Fastly vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway comparison

Fastly and Microsoft are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Fastly is ranked #21 with an average rating of 8.7, while Microsoft is ranked #9 with an average rating of 7.8. Fastly holds a 1.7% mindshare in WAF, compared to Microsoft’s 3.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Fastly users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Fastly and Microsoft Azure Application Gateway compete in content delivery and application hosting services. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is considered superior for its extensive features and perceived value.

Features: Fastly provides real-time log streaming, quick configuration versioning allowing for fast deployment and rollbacks, and rate limiting for volumetric attack protection. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway offers integrated threat protection via its Web Application Firewall, auto-scaling for enhanced enterprise-level operations, and seamless API integration for traffic management.

Room for Improvement: Fastly could enhance its zero-trust features and provide more advanced edge security options. Improvements in customer support response time and expansion of its performance globally could further benefit users. Meanwhile, Microsoft Azure Application Gateway might benefit from increasing its API integration capabilities, further simplifying its configuration process, and offering more detailed analytics and insights for enhanced decision-making.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Fastly offers a quick and efficient deployment process, favoring businesses that need minimal setup time. It also supports easy changes via CLI for flexible configuration. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, in contrast, provides a robust and detailed deployment process supported by comprehensive documentation and a wide support network, favoring thorough integration capabilities for enterprises.

Pricing and ROI: Fastly is attractive to small to mid-sized businesses with its cost-effective initial setup, focusing on quick return on investment. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway may have higher initial costs but promises long-term ROI through scalable features, appealing to larger-scale operations planning strategic investments for future growth.

To learn more, read our detailed Fastly vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Fastly vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

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 June 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 4.5%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fastly is 1.7%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is 3.5%, down from 8.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall	4.5%
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway	3.5%
Fastly	1.7%
Other	90.3%

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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reviewer5599486

Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Mutual TLS has secured our web services and now needs broader protocol support

The most valuable feature we have found in Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is mutual TLS. We find mutual TLS valuable because we can verify the client securely by setting up the trust certificate of the client, and also if we do it at the client side as well. This successfully develops mutual trust, ensuring that we know the client who is calling our service is a legitimate client. That is a very nice feature.Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has helped manage our traffic efficiently because we have many web services that we can put behind the same URL, and we can have different URLs with the same Application Gateway with a limited number of listeners. We can do host-based routing as well as URL-based routing or path-based routing. It supports both, so we can have even a single URL supporting many applications, or we can have different URLs for different applications respectively. We have both use cases.

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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 security features are valuable. The particular feature we use is called OWASP."

"The integration of Cloudflare with Cloud Suite is its most valuable feature."

"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."

"In general, it's a very good product: the solution is very stable, the performance is great, the product offers very good scalability, the pricing is very reasonable, the installation is very straightforward and quite simple, and technical support has a very fast response time and is helpful."

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

"The Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."

"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."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

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

"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."

"Compute@Edge features are valuable to me."

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

"Its initial setup process is straightforward."

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

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

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

More Fastly pros

"We can control what rules should be used and what should be disabled."

"The most valuable feature is WAF."

"Good customization; able to report and take action on alerts."

"The solution provides great automation and it is easy to upgrade service."

"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway gives us a lot of benefits, including domain mapping."

"In my experience, Microsoft products have a smooth integration and facilitate easy management and monitoring. Using Azure Application Gateway allows us to efficiently handle the system loads."

"The health probe is pretty good for your backend health. It tells you whether it's communicating and talking to the endpoint correctly. It is quite useful."

"I like the tool's stability and performance."

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway pros

Cons

"The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced"

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

"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."

"Cloudflare should update the version of the ModSecurity core rule set that they run on."

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should improve visibility for a customer."

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

"Support can be challenging at times."

"The ModSecurity core rules need to be updated."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

"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 solution's pricing could be better."

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

More Fastly cons

"The solution should provide more security for certificate-based services so that we can implement more security on that."

"In future releases of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, I would to see more AI functionalities and a better dashboard as well as some customizations."

"Application Gateway’s limitation is that the private and the public endpoint cannot use the same port."

