Fastly vs Fortinet FortiWeb comparison

Fastly and Fortinet are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Fastly is ranked #20 with an average rating of 9.0, while Fortinet is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.1. Fastly holds a 1.7% mindshare in WAF, compared to Fortinet’s 6.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Fastly users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Fortinet users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Fastly and Fortinet FortiWeb are both competitors in the web application security and performance optimization market. Fastly has an advantage in speed and simplicity, excelling in dynamic content delivery, while Fortinet FortiWeb is superior in comprehensive security capabilities, making it ideal for complex security requirements.

Features: Fastly provides a real-time CDN and edge cloud platform, allowing instant purging, origin shielding, and VCL configuration. Fortinet FortiWeb offers advanced threat protection, machine learning-based anomaly detection, and detailed analytics for attack prevention.

Room for Improvement: Fastly can enhance its focus on security to provide more comprehensive protection features similar to FortiWeb's offerings, which may include advanced threat detection and machine learning integrations. Fortinet FortiWeb can improve by simplifying its configuration and deployment processes and focusing on enhancing content delivery efficiency to match Fastly's speed.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Fastly offers straightforward deployment and responsive customer support, ideal for businesses seeking quick setup. In contrast, Fortinet FortiWeb entails a more involved setup due to its advanced security features, but it offers extensive documentation and in-depth customer support.

Pricing and ROI: Fastly's on-demand pricing model is cost-efficient for businesses prioritizing agility and speed, offering quicker ROI. Fortinet FortiWeb, with its higher initial setup cost, provides long-term ROI through security breach prevention, making it a valuable investment for security-focused enterprises.

To learn more, read our detailed Fastly vs. Fortinet FortiWeb Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Fastly vs. Fortinet FortiWeb

April 2026

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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 Web Application ...

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 Fastly is 1.7%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiWeb is 6.0%, down from 8.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiWeb	6.0%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall	4.7%
Fastly	1.7%
Other	87.6%

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Featured Reviews

Dean Barisic

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.

Read full review

Pranay Jain

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.

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HameedAhmed

Joint Director at PAA

Security threats have been reduced through seamless deployment and strong integration with other tools

I have used Fortinet FortiWeb's integration features. We have easily integrated all of the applications with the product. Most of the applications we are using are in-house built. My technical team is looking after the best features. I have not used it extensively for maybe two and a half years. I have been involved in the installation, but I am not actually using the product. I work with it from time to time but not extensively. I would assess Fortinet FortiWeb's adaptive machine learning and artificial intelligence as having new patches installed regarding artificial intelligence, but when we bought it, I think the learning feature was there. Now they have installed artificial intelligence features through patches. We have a complete portfolio of Fortinet in our organization, including FortiMail, Fortinet FortiWeb, and FortiGate, along with multi-factor authentication. All of the products are from Fortinet. Fortinet tools integrate with each other and work in conjunction. I think Fortinet FortiWeb has helped us meet regulatory compliance because we are not a regulatory organization, but our sister organization is regulatory. We have regulatory compliance with the International Civil Aviation Authority, whose audit teams have checked our data center and these security products, and they are satisfied with us. The question about leveraging Fortinet FortiWeb's automated policy management does not pertain to my domain because I am not so technical, but I am in a management role now. My engineer is more technical than me. I would rate this product an eight point five out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable part of the solution for us overall is exactly that it is a Software-as-a-Service product."

"Does a good job preventing web application attacks."

"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."

"It is configurable via API."

"For us, the key feature of Cloudflare is DDoS protection and IP hiding, especially since we are a crypto company."

"We extensively use the solution every day. The solution is very stable; we haven’t seen any glitches."

"This is a good product; it's reliable and scales well."

"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

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

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

"Its initial setup process is straightforward."

"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."

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

"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."

"In summary, this solution is easy to manage, quick to deploy, and all of my customers are happy."

"Compute@Edge features are valuable to me."

More Fastly pros

"Banks have to be compliant with PCI and other things, and FortiWeb is absolutely amazing in terms of providing these reports."

"Fortinet FortiWeb has positively impacted my organization because most of our servers and applications are secure from hackers and other security threats."

"Pricing and licensing are USP of this solution; deploying an appliance provides in-house control and flexibility."

"We wanted to use the application and it's critical to us, Fortiweb enabled us to have that ability."

"L-7 protection makes possible to protect legacy/not up-to-date servers/applications without changing the application code."

"The solution is easy to configure and deploy."

"I have recently been looking at the SSL certificate features and the learning mode of the appliance. This appliance learns from the pattern of SSL attacks."

"The tool secures our critical applications, especially the mobile money application, which is often targeted by attacks. The solution provides rapid protection and has proven reliable against various threats."

