Web Application Firewall provides optimized performance, a user-friendly environment, helpful dashboards, and is simple to use."

"It significantly improved our overall web security posture, addressing intrusions and enhancing control over web URLs in our environment."

"We only need one subscription to be protected against both active DDoS and offline DDoS attacks."

"I find the solution very stable."

"Barracuda Web Application Firewall provides optimized performance, a user-friendly environment, helpful dashboards, and is simple to use."

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall pros

"Fastly provides CDN, WAF, image optimization, and IP restriction."

"Rate limiting is a good feature that protects from volumetric attacks."

"The product helps our organization to access sites located in different regions quickly."

"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."

"In summary, this solution is easy to manage, quick to deploy, and all of my customers are happy."

"Its initial setup process is straightforward."

"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."

"Fastly uses configuration versioning, where you can deploy a new version in less than one minute."

More Fastly pros

Cons

"A key challenge arises when dealing with numerous integrations with HVAC systems. Depending on the specifics, there might be some configuration mismatches, which necessitate specific support."

"Its stability could be better."

"They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long."

"If they add logs history within the Cloudflare offering, that would be a great benefit."

"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."

"The dashboard could be more user-friendly."

"The learning curve was steep initially."

"The platform's control features related to real-time authentication and response time need improvement."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

"We encountered a few glitches while implementing API security features into the product."

"I wouldn't say that the solution is flexible."

"The solution could use more reports."

"Occasionally, upon installation of the Energize Updates, the plans will go off track, something which necessitates us calling up their support team for another update."

"I am not satisfied with the technical support from Barracuda. I am somewhat disappointed with the technical support that I have received so far."

"The documentation is lacking. It's not like what you'd get if you were using Juniper or Cisco. They need to expand on it and make it more useful."

"They should improve their features, so they easily compare to the competition."

"One of Barracuda's limitations is its user interface. The GUI for configuration is not intuitive and has remained largely unchanged for the past 10 to 12 years."

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall cons

"What I don't like about Fastly is that they charge a heavy price."

"The product should provide improved bot detection and management."

"Fastly can be improved in certain areas such as VCL, which is powerful but has a steep learning curve for normal users."

"It's not easy to start with Fastly if you don't have VCL knowledge, so it appears very complex at the beginning."

"We are not getting quick responses from Fastly technical support engineers. Sometimes they depend on their D3 developers."

"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."

"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."

"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."

More Fastly cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."

"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."

"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."

"What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I believe the pricing is not the best, but it's reasonable and acceptable. We also use the McAfee system in parallel. In terms of pricing, its okay - not great, but not bad either. It falls in the middle, which is acceptable. In terms of support licensing, last time, we were searching for a solution, and we considered products from resellers rather than directly from the cloud provider. However, the pricing we encountered was exceptionally high. As a result, we are inclined to select support from the reseller."

"It is not too pricey."

"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."

"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."

"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"The product is expensive."

"The solution is based on a licensing model and might be $360 for the hybrid version."

"While I would have to check on the price of the solution, I feel it to be okay and it matches the market price."

"They only offer a yearly licensing plan."

"The price of the solution is a little expensive. There is a license for this solution and it can be purchased every one, two, or five years."

"The pricing is less compared to other web applications."

"Barracuda costs us $8,000 per year. Barracuda costs $20,000 for a full subscription, when you try to protect multi-site infrastructure, in different geographical zones and for different data centers. If you have only one site, Barracuda will be cheaper."

"For small companies, the price is very expensive because the WAF is an enterprise-level application, not intended for smaller businesses. In my opinion, the price is right for enterprise-level use."

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"Fastly is less expensive than one of its competitors."

"The pricing has been very competitive."

"I've generally found Fastly to be very competitive in pricing, especially around Compute@Edge."

"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."

"You need to pay a premium price for the tool."

"The solution is cheaper than other products in the market."

"It is an expensive solution."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

17%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Marketing Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	26
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	11

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	5

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

The price of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

We are using Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools with their Zero Trust, so e...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?

I have been working with Barracuda Web Application Firewall for more than almost three and a half years. Its main use...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?

The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Barracuda Web Application Firewall are reasonable. They are competitive wh...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Barracuda Web Application Firewall?

The areas where it could be better are in security profiles, where a single service can have only one policy. There i...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fastly?

You need to pay a premium price for the tool.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Fastly?

I am using Fastly in the Adobe Commerce Cloud project. In this project, it is working as a reverse proxy for CDN and ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Azure Web Application Firewall vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

Radware Cloud WAF Service vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

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Compared 14% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 10% of the time

NetScaler vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 7% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 7% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 3% of the time

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Cloudflare vs Fastly

Compared 19% of the time

Akamai vs Fastly

Compared 17% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Fastly

Compared 9% of the time

Uplynk vs Fastly

Compared 5% of the time

Radware DDoS vs Fastly

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

May 2026

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Download Cloudflare Web Application Firewall product report

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda Web Application Firewall

May 2026

Barracuda Web Application Firewall report

Download Barracuda Web Application Firewall product report

Buyer's Guide

Fastly

May 2026

Download Fastly product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF

No data available

Overview

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall integrates DDoS protection, load balancing, and firewall capabilities. Its ease of use, configurability, and robust security measures make it a versatile choice for protecting web applications.

