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F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs Fastly comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall...
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
13th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fastly
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
10th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
CDN (8th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (18th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) is 1.2%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fastly is 2.7%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Fastly2.7%
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)1.2%
Other96.1%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Pawel Augustyn - PeerSpot reviewer
System Advisor at CRIF SpA
Provides outstanding resource management and application security across multiple geographies
The most valuable features for me are stability, availability, and security, along with the ability to manage multiple features to secure my applications. The solution also monitors and blocks unconventional requests and maintains security efficiently. The scalability feature also allows me to manage and allocate resources dynamically without disrupting production traffic.
PP
Technical support engineer at Adobe
Optimized ecommerce performance and improved access control through image handling and IP filtering
I believe that Fastly should provide guidelines for their WAF blocking rules. It should be public what the rules are that are blocking their contents. I believe Fastly should provide regional IP addresses instead of POP IPs. Fastly should provide features similar to Cloudflare regarding a block list. Additionally, a POP address should be there with a wide range of IP addresses provided, public static IP addresses, so customers can integrate egress IPs. Fastly should provide WebP image processing on the backend instead of on the fly. It would be a very useful feature to avoid unnecessary time for browser to browser and local cookies. I believe that Fastly service has a few gaps. We are not getting quick responses from Fastly technical support engineers. Sometimes they depend on their D3 developers. There should be transparency.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The customer service is excellent, and I rate it ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of F5 BIG-IP AFM is the iRules where I can customize the configuration."
"The most valuable feature of F5 BIG-IP AFM is all of my workers enjoy using it."
"It excels in preventing downtime and maintaining application performance, which is crucial for our clients' security and operational continuity."
"The product helps us provide security validation by protecting various applications from getting hacked."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is that the blocking of IP's."
"This product excells in every aspect from installation and the interface to providing superior network security."
"The decryption is great."
"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."
"Fastly provides CDN, WAF, image optimization, and IP restriction."
"The product helps our organization to access sites located in different regions quickly."
"Compute@Edge features are valuable to me."
"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."
"Fastly uses configuration versioning, where you can deploy a new version in less than one minute."
"Its initial setup process is straightforward."
"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

"F5 could provide a distributed cloud version."
"F5 BIG-IP AFM can improve the reporting interface in relation to advanced troubleshooting depending on CLI. They should have enhanced troubleshooting with the use of GUI."
"F5 should increase its capability to prevent zero-day attacks. Having advanced technology similar to other vendors like Palo Alto for zero-day attack prevention would be valuable."
"The product is expensive."
"Some spam can go by the firewall."
"Deployment times vary according to the customer. It needs to be heavily configured. You need to look and you need to observe the behavior of the traffic before you can start configuring everything. It can take time."
"Currently, we have eighty F5s and we need some kind of management software. It would be very helpful."
"The solution doesn't really meet our requirements for an edge firewall."
"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."
"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."
"The product should provide improved bot detection and management."
"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."
"Support is not that great."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of F5 BIG-IP AFM is a little more expensive than other firewalls on the market."
"As per pricing, I would not say cheap, but little higher than cheap, but not very expensive. So you can say kind of value for money solutions."
"It is somewhat on the expensive side although it is worth the additional cost."
"F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) is an expensive solution. They are one of the best in the market, but the price could be cheaper."
"The product is expensive."
"We have purchased a five-year licensing package for the product."
"F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager is not an expensive solution."
"The solution is slightly on the higher priced side."
"I've generally found Fastly to be very competitive in pricing, especially around Compute@Edge."
"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."
"It is an expensive solution."
"You need to pay a premium price for the tool."
"Fastly is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"The pricing has been very competitive."
"The solution is cheaper than other products in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Performing Arts
9%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Retailer
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?
The standard license is reasonably priced, but additional features like the WAF can be more expensive. There are plenty of technical documents and a supportive community available, which helps mana...
What needs improvement with F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?
The appliance and features could be enhanced further, especially in terms of security. Some features like the WAF ( /categories/web-application-firewall-waf ) firewall may seem expensive compared t...
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 help, live, engage, and ring when they respond. Very quickly.
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 that are blocking their contents. I believe Fastly should provide regional IP ad...
 

Also Known As

F5 AFM, F5 Advanced Firewall Manager
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
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 F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs. Fastly and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.