Cloudflare vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) comparison

Cloudflare and Fastly are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Cloudflare is ranked #9 with an average rating of 9.1, while Fastly is ranked #33 with an average rating of 7.0. Cloudflare holds a 5.2% mindshare in WAF, compared to Fastly’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Cloudflare users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 60% of Fastly users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cloudflare and The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloudflare vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

June 2026

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Helped 908,800 peers since 2012

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 August 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 3.8%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare is 5.2%, down from 7.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is 1.1%, up from 0.9% 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	3.8%
Cloudflare	5.2%
The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)	1.1%
Other	89.9%

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.

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M.A. Faisal

General Manager at bKash Limited

Advanced protection has secured critical web workloads and provides clear traffic visibility

From a security perspective, there remains a security loophole, as some browsers in the market can bypass the Turnstile solution, which requires approximately 40 seconds to do so. From a performance perspective, this is acceptable. We also tried Google reCAPTCHA, and that can also be bypassed. From a security perspective, I would say neither solution is completely secured. Regarding uptime, we have faced a couple of incidents due to Cloudflare in recent years, so I cannot say we receive 100% uptime for our region. We sometimes face challenges, including downtime and other issues. As a result, we are not receiving 100% uptime from Cloudflare's solution. Since most of our customers are in this region, we need alternatives. We need something more competitive than Cloudflare. Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, Cloudflare has three points of presence already, and we cannot find any other solution provider in Bangladesh as an alternative, which presents another challenge. Competitor solutions have more attack signatures, which ensure better security compared to Cloudflare's predefined configurations. Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements. Cloudflare could improve in this area. Additionally, regarding visibility, Cloudflare has static visibility, but they could adopt dynamic graph features for their customers.

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reviewer2161107

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.

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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

"It protects web applications efficiently."

"We extensively use the solution every day. The solution is very stable; we haven’t seen any glitches."

"The impact of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's integration with existing web technologies on our site's performance and security measures is quite great, actually."

"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."

"The setup process is very simple for me."

"The solution protects our application, which runs on the HTTP protocol, from DDoS attacks."

"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."

"In general, it's a very good product: the solution is very stable, the performance is great, the product offers very good scalability, the pricing is very reasonable, the installation is very straightforward and quite simple, and technical support has a very fast response time and is helpful."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is that it has a free version. They give us the free version with the anti-DDoS features and also the load balancing solution."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."

"I have not had a DDOS attack since, or at least not become unavailable due to DDOS which means my ROI is pretty good."

"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."

"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules."

"CloudFlare's caching brings the load speed down from 4.32 seconds to 2.45 seconds."

"So far I use free tier and happy with it."

"Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website."

More Cloudflare pros

"When configuring a web application firewall using Signal Sciences, we configure a rule whereby no one except a few people can access the application."

"The product's most valuable feature is its ability to set up the rules easily."

"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."

"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

"We have noticed some latency when the call goes through the firewall. That could be improved."

"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."

"Its stability could be better."

"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."

"The dashboard could be more user-friendly."

"I have experienced some difficulties with Cloudflare's support as a customer based in India."

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

"The user interface is very simple and straightforward, but users need knowledge about DNS to accomplish tasks."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

"More insight into analytics and threats would be a good place to start improving Cloudflare."

"It would be beneficial for us if Cloudflare could offer a scrubbing solution. This would involve taking a snapshot of my website and keeping it live during a DDoS attack, ensuring uninterrupted service for our users. DDoS attacks are typically short in duration, and having Cloudflare maintain the site's availability from its secure network would enhance the overall user experience. I would appreciate it if Cloudflare could consider implementing this feature. Many organizations already utilize similar capabilities in their CDN platforms, where a static snapshot of the web page is displayed during DDoS attacks. In terms of features, Cloudflare needs to enhance its resilience and stay more focused on adopting new technologies. For instance, solutions like F5 XC Box, Access Solution, and Distributed Cloud Solution have impressive features, and Cloudflare should strive to match and exceed those capabilities. There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features. Cloudflare should prioritize enhancements in areas such as behavioral DDoS and protection against SQL injection attacks, considering the prevalent trend of public exposure to the internet for business reasons. Overall, Cloudflare needs to invest more in advancing its feature set."