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall provides a comprehensive defense against threats with advanced reporting and robust security measures. It includes DNS integration, rate limiting, and extensive rule sets, all within a SaaS model that allows API configurability. Users value its caching, scalability, and pricing, although enhancements are needed in rate-limiting and third-party integration. Improvements in customer support, especially in India, real-time controls, and user documentation are also desired. Users seek a more intuitive dashboard, better log management, and improved alert systems, along with multitenancy capabilities and enhanced reporting.

What are the key features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

DDoS Protection: Shields applications from denial-of-service attacks
Load Balancing: Ensures efficient traffic distribution
DNS Integration: Enhances domain name system security
Rate Limiting: Controls traffic flow and reduces abuse
Extensive Rule Sets: Offers customizable security rules

What benefits and ROI can users find in reviews?

Scalability: Easily adapts to growing business needs
Pricing: Offers reasonable pricing structure
Caching: Improves application performance and speed
Configurable Security: Provides customizable defense settings
Efficient Management: Simplifies security and application control

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall finds application in industries like banking and retail by acting as a comprehensive security gateway, managing authentication and authorization while protecting web applications from malicious Layer 7 traffic. It also implements load balancing, CDN, and zero-trust policies, supported by advanced reporting, analytics tools, and threat scoring to meet specific industry needs.

Cloudflare

Barracuda Web Application Firewall combines advanced bot management, DDoS protection, and real-time threat detection for enhanced application security, making it a popular choice for safeguarding web environments.

Organizations rely on Barracuda Web Application Firewall for its robust features, including automatic security updates and comprehensive technical support. It offers a user-friendly interface, though improvements are needed in scalability and false positive reduction. It is widely used to enhance security against DDoS attacks, cross-site scripting, SQL injections, and malicious bots. Suitable for Azure environments, it manages legitimate traffic and ensures OWASP compliance across cloud and data centers.

What are the top features of Barracuda Web Application Firewall?

Advanced Bot Management: Protects against malicious bot activity through intelligent detection.
DDoS Protection: Offers defenses against Distributed Denial of Service attacks.
Automatic Security Updates: Keeps protections current with auto updates.
Real-Time Threat Detection and Reporting: Monitors and reports threats immediately for rapid response.
Content Filtering and URL Encryption: Secures traffic with robust content inspection and URL encryption.
Traffic Management: Ensures efficient traffic handling and stability.

What benefits should be noted in reviews?

Enhanced Security: Strong protection against a wide range of web threats.
User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies configuration and management tasks.
Comprehensive Support: Access to technical support for rapid issue resolution.
Real-Time Monitoring: Immediate detection and reporting enhance threat management.

Barracuda Web Application Firewall is implemented in industries like cloud and banking for its compliance capabilities and threat protection. It supports web applications through traffic filtering, server protection, and content inspection in hosting environments.

Barracuda Networks

Fastly is a leading provider of content delivery network services that enhances website performance through efficient caching and real-time architecture capabilities.

Fastly integrates CDN technology with advanced web application firewall for comprehensive security. Its global infrastructure supports performance enhancement, rapid deployment, and rollback capabilities. Utilizing the VCL language allows custom caching solutions. Compute@Edge provides extensive architectural flexibility, aiding in HTML manipulation and script execution. Users benefit from its stability and reliability features for seamless network protection, log management, image optimization, and A/B testing. Challenges include limited support in mainland China, inadequate WebSocket protocol implementation, and complex pricing structures.

What are the key features of Fastly?

CDN Integration: Delivers content quickly across global Points of Presence.
Signal Sciences’ WAF: Manages security threats effectively.
VCL Language: Offers customizable caching solutions.
Compute@Edge: Enables flexible architecture for HTML manipulation.
Image Optimization: Enhances performance with dynamic image delivery.

What benefits should users consider in reviews?

Performance Enhancement: Boosts website speed and response time.
Rapid Deployment: Allows for swift implementation and rollback.
Real-Time Visibility: Provides insights into cached content management.
Security and Stability: Ensures reliability against DDoS attacks and other threats.
Flexibility: Offers diverse network protection and infrastructure capabilities.

Fastly is widely implemented in industries needing robust content delivery and security capabilities. Companies use it as a reverse proxy for media delivery, ensuring availability and optimized performance. Its rapid deployment and rollback features are particularly beneficial in technology sectors requiring agile responses to demand shifts.

Fastly

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk

Oracle, CBS, Pioneer, Hyundai, Publix, Barnes Noble, Calzedonia, Nordstrom, Samsung, Nascar

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

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. Fastly

April 2026

Free Report: Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. Fastly

Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. Fastly and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.

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