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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

"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."
"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."
"It's very user-friendly."
"Cloudflare consolidates various capabilities into one product, streamlining processes."
"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."
"Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website."
"Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. You don't necessarily need a certificate if you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host."
"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."
"AWS WAF has a lot of integrated features and services. For example, there are security services that can be integrated very well for our customers."
"AWS has flexibility in terms of WAF rules."
"The initial setup was very straightforward. Deployment took about ten minutes or less."
"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."
"The interface is good."
"The customized billing is the most valuable feature."
"The security firewall plus the features that protect against database injections or scripting,"
"The most valuable feature of AWS WAF is the extra layer of security that I have when connecting to my web applications."
"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."
"Fastly uses configuration versioning, where you can deploy a new version in less than one minute."
"The product helps our organization to access sites located in different regions quickly."
"Rate limiting is a good feature that protects from volumetric attacks."
"Its initial setup process is straightforward."
"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."
 

Cons

"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."
"For large enterprises, the pricing is okay. However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high. A mid-tier pricing option would be beneficial."
"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."
"It should have easier documentation for the configuration. It's very technical and people who aren't technical should also be able to do the configuration."
"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."
"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."
"One area of improvement is in the Access Rules. Hypothetically, if we wanted to block or challenge traffic outside of the United States, the only way to currently do that (as far as I know) is to enter every single country outside of the United States. That could be a labor intensive job. A solution could be to enable users to create a rule where traffic is only allowed within a certain country."
"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."
"The area of reporting in the product needs to have a proper format."
"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 technical support does not respond to bugs in the coding of the product."
"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."
"An improvement area would be that it's more of a manual effort when you have to enable rules. That's one of the downsides. If that can be done in an automated way, it would be great. That's a lagging feature currently."
"We should be able to do proper whitelisting."
"Compatibility and integration functionalities, especially with services like Kafka for event-driven messaging, could be better."
"The dashboarding could be improved, and the default metrics provided by AWS WAF could be upgraded."
"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."
"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."
"Support is not that great."
"The product should provide improved bot detection and management."
"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 don't have any issues with the price."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"The price of AWS WAF is reasonable, it is not expensive and it is not cheap."
"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."
"AWS WAF has reasonable pricing."
"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The solution's cost depends on the use cases."
"You need an additional AWS subscription for this product if you are buying a managed tool."
"It's an annual subscription."
"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."
"I've generally found Fastly to be very competitive in pricing, especially around Compute@Edge."
"You need to pay a premium price for the tool."
"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."
"It is an expensive solution."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
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: July 2025.
862,499 professionals have used our research since 2012.