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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

"Does a good job preventing web application attacks."
"The rate limiting features and customizations in terms of URL match and applying policies are valuable to me."
"Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before."
"The most valuable part of the solution for us overall is exactly that it is a Software-as-a-Service product."
"The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10."
"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."
"In general, it's a very good product: the solution is very stable, the performance is great, the product offers very good scalability, the pricing is very reasonable, the installation is very straightforward and quite simple, and technical support has a very fast response time and is helpful."
"The Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."
"The most valuable aspect is that it protects our code. It's a bit difficult to overwrite code in our application. It also protects against threats."
"The most valuable feature of AWS WAF is the extra layer of security that I have when connecting to my web applications."
"The most valuable feature is the scalability because it automatically scales up or scales down as per our requirements."
"The most valuable feature is the security, making sure that files are protected, preventing unauthorized users from accessing the system."
"The most valuable feature of AWS WAF is the extra layer of security that I have when connecting to my web applications."
"The interface is good."
"Because it integrates with the existing AWS solution, we get a lot of support without having to do much extra work."
"The most valuable feature of AWS WAF is its highly configurable rules system."
"Fastly uses configuration versioning, where you can deploy a new version in less than one minute."
"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."
"Rate limiting is a good feature that protects from volumetric attacks."
"Fastly provides CDN, WAF, image optimization, and IP restriction."
"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."
"In summary, this solution is easy to manage, quick to deploy, and all of my customers are happy."
"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."
 

Cons

"The notification part could be improved. It's very much connected to Web Application Firewall, rate-limiting, and DDoS protection."
"I have experienced some difficulties with Cloudflare's support as a customer based in India."
"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 learning curve was steep initially."
"The platform's control features related to real-time authentication and response time need improvement."
"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."
"We have noticed some latency when the call goes through the firewall. That could be improved."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well."
"The setup is complicated."
"Technical support for AWS WAF could still be improved, e.g. support could be faster, more knowledgeable, and friendlier."
"They should work to define more threats, add more security, and make it more compliant with more security companies."
"There is room for improvement in pricing."
"The solution's pricing could be improved."
"I would like to see the addition of more advanced rate-limiting features in the next release. It would be beneficial to extend rate limiting beyond just web servers to the main node level."
"The serverless product from AWS WAF could be improved. For example, they have only one serverless series, Lambda, but they should extend and improve it. Additionally, the firewall rules are not very easy to configure."
"The solution could improve by having better rules, they are very basic at the moment. There are more attacks coming and we have to use third-party solutions, such as FIA. The features are not sufficient to prevent all the attacks, such as DDoS. Overall the solution should be more secure."
"It's not easy to start with Fastly if you don't have VCL knowledge, so it appears very complex at the beginning."
"The product should provide improved bot detection and management."
"Fastly can be improved in certain areas such as VCL, which is powerful but has a steep learning curve for normal users."
"We are not getting quick responses from Fastly technical support engineers. Sometimes they depend on their D3 developers."
"Support is not that great."
"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."
"What I don't like about Fastly is that they charge a heavy price."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"The solution is expensive."
"It is not too pricey."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"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 annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"I would rate AWS WAF's pricing a seven out of ten."
"The pricing is good and manageable."
"AWS WAF has reasonable pricing."
"The product is moderately priced."
"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 solution is affordable."
"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"
"You need an additional AWS subscription for this product if you are buying a managed tool."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The solution is cheaper than other products in the market."
"You need to pay a premium price for the tool."
"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."
"Fastly is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"I've generally found Fastly to be very competitive in pricing, especially around Compute@Edge."
"The pricing has been very competitive."
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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
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
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 needs improvement with Fastly?
I believe that Fastly should provide guidelines for their WAF blocking rules. It should be public what the rules are ...
What is your primary use case for Fastly?
I am using Fastly in the Adobe Commerce Cloud project. In this project, it is working as a reverse proxy for CDN and ...
 

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.
895,891 professionals have used our research since 2012.