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Microsoft Azure Application Gateway 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

Microsoft Azure Application...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
10th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (12th)
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 September 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is 2.8%, down from 7.4% 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 (%)
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway2.8%
The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)1.2%
Other96.0%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

SS
Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Mutual TLS has secured our web services and now needs broader protocol support
The most valuable feature we have found in Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is mutual TLS. We find mutual TLS valuable because we can verify the client securely by setting up the trust certificate of the client, and also if we do it at the client side as well. This successfully develops mutual trust, ensuring that we know the client who is calling our service is a legitimate client. That is a very nice feature.Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has helped manage our traffic efficiently because we have many web services that we can put behind the same URL, and we can have different URLs with the same Application Gateway with a limited number of listeners. We can do host-based routing as well as URL-based routing or path-based routing. It supports both, so we can have even a single URL supporting many applications, or we can have different URLs for different applications respectively. We have both use cases.
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

"The load balancing features are valuable."
"The simplicity of the solution and its ability to integrate easily with others are its most valuable aspects."
"This is a SaaS product, so it is always up to date."
"Some of the key features of this solution are the low-level maintenance required, floating proxy service, and load balancing."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway gives us a lot of benefits, including domain mapping."
"Up until this point, it's working great for us; it's excellent at catching attacks and suspicious content and works well for us while offering good performance."
"This product works well to secure my public facing websites from things like sql injections"
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"It does not have the flexibility for using public IPs in version 2."
"The user interface could be better."
"We got the feeling that this product wasn't stable or good enough for us."
"The working speed of the solution needs improvement."
"The solution could improve by increasing the performance when doing updates. For example, if I change the certificate it can take 30 minutes. Other vendors do not have this type of problem."
"In future releases of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, I would to see more AI functionalities and a better dashboard as well as some customizations."
"It could be easier to change servicing."
"The tool is a pain to deal with when it comes to the area of configuration."
"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

"There is some additional cost, such as extended support."
"The pricing is based on how much you use the solution."
"There is a need to pay a fixed price per month to use the product. There are no additional payments to be made to Microsoft apart from the charges paid towards the monthly licensing costs attached to the solution."
"The solution is fairly priced."
"The product is expensive. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"We use the tool's basic subscription. Its licensing costs are monthly."
"It is an expensive solution. We have an enterprise agreement, it is monthly."
"The solution is cheaper than Imperva. I rate it four to five out of ten."
"The pricing is 50% less than Akamai."
"Signal Sciences is pretty cheap compared to other solutions."
"The product has an affordable cost."
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913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Retailer
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise24
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?
We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides excellent support. Azure Front Door can quickly detect abnormalities before the...
How does AWS WAF compare to Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Web Application Firewall or Microsoft Azure Application Gateway web application firewall software was the better fit ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Regarding the pricing and licensing of Application Gateway, it is not cheap because the version we are using is WAF V2, and we are also using DDoS Premium Protection. I think the price of WAF on Ap...
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

Azure Application Gateway, MS Azure Application Gateway
Signal Sciences Next-Gen WAF, Signal Sciences RASP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Lilly, AccuWeather, AIRFRANCE, Honeywell
Chef, Adobe, Datadog, Etsy, GrubHub, Vimeo, SendGrid, Under Armour, Duo, AppNexus
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.