F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Imperva Bot Management vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) comparison

The compared F5 and Imperva solutions aren't in the same category. F5 is ranked #2 in ADC , with an average rating of 8.9, and holds a 15.9% mindshare in the category. Imperva is ranked #10 in BM , and holds a 6.7% mindshare. Additionally, 83% of F5 users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Imperva users who would recommend it.

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

Read 122 F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) reviews

7,346 Views
5,436 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

Imperva Bot Management

Read 2 Imperva Bot Management reviews

482 Views
251 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (po...

Read 4 The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) reviews

859 Views
704 Comparison Views

60% willing to recommend

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

Imperva Bot Management

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (po...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), Imperva Bot Management, and The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about NetScaler, F5, HAProxy and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC).

To learn more, read our detailed Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

August 2025

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Helped 866,956 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)	15.9%
NetScaler	14.3%
HAProxy	11.3%
Other	58.5%

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Bot Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Imperva Bot Management	6.7%
Akamai Bot Manager	25.0%
F5 Shape Security	18.7%
Other	49.6%

Bot Management

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)	1.1%
F5 Advanced WAF	9.2%
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway	7.8%
Other	81.9%

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Featured Reviews

Bonieber Orofeo

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

Identifying compromised traffic and securing data has been a significant advantage

One of the most beneficial features of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is its ability to identify compromised traffic and its capabilities in authentication. Additionally, the security aspect of it provides a significant advantage as it helps us secure our data, which is a major investment and benefit for us. Before using this system, we had difficulties in storing our data and managing the traffic that comes in and out.

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RiaanDu Preez

Senior Cyber Security Specialist Architect at a tech consulting company with 11-50 employees

A product that offers advanced bot detection capabilities and reporting features

The scalability of the product is high. I rate the product's scalability a ten out of ten. It is very easy to use the scalability features of the product, especially if the product is deployed on the cloud model, but it may be a different story if the tool is deployed on an on-premises model. The difficulty of using the scalability feature nude of the product arises when the client does not have the capacity to scale up. My company deals with businesses of all sizes. One of my company's clients who uses the solution has five members and a large e-commerce environment. There are also enterprise-sized clients who use the solution.

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Shashank N

Security Engineer-DevSecOps at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Provides good stability, but the agent-based approach could be more convenient

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. Additionally, the agent-based approach presents challenges with managing agents across versions and dependencies on specific application platforms like Apache or NGINX, leading to compatibility issues and complexity in integration. This agent-based system proved particularly difficult to manage.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Bandwidth optimization and capacity awareness of the bandwidth are valuable features. Its video streaming capabilities are also very useful."

"The combination of ADC and WAN is the most valuable feature."

"BIG-IP LTM is completely stable, and its performance is good."

"It has helped a lot to protect our organization from external attacks, especially XSS or XSRF types of attacks."

"The most valuable features are the WAF and the big IP."

"The v11 clustering is a new technology they have brought in that does not require improvement. They are the leader in it."

"It is a scalable solution."

"The solution is easy to install. It's a straightforward process."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) pros

"The stability of the product is good since I haven't had any problems with the solution."

"I am impressed with the product's automatic bot mechanism. It also gives us the control to create our own custom bot rules."

"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."

"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."

"The product's most valuable feature is its ability to set up the rules easily."

Cons

"The setup is a little bit complex."

"The pricing could always be better. It's a bit expensive."

"For integration with other AWS environments, we do some tie-ins with some autoscaling groups. This has been challenging for us. We have had issues, where when autoscaling groups scale up, there are some instances which are not showing up in the proper size. Then, those IPs would get registered with F5, but never get released. Therefore, we are ending up with a whole bunch of ghosted IPs."

"Logging is a bit of a problem. Logging and monitoring are only in plain text. You have to search and you have to know what you are searching for to find anything. So of course, monitoring and getting alerts for abnormal situations is hard. There are no tools for monitoring and alerts"

"Fixing bugs."

"F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is expensive. Pricing needs to be improved."

"There is a need for a more modular version to concentrate on the current monolithic structure of both the virtual and hardware versions."

"Currently, the product offers everything we need. I can't recall any features that may be lacking."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) cons

"Sometimes, it takes a bit of time for the technical staff of the solution to get back to our company with a resolution for our problems."

"The tool needs to include artificial intelligence and machine learning. It also needs to improve profiling."

"The UI is not very intuitive and could be better."

"Even if we create some custom rules, Signal Sciences cannot capture some of the malicious traffic."

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are additional costs depending on what modules or what functionality is required."

"The solution is more expensive than one of its competitors."

"I am a fan of using AWS natively. It is much cheaper."