More Fortinet FortiWeb pros

Cons

"Its stability could be better."

"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."

"The dashboard could be more user-friendly."

"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well."

"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."

"There could be an option to duplicate the cluster to maintain the consistency of rules."

"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."

"The ModSecurity core rules need to be updated."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

"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."

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

"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."

"It's not easy to start with Fastly if you don't have VCL knowledge, so it appears very complex at the beginning."

"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."

"Fastly can be improved in certain areas such as VCL, which is powerful but has a steep learning curve for normal users."

"The solution's pricing could be better."

More Fastly cons

"The product is complicated to set up."

"There is room for improvement in the portability on multi-cloud environments."

"Fortinet can improve their technical support, especially the response time."

"It would also be helpful if they could introduce easier reporting. It's good to have those reports that go to C-level management, and Fortinet does provide some graphs, but if they went into some more detail, that would be great."

"Their documentation is fairly complete, but it's sometimes a little bit difficult to search for exactly what you're looking for to resolve an issue. There have been times when we've gone to try to search for areas that we needed to get information on, and it has not always been extremely clear exactly how a particular thing needs to be set up."

"Integration and learning about attacks. I would improve these areas by making FortiWeb integrate with other network technologies and feedback from multiple platforms."

"Fine-tuning is a room for improvement in Fortinet FortiWeb."

"The price is a little higher than the competitors."

More Fortinet FortiWeb cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not too pricey."

"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 pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."

"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."

"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."

"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."

"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

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

"I've generally found Fastly to be very competitive in pricing, especially around Compute@Edge."

"It is an expensive solution."

"You need to pay a premium price for the tool."

"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."

"The pricing has been very competitive."

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

"The pricing is pretty good. We do pass a lot of traffic through our API servers. Something like 100 gigs of web traffic is a fair amount for reduced JSON API calls, but the cost is $50. For that peace of mind, we have thousands and thousands of customers that are protected by that $50, so it's a no-brainer."

"The licensing cost of the product is pretty high compared to other OEMs in the market."

"FortiWeb has a good presence because of its price."

"It keeps changing, but it's based on the size of the VM you buy and also the traffic throughput you want from it, whereas what we have on Azure is just the traffic throughput. You can also pay on a monthly basis from Azure. During each part of the project, it's okay to get Azure-based licensing or AWS-based licensing for FortiWeb, but over time, you would want to go with the perpetual license. You should go to Fortinet and buy the license from them. So, there is a two-step process there."

"It really pays off to buy licences for multiple years."

"There are no licensing costs."

"We are on an annual license for this solution and the price is approximately €100."

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

More Fortinet FortiWeb pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

17%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	60
Midsize Enterprise	27
Large Enterprise	37

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

The price of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is reasonable.

See all answers

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...

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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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fastly?

You need to pay a premium price for the tool.

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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 ...

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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 ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiWeb?

The pricing for Fortinet FortiWeb varies with different models having different prices. It depends on the requirement...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiWeb?

There is room for improvement in Fortinet FortiWeb. The team was only from FortiGate itself. They are making new firm...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiWeb?

Fortinet FortiWeb is very good as a web application solution. I have been working with Fortinet FortiWeb since 2020.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Azure Web Application Firewall vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

Radware Cloud WAF Service vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

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F5 Advanced WAF vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

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Cloudflare vs Fastly

Compared 19% of the time

Akamai vs Fastly

Compared 17% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Fastly

Compared 9% of the time

Uplynk vs Fastly

Compared 5% of the time

Radware DDoS vs Fastly

Compared 2% of the time

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F5 Advanced WAF vs Fortinet FortiWeb

Compared 15% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Fortinet FortiWeb

Compared 9% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs Fortinet FortiWeb

Compared 5% of the time

Fortinet FortiOS vs Fortinet FortiWeb

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Web Application Firewall vs Fortinet FortiWeb

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

May 2026

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Download Cloudflare Web Application Firewall product report

Buyer's Guide

Fastly

May 2026

Download Fastly product report

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiWeb

May 2026

Download Fortinet FortiWeb product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF

No data available

FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Overview

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall integrates DDoS protection, load balancing, and firewall capabilities. Its ease of use, configurability, and robust security measures make it a versatile choice for protecting web applications.

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall provides a comprehensive defense against threats with advanced reporting and robust security measures. It includes DNS integration, rate limiting, and extensive rule sets, all within a SaaS model that allows API configurability. Users value its caching, scalability, and pricing, although enhancements are needed in rate-limiting and third-party integration. Improvements in customer support, especially in India, real-time controls, and user documentation are also desired. Users seek a more intuitive dashboard, better log management, and improved alert systems, along with multitenancy capabilities and enhanced reporting.

