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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 Web Application ...
Sponsored
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
AWS WAF
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fastly
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
20th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
CDN (7th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 4.7%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS WAF is 4.8%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fastly is 1.7%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall4.7%
AWS WAF4.8%
Fastly1.7%
Other88.8%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

DB
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.
Azam S M - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
Has successfully filtered malicious traffic and allowed country-specific access controls
For improvement in AWS WAF, we can have better monitoring. One of the things that should be improved in AWS WAF is the monitoring; we need to identify the requests and where they are coming from. If it's a bot, we should differentiate the requests, whether they are automated or not. The way we see it now is just mentioned as a percentage from bots and actual users, which should include proper graphs and detailed information. We also need a feature where we can filter specific requests. If there are scripts in the requests, we should be able to filter those requests to see if there are any scripts running from them.
Pranay Jain - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior software developer at Simplifyvms
Edge caching has transformed response times and delivers faster candidate data globally
Fastly can be improved in certain areas such as VCL, which is powerful but has a steep learning curve for normal users. A more user-friendly, UI-based configuration could simplify the experience, alongside better templates for common use cases and dashboard improvements, as the current dashboard feels complex for beginners, and pricing can be hard to predict for smaller companies. I chose 8 out of 10 because it has excellent performance and low latency delivery, making it suitable for larger applications, with strong Edge Caching and instant purging capabilities. However, VCL complexity and pricing predictability, especially for smaller companies, along with a user-friendly dashboard are areas impacting my score.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."
"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."
"It is configurable via API."
"The setup process is very simple for me."
"Very glad the WAF rulesets works out of box, and requires very little tuning or maintenance."
"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."
"There is a huge signature repository"
"Cloudflare has positively impacted my organization by making it easier for me to handle and set up DNS for multiple clients; I can easily go in and access their accounts, make changes they need, and it's a one-stop shop."
"The simple configuration and the scalability have been most valuable, and we are able to scale across all of our different AWS instances."
"What I like best about AWS WAF is that it's a simple tool, so I could understand the basics of AWS WAF in two to three hours."
"AWS WAF helps mitigate different kinds of bot attacks and SQL injection that happen within the retail industry."
"Overall, this is a good product and I recommend it."
"The security firewall plus the features that protect against database injections or scripting,"
"The most valuable feature is the addition of managed tools that help us create customizable rules. In case we want to block a particular request, we can make use of those rules."
"They filter a lot of attacks out."
"I believe the most impressive features are integration and ease of use, and the best part of AWS WAF is the cloud-native WAF integration, where AWS maintains everything and all we have to do is click the button and WAF will be activated so any packet coming through the internet will be filtered through."
"Initially, we faced load time issues, but after deploying Fastly and optimizing our queries, we achieved a response time cut to less than 1 millisecond from an initial 3 to 4 seconds."
"Its initial setup process is straightforward."
"Fastly combines both the CDN side and the Signal Sciences next-generation WAF, which is closely integrated with the CDN, allowing us to use both products seamlessly."
"In summary, this solution is easy to manage, quick to deploy, and all of my customers are happy."
"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."
"The product helps our organization to access sites located in different regions quickly."
"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."
"Fastly uses configuration versioning, where you can deploy a new version in less than one minute."
 

Cons

"There could be an option to duplicate the cluster to maintain the consistency of rules."
"The dashboard could be more user-friendly."
"The rate limiting functionality could be enhanced, as we find it somewhat limited."
"The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced"
"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."
"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."
"The reporting could be more granular."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well."
"The issue with AWS WAF is that the rule structure is very complicated and it is very hard to maintain."
"Rule exclusion could be a bit more transparent."
"We must monitor and clean up the WAF manually."
"They should make the implementation process faster."
"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."
"The product could be improved by expanding the weightage units of rules."
"It's a bit difficult to apply the right rules for the right security."
"The product must provide more features."
"Fastly can be improved in certain areas such as VCL, which is powerful but has a steep learning curve for normal users."
"It's not easy to start with Fastly if you don't have VCL knowledge, so it appears very complex at the beginning."
"We are not getting quick responses from Fastly technical support engineers. Sometimes they depend on their D3 developers."
"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."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"The product should provide improved bot detection and management."
"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"AWS is not that costly by comparison. They are maybe close to $40 per month. I think it was between $29 or $39."
"I would rate AWS WAF's pricing a seven out of ten."
"It's cheap."
"There are no separate licensing costs we pay for since it is included in the plan we purchase."
"The pricing is good and manageable."
"AWS WAF has reasonable pricing."
"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"For Kubernetes microservices, AWS is more expensive compared to OCI. AWS costs approximately 70 cents per hour, while OCI is 50% cheaper."
"The solution is cheaper than other products in the market."
"You need to pay a premium price for the tool."
"Fastly is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."
"The pricing has been very competitive."
"I've generally found Fastly to be very competitive in pricing, especially around Compute@Edge."
"It is an expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise27
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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...
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS WAF?
AWS WAF is affordable; it depends on the number of rules you apply. The licensing cost for AWS WAF is just pay-as-you...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fastly?
The pricing of Fastly can be hard to predict because it is primarily usage-based with minimal setup costs and flexibl...
What needs improvement with Fastly?
Fastly can be improved in certain areas such as VCL, which is powerful but has a steep learning curve for normal user...
What is your primary use case for Fastly?
Fastly serves as an Edge Cloud platform and CDN that we use for real-time Edge Caching and instant caching purging, a...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
AWS Web Application Firewall
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
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: April 2026.
896,467 professionals have used our research since 2012.