"It could be more stable, and support could be better. It would also be better if they offered more features. For example, it lacks security features. Before we used another English solution, and we realized that some of the rules were not set up correctly and passed through the Application Gateway's English controllers. But the problem, in this case, is if you send ten rules, for example, six rules hit some issues. IP address blocking could be better. The rules, for example, don't work properly. If you have one issue, one rule or another rule will not work. This sounds like total madness to me."

"Needs easier integration with the existing SIAM."

"The user interface could be better."

"The main drawback of the solution is that it's only for Azure."

"We have encountered some issues with automatic redirection and cancellation, leading to 502 and 504 gateway errors. So, I experienced some trouble with containers."

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The solution is expensive."

"It is not too pricey."

"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"

"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."

"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."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"The pricing has been very competitive."

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

"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 is based on how much you use the solution."

"Every solution comes with a license and cost. Microsoft provides the license and the total cost is for the maintenance every year."

"The solution is paid monthly. The solution is highly expensive."

"The cost is not an issue."

"The product is not expensive."

"I rate the pricing seven out of ten because some third-party solutions are even costlier than this."

"I rate the price of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway an eight out of ten."

"The solution's pricing is not complex. It is not expensive from our point of view."

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

16%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

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	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	23
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	24

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fastly?

The pricing of Fastly can be hard to predict because it is primarily usage-based with minimal setup costs and flexibl...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Fastly?

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

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Fastly?

Fastly serves as an Edge Cloud platform and CDN that we use for real-time Edge Caching and instant caching purging, a...

See all answers

What's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?

We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides...

See all answers

How does AWS WAF compare to Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?

Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Web Application Firewall or Microsoft...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?

Regarding the pricing and licensing of Application Gateway, it is not cheap because the version we are using is WAF V...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 7% of the time

Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

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Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 6% of the time

Azure Web Application Firewall vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

Cloudbric WAF+ vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 4% of the time

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Cloudflare vs Fastly

Compared 19% of the time

Akamai vs Fastly

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Imperva Application Security Platform vs Fastly

Compared 10% 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 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 5% of the time

Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

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

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Buyer's Guide

Fastly

May 2026

Download Fastly product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

May 2026

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

Download Microsoft Azure Application Gateway product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF

No data available

Azure Application Gateway, MS Azure Application Gateway

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

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway offers advanced traffic management and security features for web applications. It includes built-in rules, Layer 7 control, autoscaling, and integration options, providing flexibility and security for managing application traffic efficiently.

Azure Application Gateway is utilized by organizations for securing and managing web traffic with its comprehensive web application firewall, load balancing capabilities, and Layer 7 firewall rules. Known for its ease of setup and integration, the platform facilitates external application access and deploys secure services. While it enhances security with customized configurations, users note areas for improvement such as configuration complexity, pricing, third-party tool integration, and automation. Addressing these aspects can improve user experience and performance.

What are the key features of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?

Built-in Rules: Pre-configured rules help streamline traffic management and enhance security.
Layer 7 Control: Offers detailed traffic routing and policies based on application-level information.
Real-Time Autoscaling: Automatically adjusts resources to meet demand and optimize performance.
Comprehensive WAF Protection: Guards against web vulnerabilities and potential threats.
Seamless Integration: Easily integrates with Azure services for enhanced workflow efficiency.

What benefits do users look for in reviews?

Traffic Routing: Efficiently directs application traffic based on defined rules for improved performance.
Security: Provides robust protection for internet-facing applications.
Ease of Setup: Simplifies deployment and management of applications.
Flexibility: Supports different application scenarios with customizable configurations.

Industries such as finance, healthcare, and retail implement Azure Application Gateway to protect sensitive data and manage significant web traffic. Its application deployment support and security capabilities make it suitable for businesses needing to ensure secure data exchange and reliable access to online services.

Microsoft

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

Lilly, AccuWeather, AIRFRANCE, Honeywell

Buyer's Guide

Fastly vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

April 2026

Free Report: Fastly vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Find out what your peers are saying about Fastly vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.

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