"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was good. We chose to go through the AWS Marketplace because everything that we needed was a soft appliance. We needed something to work in Amazon, and this product was available there."

"The price of F5 BIG-IP LTM could improve."

"Compared to using open-source products, the prices are not cheap."

"It is quite expensive as a product. Because it is very stable, it is also expensive."

"Our company pays for the licensing cost on a yearly basis. Also, there are no extra costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) pricing and cost advice

"I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."

"The tool's pricing is good."

"The product has an affordable cost."

"Signal Sciences is pretty cheap compared to other solutions."

"The pricing is 50% less than Akamai."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

20%

Comms Service Provider

16%

Media Company

16%

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Retailer

10%

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	62
Midsize Enterprise	31
Large Enterprise	84

No data available

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?

The GUI of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) could be improved. It's not something regarding how it processes or ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP?

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is a perfect product for load balancing and WAF, and I would recommend it far m...

See all answers

What do you like most about F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)?

The solution is robust and reliable.

See all answers

What do you like most about Imperva Bot Management?

The stability of the product is good since I haven't had any problems with the solution.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Imperva Bot Management?

I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price. The pric...

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What needs improvement with Imperva Bot Management?

At the moment, I am okay with the product. I haven't found something that needs to be improved yet. I am not physical...

See all answers

What do you like most about Signal Sciences?

The product's most valuable feature is its ability to set up the rules easily.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Fortinet FortiADC vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 18% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 8% of the time

VMWare Avi Load Balancer vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 8% of the time

NetScaler vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 8% of the time

HAProxy vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 7% of the time

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Competitors

Cloudflare vs Imperva Bot Management

Compared 31% of the time

DataDome vs Imperva Bot Management

Compared 29% of the time

F5 Shape Security vs Imperva Bot Management

Compared 23% of the time

Cequence Security vs Imperva Bot Management

Compared 17% of the time

More Imperva Bot Management Competitors

AWS WAF vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 17% of the time

Sqreen vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 14% of the time

Cloudflare vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 14% of the time

Azure Web Application Firewall vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 11% of the time

Azure Front Door vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 10% of the time

More The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

September 2025

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) report

Download F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) product report

Buyer's Guide

Bot Management

August 2025

Download Imperva Bot Management product report

Buyer's Guide

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

August 2025

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) report

Download The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) product report

Also Known As

F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP

Distil Networks, Distil Bot Detection and Mitigation

Signal Sciences Next-Gen WAF, Signal Sciences RASP

Overview

F5 BIG-IP LTM optimizes the speed and reliability of your apps via both network and application layers. Using real-time protocol and traffic management decisions based on app and server and connection management conditions, and TCP and content offloading, BIG-IP LTM dramatically improves application and infrastructure responsiveness. BIG-IP LTM's architecture includes protocol awareness to control traffic for the most important applications. BIG-IP LTM tracks the dynamic performance levels of servers and delivers SSL performance and visibility for inbound and outbound traffic, to protect the user experience by encrypting everything from the client to the server.

BIG-IP LTM provides enterprise-class Application Delivery Controller (ADC). You get granular layer 7 control, SSL offloading and acceleration capabilities, and advanced scaling technologies that deliver performance and reliability on-demand. The highly optimized TCP/IP stack combines TCP/IP techniques and improvements in the latest RFCs with extensions to minimize the effect of congestion and packet loss and recovery. Independent testing tools and customer experiences show LTM's TCP stack delivers up to a 2x performance gain for users and a 4x increase in bandwidth efficiency.

Distil Networks is the first easy and accurate way to identify and police malicious website traffic, blocking 99.9% of bad bots without impacting legitimate users. Only 41% of web traffic originates from humans, so it’s imperative to be able to detect and block automated attacks. Bots are the key culprits behind web scraping, online fraud, web application security breaches, content spam, digital ad fraud, and downtime. Distil Networks is purpose built to defeat bad bots that circumvent traditional web application defenses like Web Application Firewalls (WAFs). Distil makes your web applications more secure with API security, real-time threat intelligence, a 24/7 security operations center, and complete visibility and control over human, good bot, and bad bot traffic.

Imperva

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) provides web application and API protection, RASP, rate limiting, bot protection and DDoS purpose built to eliminate the challenges of legacy WAF.

Fastly

Sample Customers

Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.

StubHub, Yelp, Glassdoor, DowJones, The Wall Street Journal, Whitepages, CrunchBase, AOL, Staples, Wayfair, EasyJet, Autotrader, Skyscanner, Orbitz, and Conde Nast, Amadeus, and Thomson Reuters, just to name a few.

Chef, Adobe, Datadog, Etsy, GrubHub, Vimeo, SendGrid, Under Armour, Duo, AppNexus

Buyer's Guide

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

August 2025

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