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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)
6th
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)
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fastly
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
21st
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 June 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 4.5%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS WAF is 4.6%, down from 9.1% 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 Firewall4.5%
AWS WAF4.6%
Fastly1.7%
Other89.2%
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 engineer 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

"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."
"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."
"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."
"The rate limiting features and customizations in terms of URL match and applying policies are valuable to me."
"For us, the key feature of Cloudflare is DDoS protection and IP hiding, especially since we are a crypto company."
"I have not had any issues with this solution, and I would recommend it to others who are interested in using it."
"The product has improved our security posture by blocking bad actors."
"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."
"The ease of deployment of the product is valuable to me."
"The ability to take multiple data sets and match those data sets together is the solution's most valuable feature. The data lake that comes with it is very useful because that allows us to match data sets with different configurations that we wouldn't normally be able to match."
"I'm satisfied with AWS WAF, and I've had no issues with it."
"The customized billing is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to use the product to enhance security in deploying web applications."
"As a basic WAF, it's better than having nothing, so if you need something simple out of the box with default features, AWS WAF is good."
"Stable and scalable web application firewall. Setting it up is straightforward."
"Its best feature is that it is on the cloud and does not require local hardware resources."
"Its initial setup process is straightforward."
"Rate limiting is a good feature that protects from volumetric attacks."
"The product helps our organization to access sites located in different regions quickly."
"Compute@Edge features are valuable to me."
"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 provides CDN, WAF, image optimization, and IP restriction."
"Fastly uses configuration versioning, where you can deploy a new version in less than one minute."
"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."
 

Cons

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should include port forwarding features."
"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."
"Support can be challenging at times."
"The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced"
"The learning curve was steep initially."
"A key challenge arises when dealing with numerous integrations with HVAC systems. Depending on the specifics, there might be some configuration mismatches, which necessitate specific support."
"We don't even use Cloudflare Bot Management because it's too expensive; you need to pay per request, and it's much cheaper to get one or two additional machines."
"The notification part could be improved. It's very much connected to Web Application Firewall, rate-limiting, and DDoS protection."
"I would like to see it more tightly integrated with other AWS services."
"There is a lot of innovation talk, however, implementation might be lacking."
"The price could be improved."
"Technical support for AWS WAF could still be improved, e.g. support could be faster, more knowledgeable, and friendlier."
"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."
"I would like to be able to view a graphical deployment map in the user interface that will give me an overview of the configuration and help to determine whether I have missed any steps."
"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."
"They should make the implementation process faster."
"Fastly can be improved in certain areas such as VCL, which is powerful but has a steep learning curve for normal users."
"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."
"It's not easy to start with Fastly if you don't have VCL knowledge, so it appears very complex at the beginning."
"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."
"We are not getting quick responses from Fastly technical support engineers. Sometimes they depend on their D3 developers."
"The product should provide improved bot detection and management."
"What I don't like about Fastly is that they charge a heavy price."
"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

"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"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."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"It is not too pricey."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven or eight out of ten."
"There are no separate licensing costs we pay for since it is included in the plan we purchase."
"It's an annual subscription."
"We are kind of doing a POC comparison to see what works best. Pricing-wise, AWS is one of the most attractive ones. It is fairly cheap, and we like the pricing part. We're trying to see what makes more sense operation-wise, license-wise, and pricing-wise."
"AWS WAF is pay-as-you-go, I only pay for what I'm using. There is no subscription or any payment upfront, I can terminate use at any time. Which is an advantage."
"You need an additional AWS subscription for this product if you are buying a managed tool."
"I rate the product price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is high price, and ten is low price"
"The price of AWS WAF is expensive if you do not know how to manage your software up or down. I price of the solution is average amongst the other competitors but it would be better if it was less expensive."
"The solution is cheaper than other products in the market."
"I've generally found Fastly to be very competitive in pricing, especially around Compute@Edge."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The pricing has been very competitive."
"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."
"Fastly is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"You need to pay a premium price for the tool."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing 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 Enterprise28
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.
899,204 professionals have used our research since 2012.