F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs Fastly comparison

F5 and Fastly are both solutions in the CDN category. F5 is ranked #10 with an average rating of 10.0, while Fastly is ranked #8 with an average rating of 9.0. F5 holds a 2.4% mindshare in CDN, compared to Fastly’s 5.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of F5 users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Fastly users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Fastly and F5 Distributed Cloud Services compete in the content delivery and security space. Fastly leads in performance with its agility and speed, while F5 is more favorable for enterprises needing high-security solutions due to its comprehensive security features.

Features:Fastly provides quick response times with its edge server technology, real-time data analysis, and agile performance capabilities. F5 Distributed Cloud Services offers robust security functions including integrated application security and advanced API protection, along with extensive integration capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:Fastly ensures straightforward deployment, focusing on efficient integration with existing systems and offers strong customer service. F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides a cloud-native platform that requires more complex deployment but allows for extensive customization and scalability for users.

Pricing and ROI:Fastly offers competitive pricing emphasizing high ROI through its speed and cost-efficiency. F5 requires a higher initial investment but promises significant ROI with its comprehensive security and management features.

To learn more, read our detailed F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs. Fastly Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs. Fastly

December 2025

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 19.1%, down from 21.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Distributed Cloud Services is 2.4%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fastly is 5.3%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

CDN Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cloudflare	19.1%
Fastly	5.3%
F5 Distributed Cloud Services	2.4%
Other	73.2%

CDN

Featured Reviews

Herb Angle

Owner at Hga consulting

Has helped manage client domains with streamlined access control and threat visibility

I don't know what areas could be improved with Cloudflare WAF; Cloudflare is constantly improving and adding features to their feature set. They're doing a good job, and as far as DNS and support for any domains that I create or my clients create, it's mandatory for me to make sure that they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider. The Cloudflare load balancing capability hasn't really helped in enhancing my website's uptime and resiliency because we don't really get that much traffic; it's mostly remote users, and web hosting is done by a web hosting service. It doesn't pay to try to host your own website.

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Filip Mikulik

IT Analyst at Atlas.cz, a.s.

Protects web applications with comprehensive security features

All features are valuable. In a multi-cloud or distributed cloud, there are many protection possibilities from data to web application or API protection, including bot mitigation. This is a comprehensive package for web application security. The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation.

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Patel Parth

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.

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

"Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations."

"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."

"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."

"The solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."

"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."

"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."

"The technical support is good."

"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."

More Cloudflare pros

"In a multi-cloud or distributed cloud, there are many protection possibilities from data to web application or API protection, including bot mitigation."

"The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation."

"F5 is known for being the best load balancer in the market. Customers with an existing module can easily adopt additional modules without investing in new hardware."

"The product helps our organization to access sites located in different regions quickly."

"Rate limiting is a good feature that protects from volumetric attacks."

"Fastly provides CDN, WAF, image optimization, and IP restriction."

"Fastly uses configuration versioning, where you can deploy a new version in less than one minute."

"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."

"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."

"Its initial setup process is straightforward."

More Fastly pros

Cons

"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."

"Latencies are always a problem."

"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."

"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."

"The pricing could be improved."

"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."

"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."

"There are some issues with the CDN services."

More Cloudflare cons

"The pricing could be adjusted to better meet the needs of typical customers in regions like Poland, where the product is considered too expensive."

"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF."

"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF. There are some problems, mainly from the perspective of implementation and customer expectations, which sometimes differ from reality."

"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."

"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."

"We are not getting quick responses from Fastly technical support engineers. Sometimes they depend on their D3 developers."

"What I don't like about Fastly is that they charge a heavy price."

"The product should provide improved bot detection and management."

"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."

"The solution's pricing could be better."

"Support is not that great."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."

"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."

"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."

"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."

"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

Information not available

"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."

"The pricing has been very competitive."

"The solution is cheaper than other products in the market."

"Fastly is less expensive than one of its competitors."

"It is an expensive solution."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	25

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Large Enterprise	5

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...

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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...

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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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?

I am not involved in sales, so I do not deal with the pricing aspect directly. I give the cost of the solution a four...

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What needs improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services?

It's a long way to be perfect, of course, as with all solutions. The main issue is integration with other parts or pr...

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What is your primary use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?

There are two main use cases for Distributed Call Services: DDoS or Distributed attacks protection and WAF web applic...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fastly?

You need to pay a premium price for the tool.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

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Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare

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Myra Security DDoS Protection vs Cloudflare

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AWS Shield vs Cloudflare

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Akamai vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Compared 15% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Compared 13% of the time

F5 Silverline Managed Services vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Compared 13% of the time

Akamai API Security vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Compared 10% of the time

Azure Front Door vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Compared 10% of the time

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Akamai vs Fastly

Compared 22% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Fastly

Compared 6% of the time

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Fastly

Compared 5% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Fastly

Compared 5% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Fastly

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

January 2026

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Buyer's Guide

CDN

January 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Fastly

January 2026

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Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

Overview

Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.

Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.

What are Cloudflare's key features?

CDN Caching: Enhances website speed through content delivery network caching.
Web Application Firewall: Protects websites from online threats.
DDoS Mitigation: Shields against distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DNS Management: Offers easy-to-use and flexible domain management.
SSL Certificates: Ensures secure connections between users and servers.
Analytics: Provides insights with robust analytics tools.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Enhanced Security: Strengthening web security with DDoS and firewall protection.
Speed Improvement: Faster content delivery with CDN caching.
Operational Simplicity: Simplifies website optimization through a user-friendly interface.
Scalable Solutions: Scales with global reach, lowering latency for improved performance.
Cost Efficiency: Offers layers of valuable functionality with pricing options.

Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.

Cloudflare

F5 Distributed Cloud Services excel in enhancing security, optimizing web application delivery, and ensuring robust network performance. Users value its integrated Web Application Firewall, DDoS protection, global server load balancing, and intuitive management interface. It boosts organizational efficiency, reduces operational costs, and scales seamlessly, making it essential for businesses operating in distributed environments.

Fastly helps the world’s most popular digital businesses keep pace with their customer expectations by delivering fast, secure, and scalable online experiences. Businesses trust Fastly’s edge cloud platform to accelerate the pace of technical innovation, mitigate evolving threats, and scale on demand.

Fastly

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

Information Not Available

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

Buyer's Guide

F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs. Fastly

December 2025

Free Report: F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs. Fastly

Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs. Fastly and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

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