What are the key features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

DDoS Protection: Shields applications from denial-of-service attacks
Load Balancing: Ensures efficient traffic distribution
DNS Integration: Enhances domain name system security
Rate Limiting: Controls traffic flow and reduces abuse
Extensive Rule Sets: Offers customizable security rules

What benefits and ROI can users find in reviews?

Scalability: Easily adapts to growing business needs
Pricing: Offers reasonable pricing structure
Caching: Improves application performance and speed
Configurable Security: Provides customizable defense settings
Efficient Management: Simplifies security and application control

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall finds application in industries like banking and retail by acting as a comprehensive security gateway, managing authentication and authorization while protecting web applications from malicious Layer 7 traffic. It also implements load balancing, CDN, and zero-trust policies, supported by advanced reporting, analytics tools, and threat scoring to meet specific industry needs.

Cloudflare

Fastly is a leading provider of content delivery network services that enhances website performance through efficient caching and real-time architecture capabilities.

Fastly integrates CDN technology with advanced web application firewall for comprehensive security. Its global infrastructure supports performance enhancement, rapid deployment, and rollback capabilities. Utilizing the VCL language allows custom caching solutions. Compute@Edge provides extensive architectural flexibility, aiding in HTML manipulation and script execution. Users benefit from its stability and reliability features for seamless network protection, log management, image optimization, and A/B testing. Challenges include limited support in mainland China, inadequate WebSocket protocol implementation, and complex pricing structures.

What are the key features of Fastly?

CDN Integration: Delivers content quickly across global Points of Presence.
Signal Sciences’ WAF: Manages security threats effectively.
VCL Language: Offers customizable caching solutions.
Compute@Edge: Enables flexible architecture for HTML manipulation.
Image Optimization: Enhances performance with dynamic image delivery.

What benefits should users consider in reviews?

Performance Enhancement: Boosts website speed and response time.
Rapid Deployment: Allows for swift implementation and rollback.
Real-Time Visibility: Provides insights into cached content management.
Security and Stability: Ensures reliability against DDoS attacks and other threats.
Flexibility: Offers diverse network protection and infrastructure capabilities.

Fastly is widely implemented in industries needing robust content delivery and security capabilities. Companies use it as a reverse proxy for media delivery, ensuring availability and optimized performance. Its rapid deployment and rollback features are particularly beneficial in technology sectors requiring agile responses to demand shifts.

Fastly

Fortinet FortiWeb provides advanced web application protection, using AI-driven threat detection and seamless integration with Fortinet products, ensuring robust security and easy management. It's favored for its scalability in protecting websites, mobile apps, and APIs from threats like SQL injection.

Fortinet FortiWeb offers robust web application security with features like machine learning-driven threat detection, load balancing, and OWASP protection. Its comprehensive security measures include web traffic filtering and DDoS protection, making it ideal for securing APIs and web servers. Cost-effectiveness and easy deployment further enhance its appeal as it serves banking, e-commerce, and industrial sectors. Areas needing enhancement include load balancing capabilities, comprehensive documentation, and improved support response times, addressing user-reported issues such as false positives and integration challenges. Documentation for cloud deployment is crucial for enhanced logging and performance stability.

What are Fortinet FortiWeb's Key Features?

Machine Learning: Detects threats using advanced algorithms.
AI-Driven Threat Detection: Provides automated responses to vulnerabilities.
Load Balancing: Distributes traffic across servers for efficiency.
Anti-Defacement: Protects websites from unauthorized alterations.
OWASP Protection: Guards against common web security vulnerabilities.

Why Consider Fortinet FortiWeb for Web Security?

Cost-Effectiveness: Provides affordable security solutions.
Reliability: Offers consistent performance in threat protection.
Easy Deployment: Simplifies the integration process into existing systems.
Robust Security: Delivers comprehensive protection against cyber threats.
Integration: Ensures compatibility with Fortinet's broader security ecosystem.

Companies across banking, e-commerce, and financial sectors implement Fortinet FortiWeb for its comprehensive security features in protecting web applications from SQL injection and cross-site scripting. Its use as a web application firewall provides essential protection and load-balancing capabilities, ensuring compliance with standards like PCI DSS in cloud environments and industrial settings.

Fortinet

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk

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

Lush, Barnabas Health, Options, Riverside Healthcare, Hillsbourough County Schools, Columbia Public Schools, Schiller AG

Buyer's Guide

Fastly vs. Fortinet FortiWeb

April 2026

Free Report: Fastly vs. Fortinet FortiWeb

Find out what your peers are saying about Fastly vs. Fortinet FortiWeb and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.

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