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AWS WAF vs Fastly 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

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
AWS WAF
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (1st)
Fastly
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
CDN (7th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (19th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (12th)
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch - PeerSpot reviewer
Fast and secure deployments simplify operations for government and fintech clients
It is a fast and secure DNS. It is very easy to deploy, and my customers are happy with this tool. Additionally, the CDN performance in Mexico is excellent, providing fast service and tools. It offers reliability during high-traffic periods, ensuring no impact on the environment. It helps my clients avoid using on-premise boxes, simplifying operations as they only use the prices on Cloudflare.
Kavin Kalaiarasu - PeerSpot reviewer
AWS's cloud-native security simplifies rule enforcement but needs better DDoS integration
The dashboarding could be improved, and the default metrics provided by AWS WAF could be upgraded. The rate at which AWS updates their managed rule sets could be better. Features like bot protection or DDoS mitigation, available with other WAF vendors, do not come natively with AWS WAF. Instead, they are part of AWS Shield. Providing DDoS protection as part of their WAF solution would be beneficial.
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

"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."
"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."
"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."
"What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering, so it's a valuable tool."
"Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations."
"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."
"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 DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"This is not a product that you need to install. You just use it."
"We integrate AWS WAF with several platforms within cloud hosting and other security solutions and provisions in our business. Regarding AI, it's been around for about 20 years, so it's not new. It's just a new buzzword. I've been in security for 30 years and remember using AI when I started 25-30 years ago. We have multiple forms of AI within our business."
"We do not have to maintain the solution."
"The customized billing is the most valuable feature."
"It is Amazon. Everything is scalable. It is beyond what we need."
"The interface is good."
"The web solution effectively protects from vulnerabilities and cyber attacks."
"AWS WAF is something that someone from a cloud background or cloud security background leverages. If they want to natively use a solution in the cloud, AWS WAF comes in handy. It's very useful for that, and the way we can fine-tune the WAF rules is also nice."
"Rate limiting is a good feature that protects from volumetric attacks."
"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."
"The product helps our organization to access sites located in different regions quickly."
"Compute@Edge features are valuable to me."
"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."
"Fastly uses configuration versioning, where you can deploy a new version in less than one minute."
"Its initial setup process is straightforward."
 

Cons

"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."
"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."
"The tool needs to improve caching of servers. The product needs to include PFX certificate as well."
"Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements."
"DNS Management."
"Rule exclusion could be a bit more transparent."
"In a future release I would like to see automation. There's no interaction between the applications and that makes it tedious. We have to do the preparation all over again for each of our other applications."
"The solution is cloud-based, and therefore the billing model that comes with it could be more intuitive, in my opinion. It's very easy to not fully understand how you tag things for billing and then you can quite easily run up a high bill without realizing it. The solution needs to be more intuitive around the tagging system, which enables the billing. Right now, I have a cloud architect that does that on our behalf and it isn't something that a business user could use because it still requires quite a lot of technical knowledge to do effectively."
"AWS WAF could improve by making the overall management easier. Many people that have started working with AWS WAF do not have an easy time. They should make it easy to use."
"I believe there is a need to move towards real-time analysis with the help of AI and intelligent systems in the future. This would reduce the reliance on manual work and enhance the functionality of detection protection. By incorporating AI-driven data analysis and data science techniques, we can improve the solution's user-friendliness, security compatibility, and accuracy."
"While the complexity of the installation can vary from one service to another, overall, I would say that it and the configuration and navigation are somewhat complex."
"It would be better if AWS WAF were more flexible. For example, if you take a third-party WAF like Imperva, they maintain the rule set, and these rule sets are constantly updated. They push security insights or new rules into the firewall. However, when it comes to AWS, it has a standard set of rules, and only those sets of rules in the application firewalls trigger alerts, block, and manage traffic. Alternative WAFs have something like bot mitigation or bot control within the WAF, but you don't have such things in AWS WAF. I will say there could have been better bot mitigation plans, there could have been better dealer mitigation plans, and there could be better-updated rule sets for every security issue which arises in web applications. In the next release, I would like to see if AWS WAF could take on DDoS protection within itself rather than being in a stand-alone solution like AWS Shield. I would also like a solution like a bot mitigation."
"It will be helpful if the product recommends rules that we can implement."
"The product should provide improved bot detection and management."
"Support is not that great."
"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."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"What I don't like about Fastly is that they charge a heavy price."
"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"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."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"For Kubernetes microservices, AWS is more expensive compared to OCI. AWS costs approximately 70 cents per hour, while OCI is 50% cheaper."
"The solution's cost depends on the use cases."
"It's cheap."
"For our infrastructure, we probably pay around $16,000 per month for AWS WAF. Because alternative WAF solutions provide even more features, I think the AWS WAF is a bit pricey"
"The price is average."
"It has a variable pricing scheme."
"AWS WAF costs $5 monthly plus $1 for the rule. It's cheap, cost-wise. It's worth the money."
"I would rate AWS WAF's pricing a seven out of ten."
"I've generally found Fastly to be very competitive in pricing, especially around Compute@Edge."
"The solution is cheaper than other products in the market."
"Fastly is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"The pricing has been very competitive."
"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."
"You need to pay a premium price for the tool."
"It is an expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
What are the limitations of AWS WAF vs alternative WAFs?
Hi Varun, I have had experienced with several WAF deployments and deep technical assessments of the following: 1. Im...
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...
What do you like most about AWS WAF?
The most valuable feature of AWS WAF is its highly configurable rules system.
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 h...
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 ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
AWS Web Application Firewall
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
eVitamins, 9Splay, Senao International
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 AWS WAF vs. Fastly and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
861,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.