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Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 16, 2026

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)
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Check Point WAF (formerly C...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (5th)
The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (po...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
33rd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.8
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 4.0%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) is 2.1%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is 1.1%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF)2.1%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall4.0%
The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)1.1%
Other92.8%
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.
Mohan Janarthanan - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
Integrated web protection has reduced breaches and now prevents attacks across critical apps
I have been using it for six months, and the biggest advantages for me are that Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) offers more than other F5 firewalls, which have only application protection called ASM (Application Security Monitoring). In contrast, Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) provides protection on IPS along with application protection. Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) itself provides an IPS function where I can protect against my Layer 7 traffic, which is not available in other vendors. The traditional WAF does not have the capacity of IPS functions. The intrusion prevention capability, I can only see in Layer 3 functions and stateful functions, which is the traditional firewall capability. Other vendors are keeping this in their Web Application Firewall, but Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) has integrated it differently. False positives are significantly less here compared to traditional Web Application Firewalls because they are more focused on the AI front. Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) integrates an AI platform within the Web Application itself using API protection with AI and what they call GenAI protection. They excel at creating the profile itself, which is the basic functionality of WAF. Normally, I deploy in preventive mode, which takes some time for learning, but I prefer to operate in preventing mode only.
reviewer2161107 - PeerSpot reviewer
Staff Engineer at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Room for improvement with user interface while competitive pricing impresses
It is managed through Infrastructure as Code, so all configurations can be managed in the code itself, which is beneficial. Because it uses rules, it is easy to set up, and we have many different sites where the configurations are straightforward. Though the UI is not very interactive, which is a downside, we can manage many things. The UI is not very intuitive and could be better. However, we manage all the configurations through code, which is easy to maintain. It has extensive anomaly detection capabilities, so the traffic is classified into several categories where thresholds can be defined and customized based on false positives and false negatives. This is advantageous because you do not need to tweak it very often. Once you set it up, an audit once a quarter would suffice. Because The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is API-driven, we have integrations with the CI/CD pipeline through GitHub Actions, making it easy to integrate.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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 rate limiting features and customizations in terms of URL match and applying policies are valuable to me."
"We extensively use the solution every day. The solution is very stable; we haven’t seen any glitches."
"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."
"We like that there's load balancing, firewall capabilities, DDoS protection, et cetera, all covered by Cloudflare."
"The integration of Cloudflare with Cloud Suite is its most valuable feature."
"Cloudflare WAF provides protection through rules and functionalities like Cloudflare's SDRAP."
"Machine learning is a valuable tool for this assessment because it allows for a two-phase approach: secure and non-secure."
"Whenever there was a new CVE, Check Point CloudGuard WAF used to block them."
"After integrating AppSec with other applications, team members can easily work without fear of confidential information exposure."
"In short, Check Point CloudGuard WAF is a powerful tool."
"Overall, the product is excellent."
"User attitude reviews help us keep all online users compliant with company regulations and policies."
"Check Point CloudGuard WAF has positively impacted my organization by significantly improving both security and operational efficiency, with a noticeable reduction in web-based threats, especially automated attacks and vulnerability exploits, thanks to its real-time prevention and reputation filter that has streamlined my workflow through automatic policy updates and integration smoothly with my CI/CD pipelines, allowing my DevOps teams to deploy security without delays."
"Check Point CloudGuard Application Security enabled us to develop strength and process efficiency coupled with a secure environment in the IT system."
"Fastly (Signal Sciences) integrates and tags the intermittent traffic based on patterns. It generates signals and provides them in a dashboard where we can view them and decide whether to allow or deny traffic. It's a more advanced and easy-to-navigate dashboard."
"The product's most valuable feature is its ability to set up the rules easily."
"Because The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is API-driven, we have integrations with the CI/CD pipeline through GitHub Actions, making it easy to integrate."
"When configuring a web application firewall using Signal Sciences, we configure a rule whereby no one except a few people can access the application."
 

Cons

"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 solution's learning curve can still be further reduced"
"Cloudflare should update the version of the ModSecurity core rule set that they run on."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should improve visibility for a customer."
"Support can be challenging at times."
"The notification part could be improved. It's very much connected to Web Application Firewall, rate-limiting, and DDoS protection."
"Areas where Check Point CloudGuard WAF can improve include simple policy tuning, as the protection seems strong, though initial rule tuning can be complex."
"The reporting can be improved."
"CloudGuard for Application Security, like the other Check Point applications, has been presenting major latency problems when entering their administrative portal."
"When I was working with the WAF platform, there were limitations, particularly concerning compliance and reporting."
"There are occasions when it interfaces with other systems, leading to a loss of visibility."
"Multi-tenancy is an area where Check Point has room for improvement."
"AI-related features are not included yet in Check Point CloudGuard WAF. However, they are present in FortiGate; that is the advantage of FortiGate now."
"As a reseller, the most difficult part is the lack of awareness."
"The UI is not very intuitive and could be better."
"Fastly don't support caching for China users. That's the only feature lacking compared to Akamai."
"The areas that could be improved in Signal Sciences include the effectiveness of rules, as many didn't function optimally and required custom rule-writing to address bypasses for WAF."
"Even if we create some custom rules, Signal Sciences cannot capture some of the malicious traffic."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"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."
"If the pricing for the Infinity platform covers everything, it would be more straightforward. I had a hard time selling it to our CEO as a former CFO because of the differentials. There are different deltas year to year over a five-year period. It is very difficult to explain. It would be easier to digest for our executives if there was a flatter scale"
"Check Point CloudGuard WAF is expensive compared to Azure WAF."
"It is not cheap, but it is worth it."
"The sales team or account managers from Check Point are top-notch. As I am using other products as well, my pricing was competitive compared to others."
"The base solution costs approximately 30,000 euros, with an additional 2,000 euros per year for licenses and support."
"Check Point CloudGuard Application Security's pricing is not friendly."
"As Infiniti customers, the pricing is manageable, as we have allowances dedicated to each Check Point product. The price is not as high compared to other options I have dealt with in the past."
"Considering all the benefits we've observed, we find the price to be satisfactory."
"Signal Sciences is pretty cheap compared to other solutions."
"The product has an affordable cost."
"The pricing is 50% less than Akamai."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
19%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Retailer
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

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 Business38
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise24
No data available
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudGuard for Application Security?
The pricing is reasonable, and I believe it is acceptable. I am satisfied with the timing.
What needs improvement with CloudGuard for Application Security?
The negative aspect is that Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) uses Check Point Harmony in its management cons...
What is your primary use case for CloudGuard for Application Security?
I want to protect my application hosted in my cloud by preventing attacks against my top OWASP Top 10 threats. I am e...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Signal Sciences?
The pricing is very competitive compared to other providers. The pricing is definitely a factor in our decision-makin...
What needs improvement with Signal Sciences?
We do use it, but the UI can be improved as we mostly work through the CI/CD. It provides support, but sometimes it i...
What is your primary use case for Signal Sciences?
The CDN is for caching and The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is for protecting the servers from ma...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
Check Point CloudGuard Application Security, CloudGuard Application Security, CloudGuard AppSec
Signal Sciences Next-Gen WAF, Signal Sciences RASP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Orange España, Paschoalotto
Chef, Adobe, Datadog, Etsy, GrubHub, Vimeo, SendGrid, Under Armour, Duo, AppNexus
Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.