F5 Advanced WAF vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) comparison

F5 and Fastly are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. F5 is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.3, while Fastly is ranked #25 with an average rating of 8.0. F5 holds a 7.5% mindshare in WAF, compared to Fastly’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of F5 users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 60% of Fastly users who would recommend it.

F5 Advanced WAF

Read 73 F5 Advanced WAF reviews

7,285 Views
6,848 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (po...

Read 4 The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) reviews

992 Views
873 Comparison Views

60% willing to recommend

F5 Advanced WAF

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (po...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Fastly Next-Gen WAF and F5 Advanced WAF are two products in the web application firewall market. Fastly Next-Gen WAF is recognized for pricing and ROI, while F5 Advanced WAF stands out with advanced features.

Features: Fastly Next-Gen WAF provides protection, robust analytics capabilities, and comprehensive security insights. F5 Advanced WAF offers extensive customization, advanced threat intelligence, and adaptability in feature set.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Fastly Next-Gen WAF ensures straightforward and swift deployment, complemented by responsive customer service. F5 Advanced WAF, with a more complex deployment process, benefits from robust technical support for integration.

Pricing and ROI: Fastly Next-Gen WAF is appreciated for cost-effectiveness and quick ROI. F5 Advanced WAF requires a higher initial investment, seen as offering long-term value.

To learn more, read our detailed F5 Advanced WAF vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

F5 Advanced WAF vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

February 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

F5 Advanced WAF

Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (po...

Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)

25th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

4.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of F5 Advanced WAF is 7.5%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is 1.2%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
F5 Advanced WAF	7.5%
The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)	1.2%
Other	91.3%

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Featured Reviews

Kallamuddin Ansari

Cyber Security Consultant at ProTechmanize

Application security has protected critical banking services while policy learning minimizes false blocks

F5 Advanced WAF performs well overall, but I have noticed some points that could enhance the solution. Initially, policy tuning could be simpler, as while the learning engine is powerful, initial tuning still requires experienced engineers, which can be challenging for new teams due to the complexity of options and parameters. A more guided and simple tuning workflow would help reduce the learning curve. Additionally, tighter native integration with SIEM or SOAR tools would simplify correlation and investigations for security teams, although log exports are available. Overall, these are not blockers, merely enhancement opportunities, and once tuned, F5 Advanced WAF is very stable and reliable; improving usability, reporting, and onboarding would make it even more effective for larger environments.

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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 also has antivirus and DDoS mitigation capabilities. We have enabled these features."

"The best solution for WAF."

"WAF functionality is valuable for protecting applications from attacks."

"The web application firewall itself is most valuable. It provides positive security and negative security. In negative security, it blocks a task such as cross-site scripting, code injection, etc. In positive security, it lets you specify and enforce things, such as the parameters allowed in username and password fields and the number of characters allowed in a field."

"The most valuable features of F5 Advanced WAF are the balancer and you can change policies very easily."

"The most valuable feature of F5 Advanced WAF is its grand unity of the implementation, where you have the freedom to configure based on how it affects your use case or your organization. With the default setting of implicit deny, you can gradually start defining and deploying the tool to align with your environment, whether it is outdated, recent, or futuristic. This allows you to customize the solution to protect you from threat actors. You have the ability to define what the advanced threat act should do - whether it should alert, deny, or both - and it will deliver based on your configuration. Unlike other online solutions, F5 Advanced WAF provides flexibility to deliver to your unique environment the way you want."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the WAF protection, Data Safe, and the seven-layer DDoS."

"The most valuable feature of F5 Advanced WAF is its ability to have a pool of resources that can distribute your traffic, and that is a plus for me. My company tried to look into a competitor, Imperva, but it was lacking that capability, so F5 Advanced WAF outperforms Imperva."

More F5 Advanced WAF pros

"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."

"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."

Cons

"I would like to see improved features in the F5 Advanced WAF solution, especially with a focus on enabling Kubernetes fully."

"People who want to work with the device have to be pro in Linux"

"I would like for there to be a cloud-based solution, this would also help to improve scalability."

"The reporting could be clearer and embedded to include our movement data."

"I would like to see a better interface and better documentation compatibility with other products. It's more complicated with OWASP."

"The contextual-based component needs a lot of help to catch up with the next-gen products."

"I think the deployment templates can be better."

"There is a gap in report management."

More F5 Advanced WAF cons

"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."

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's more expensive than other solutions and depending on the modules, there can be additional fees."

"The price of F5 Advanced WAF could improve it is expensive."

"F5 Advanced WAF is not a cost-effective solution. Although they are attempting to reduce prices with their VE and cloud options, they are more expensive than other solutions. The solution is more expensive on average."

"I rate F5 Advanced WAF's pricing a three out of ten."

"Licensing fees for this solution are paid on a yearly basis."

"The pricing for F5 Advanced WAF is comparable to a Rolls-Royce. Its price is a bit high when you compare it with other vendors. F5 Advanced WAF is a bit expensive. The customer was on a three-year plan and it was around $560,000."

"I think the price is very high."

"The cost is slightly above average."

More F5 Advanced WAF pricing and cost advice

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

"The pricing is 50% less than Akamai."

"The product has an affordable cost."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Manufacturing Company

13%

Retailer

11%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	26
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	31

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about F5 Advanced WAF?

It's a fairly easy-to-use and user-friendly tool. My administrators and team also like its ability to customize the rules per the requirements.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced WAF?

Regarding the price, I think the cost is a bit higher compared to others. Earlier we were using Radware, and compared to Radware, it is very high. However, it is providing more features than Radwar...

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What needs improvement with F5 Advanced WAF?

In terms of additional features I would like to see from them in the future, I think the GTM is a bit complicated to configure, which I observed. Otherwise, LTM and WAF are straightforward. I faced...

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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.

See all answers

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.

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 malicious traffic. They both perform different jobs and serve different purposes, ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 26% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

AWS WAF vs F5 Advanced WAF

Compared 5% of the time

Radware Alteon vs F5 Advanced WAF

Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 14% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 11% of the time

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

Compared 10% of the time

Azure Front Door vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

F5 Advanced WAF

February 2026

Download F5 Advanced WAF product report

Buyer's Guide

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

January 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

No data available

Signal Sciences Next-Gen WAF, Signal Sciences RASP

Overview

F5 Advanced WAF is a web application security solution for financial and government sectors, e-commerce, and public-facing websites. It offers protection against various attacks, including botnets, web scraping, and foreign entities. The solution can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud and is often used with other security tools. Its most valuable features include DDoS and DNS attack protection, SSL uploading, anomaly detection, and the ability to input custom rules.

F5 Advanced WAF has helped organizations to expose more services to the public while providing an extra layer of protection, preventing revenue loss, and securing connectivity.

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) provides web application and API protection, RASP, rate limiting, bot protection and DDoS purpose built to eliminate the challenges of legacy WAF.

Fastly

Sample Customers

MAXIMUS, Vivo, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office, City Bank

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

Buyer's Guide

F5 Advanced WAF vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

February 2026

Free Report: F5 Advanced WAF vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Advanced WAF vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.

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