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Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Fastly comparison

 

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

Cloudflare Web Application ...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fastly
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
19th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
CDN (7th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 7.4%, up from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fastly is 1.6%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

SachidDoshi - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers a huge signature repository and is superiorly effective in mitigating DDoS attacks
The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced, which presently stands at two or three months. The product has a custom rule set that users can modify and manifest as needed. The vendor can probably shorten the learning curve using cutting-edge technologies like AI. The solution provider can also work around the web applications and identify the toolset that needs to be implemented to deploy the solution in less time. The vendor has launched a SASE product that can function with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall, but many improvements are needed in terms of features, such as the web filtering feature, and CASB has not yet been added.
Nick Wilsdon - PeerSpot reviewer
An easily scalable and stable product that provides exceptional support
The product should provide improved bot detection and management. The product should also provide support for code management. Everybody working in CDN is currently looking for ways to better manage code deployment with various authorization levels and synchronization with our lower environments. Matching up what's happening in CDN with what's happening on the origin regarding testing would always be useful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup process is simple."
"We like that there's load balancing, firewall capabilities, DDoS protection, et cetera, all covered by Cloudflare."
"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."
"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."
"Technical support has a very fast response time and they are helpful."
"The security features are valuable. The particular feature we use is called OWASP."
"The product has improved our security posture by blocking bad actors."
"The setup process is very simple for me."
"The product helps our organization to access sites located in different regions quickly."
"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."
"Fastly uses configuration versioning, where you can deploy a new version in less than one minute."
"Compute@Edge features are valuable to me."
"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."
"Rate limiting is a good feature that protects from volumetric attacks."
"Its initial setup process is straightforward."
 

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."
"There could be an option to duplicate the cluster to maintain the consistency of rules."
"If they add logs history within the Cloudflare offering, that would be a great benefit."
"We have noticed some latency when the call goes through the firewall. That could be improved."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well. They have documentation for everything you're looking for, but they lack a single piece of documentation to tie everything together. As a new user or beginner, it took us a little bit of time to figure out how to put all these things in place."
"They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long."
"Its stability could be better."
"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."
"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."
"Support is not that great."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"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."
"What I don't like about Fastly is that they charge a heavy price."
"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."
"The product should provide improved bot detection and management."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"It is not too pricey."
"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."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."
"The solution is cheaper than other products in the market."
"The pricing has been very competitive."
"I've generally found Fastly to be very competitive in pricing, especially around Compute@Edge."
"You need to pay a premium price for the tool."
"It is an expensive solution."
"Fastly is less expensive than one of its competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Educational Organization
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
The product has a valuable security control functionality.
What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
I cannot say much about areas of improvement for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall because I haven't gone through deep understanding of it, as I am still learning. However, they need to improve t...
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?
What I don't like about Fastly is that they charge a heavy price. The pricing is different per region. If you have a customer who is international and has deployments in different regions, it is ve...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
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 Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. Fastly and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.