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Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

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

Barracuda Web Application F...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
16th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (po...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
34th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.8
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Barracuda Web Application Firewall is 1.8%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is 1.2%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Barracuda Web Application Firewall1.8%
The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)1.2%
Other97.0%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2797602 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Security Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Advanced application protection has reduced manual monitoring and improved attack visibility
For example, if we consider a company that has an application with a payment gateway configured, which provides services including money transactions, we deploy Barracuda Web Application Firewall for that application. We host the service in Barracuda Web Application Firewall. When a client requests access to the application, the request goes to Barracuda Web Application Firewall first, which will verify the request contents and create a separate TCP connection to the backend server if the request is legitimate. This process protects against attacks including SQL injection or cross-site scripting, where Barracuda Web Application Firewall will block any request that matches attack signatures. The reporting features are quite good as they have reporting charts and dashboards that provide lists of attacks and real-time verification of those attacks, helping in better reporting by tracking requests based on time and unique endpoints. I believe URL Profiles and Website Profiles are the most unique features offered. They create separate endpoints for each request integrated with the application, providing different security profiles based on the requirements. Moreover, the learning feature is very comprehensive, allowing us to monitor the applications before switching to protect mode, creating automatic profiles based on learned traffic, which helps to fine-tune security policy. Barracuda Web Application Firewall's user interface automates the blocking of malicious IP addresses, reducing the manual burden. Additionally, enabling the learning feature allows for quick preparation of security profiles, creating URL profiles automatically, which significantly reduces manual intervention and false positives.
reviewer2161107 - PeerSpot reviewer
Staff Engineer at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Room for improvement with user interface while competitive pricing impresses
It is managed through Infrastructure as Code, so all configurations can be managed in the code itself, which is beneficial. Because it uses rules, it is easy to set up, and we have many different sites where the configurations are straightforward. Though the UI is not very interactive, which is a downside, we can manage many things. The UI is not very intuitive and could be better. However, we manage all the configurations through code, which is easy to maintain. It has extensive anomaly detection capabilities, so the traffic is classified into several categories where thresholds can be defined and customized based on false positives and false negatives. This is advantageous because you do not need to tweak it very often. Once you set it up, an audit once a quarter would suffice. Because The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is API-driven, we have integrations with the CI/CD pipeline through GitHub Actions, making it easy to integrate.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Data leak prevention is very important and ensures protection against attacks."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use and the signature base."
"We've always been pretty happy with technical support; we find them helpful and knowledgable."
"The solution is user-friendly and easy to set up."
"It allows us to scale out to multiple phase servers."
"The solution ensures layer seven is secure from attacks."
"It's very simple and predictable, because Barracuda provides a vision of the current state of your application. It gives you an understanding of what is happening on your site and any attempts against you at your source. This is the main value that Web Application Firewall provides our company. These aspects are also the main reason for this documentation process."
"One of the strongest points is its robust issue discovery capabilities. Barracuda invests significant efforts in identifying and resolving issues. They have multiple products that work in tandem to perform these checks, which is beneficial because it automates security updates. This is the primary reason I recommend it to my customers."
"When configuring a web application firewall using Signal Sciences, we configure a rule whereby no one except a few people can access the application."
"Because The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is API-driven, we have integrations with the CI/CD pipeline through GitHub Actions, making it easy to integrate."
"The product's most valuable feature is its ability to set up the rules easily."
"Fastly (Signal Sciences) integrates and tags the intermittent traffic based on patterns. It generates signals and provides them in a dashboard where we can view them and decide whether to allow or deny traffic. It's a more advanced and easy-to-navigate dashboard."
 

Cons

"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."
"They could improve their performance, support, and their upgrades. Their updates used to be good. Their improvements were right on the money but nowadays, the updates are minor."
"There are false positives that I am receiving when compared to other WAFs. The issues with false positives affect client transactions, leading to complaints about blocked transactions."
"I would like to see an improved capacity to store logs so that they will be available for a longer time."
"Barracuda Networks Web Application Firewall is not tightly equipped to handle application layer security threats."
"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."
"The reporting aspect of the solution needs improvement. I don't find that it's very good. They could do some work on it to make it much better. It's not that the reporting isn't secure. It's just that I would prefer to store my reports for an extended period of time. Right now, that's not possible and I'd prefer it if that could change. I also would say that the reports themselves are expensive."
"It would be better if their updates would be released annually."
"The UI is not very intuitive and could be better."
"Even if we create some custom rules, Signal Sciences cannot capture some of the malicious traffic."
"Fastly don't support caching for China users. That's the only feature lacking compared to Akamai."
"The areas that could be improved in Signal Sciences include the effectiveness of rules, as many didn't function optimally and required custom rule-writing to address bypasses for WAF."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is based on a licensing model and might be $360 for the hybrid version."
"The price of this solution is okay."
"While I would have to check on the price of the solution, I feel it to be okay and it matches the market price."
"The price is reasonable, more so than other products."
"The product pricing was competitive for the value it offers regarding security features."
"They only offer a yearly licensing plan."
"The Barracuda Web Application Firewall is quite expensive."
"The pricing is less compared to other web applications."
"The pricing is 50% less than Akamai."
"The product has an affordable cost."
"Signal Sciences is pretty cheap compared to other solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise12
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
My main use case for Barracuda Web Application Firewall is utilizing it in the areas of perimeter security, load balancing, and deploying it on the cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments, whic...
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 when compared to other vendors including F5 and Imperva, who tend to have higher p...
What needs improvement with Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
I think Barracuda Web Application Firewall can be improved by providing more information around data integrity control, which would be interesting to see.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Signal Sciences?
The pricing is very competitive compared to other providers. The pricing is definitely a factor in our decision-making process.
What needs improvement with Signal Sciences?
We do use it, but the UI can be improved as we mostly work through the CI/CD. It provides support, but sometimes it is hard to navigate unless you are very familiar with it.
What is your primary use case for Signal Sciences?
The CDN is for caching and The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is for protecting the servers from malicious traffic. They both perform different jobs and serve different purposes, ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Signal Sciences Next-Gen WAF, Signal Sciences RASP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Oracle, CBS, Pioneer, Hyundai, Publix, Barnes Noble, Calzedonia, Nordstrom, Samsung, Nascar
Chef, Adobe, Datadog, Etsy, GrubHub, Vimeo, SendGrid, Under Armour, Duo, AppNexus
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.