"DNS Management."

"Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."

"Perhaps I would ask that they improve the Free plan and allow us to use it with any TLD (certain ones are not allowed)."

"Technical support is lacking."

"The Always Online feature has room for improvement. It seems to work sometimes and not others even with the pro version."

"It would be good if Cloudflare could have more servers for better traffic routing or an increase in the traffic routed. This is what I'd like to improve in Cloudflare."

More Cloudflare cons

"The UI is not very intuitive and could be better."

"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."

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"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 Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."

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

"The solution is expensive."

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

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

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."

"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."

"We are using the free tier of the solution."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The product has an affordable cost."

"The pricing is 50% less than Akamai."

"Signal Sciences is pretty cheap compared to other solutions."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

17%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Outsourcing Company

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Retailer

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

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	46
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	26

No data available

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.

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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...

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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...

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Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...

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Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?

Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare DNS?

The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cloudflare are a bit on the higher side overall.

See all answers

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-makin...

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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 i...

See all answers

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 ma...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 6% of the time

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Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

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Radware Cloud WAF Service vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 31% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Fastly vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

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Compared 12% of the time

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 6% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

August 2026

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

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Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

August 2026

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Buyer's Guide

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

July 2026

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) report

Download The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF

Cloudflare DNS

Signal Sciences Next-Gen WAF, Signal Sciences RASP

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

Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.

Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.

What are Cloudflare's key features?

CDN Caching: Enhances website speed through content delivery network caching.
Web Application Firewall: Protects websites from online threats.
DDoS Mitigation: Shields against distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DNS Management: Offers easy-to-use and flexible domain management.
SSL Certificates: Ensures secure connections between users and servers.
Analytics: Provides insights with robust analytics tools.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Enhanced Security: Strengthening web security with DDoS and firewall protection.
Speed Improvement: Faster content delivery with CDN caching.
Operational Simplicity: Simplifies website optimization through a user-friendly interface.
Scalable Solutions: Scales with global reach, lowering latency for improved performance.
Cost Efficiency: Offers layers of valuable functionality with pricing options.

Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.

Cloudflare

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF powered by Signal Sciences offers advanced protection against sophisticated cyber threats, ensuring robust and scalable security for web applications. It integrates seamlessly into existing environments, blocking malicious traffic efficiently.

Designed for optimal web application protection, The Fastly Next-Gen WAF distinguishes itself through its ability to dynamically learn traffic patterns, providing comprehensive security without compromising speed. It is engineered to defend against OWASP Top 10 threats while offering real-time insights and analytics. With a focus on adaptability, it caters to modern DevOps environments, ensuring that security stays aligned with rapid deployment cycles and agile workflows. Its scalable architecture, coupled with its detailed reporting features, makes it an attractive choice for enterprises aiming for proactive threat management.

What are the key features of The Fastly Next-Gen WAF powered by Signal Sciences?

Dynamic Traffic Analysis: Continuously learns and adapts to traffic patterns.
Scalable Protection: Meets the demands of growing business needs.
Real-Time Insights: Offers detailed analytics for proactive threat management.
Advanced Threat Detection: Shields against the latest OWASP Top 10 threats.
Seamless Integration: Fits into existing DevOps pipelines and architectures with ease.

What benefits should users seek in reviews when evaluating The Fastly Next-Gen WAF powered by Signal Sciences?

Improved Security Posture: Enhanced ability to defend against active threats.
Operational Efficiency: Streamlined workflow integration without performance hits.
Cost Efficiency: Offers strong ROI through reduced breach risk and operational downtime.
Scalability: Grows with business needs, maintaining security effectiveness.
Enhanced Decision-Making: Data-driven insights lead to better security strategies.

In industries like e-commerce, finance, and healthcare, The Fastly Next-Gen WAF is implemented to ensure compliance and data protection. Retail sectors benefit from its ability to handle peak traffic while maintaining security, and financial services appreciate its detailed monitoring capabilities for sensitive transaction protection. Healthcare organizations leverage its scalability to safeguard patient data during increased digital transformation efforts.

Fastly

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

Chef, Adobe, Datadog, Etsy, GrubHub, Vimeo, SendGrid, Under Armour, Duo, AppNexus

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

June 2026

Free Report: Cloudflare vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.

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