Fastly vs NetScaler comparison

Fastly and NetScaler are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Fastly is ranked #23 with an average rating of 9.0, while NetScaler is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.7. Fastly holds a 1.4% mindshare in WAF, compared to NetScaler’s 3.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Fastly users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of NetScaler users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

NetScaler and Fastly are products competing in content delivery and load balancing. NetScaler holds the upper hand in feature richness and support, while Fastly leads in speed and modern technology offerings.

Features: NetScaler provides robust load balancing, application acceleration, and advanced threat protection. Fastly offers real-time logging, edge-compute capabilities, and seamless caching solutions.

Room for Improvement: NetScaler could improve by enhancing its speed and agility. The user interface may also benefit from modernization. Fastly could improve by expanding support and feature offerings, and integrating more comprehensive application control features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetScaler uses a traditional deployment model noted for dependability and extensive customer service. Fastly features rapid deployment capabilities and responsive support, ideal for swift implementation and agile operations.

Pricing and ROI: NetScaler typically has higher initial setup costs, justified by its extensive feature set and potential long-term ROI. Fastly is competitively priced, offering significant ROI through efficient scaling and adaptability, favorable for businesses seeking rapid return and scalability.

To learn more, read our detailed Fastly vs. NetScaler Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Fastly vs. NetScaler

March 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 March 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 5.4%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fastly is 1.4%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetScaler is 3.8%, down from 4.1% 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	5.4%
NetScaler	3.8%
Fastly	1.4%
Other	89.4%

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.

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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.

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Amit Ronen

IT Security Specialist at a educational organization with 201-500 employees

Allows students and lecturers access to necessary software for their courses cost-effectively

I am a consultant and do not recommend specific products. I work with customers, and they decide what they want to buy. I'm a CISO as a service, dealing with security. I'm from an integrator company, and they usually sell a few products. One customer uses NetScaler for a VDI system with Citrix…

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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

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

"It is configurable via API."

"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."

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

"The product has a valuable security control functionality."

"Technical support has a very fast response time and they are helpful."

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

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

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

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

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

"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."

"Compute@Edge features are valuable to me."

"Its initial setup process is straightforward."

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

"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."

More Fastly pros

"The feature that I have found most valuable is its load balancing."

"Load balancing, cache redirection, content switching, all connected with traffic management."

"The most valuable feature is the content switching."

"Compared to other solutions, Citrix ADC is much more robust in terms of the native integration to cloud platforms. It is far more robust from an operational point of view as well."

"This solution increases the backend network service performance, which is one of the things that we like the most."

"The stability is good. If there is a problem, the load will be shifted to other sites automatically, which has been a good experience for us."

"Content Redirection based on application data is a wonderful feature which works absolutely fine with most of the web application, and it has good logics behind it to configure it, and secondly, Single sign-on with Citrix's own applications, like XenApp and XenDesktop."

"Because of the functionality, scalability and stability of the solution as a whole, I rate ADC eight out of 10."

More NetScaler pros

Cons

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

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should include port forwarding features."

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

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

"The rate limiting functionality could be enhanced, as we find it somewhat limited."

"I have experienced some difficulties with Cloudflare's support as a customer based in India."

"The reporting could be improved if it were more granular."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

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

"Support is not that great."

"The solution's pricing could be better."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Fastly cons

"Sometimes there are stability issues with certain releases."

"The solution's pricing is a big concern and should be improved."

"I would like to see more integration for single sign-on."

"Our customers' feedback was that support wasn't the best."

"Finding relevant documentation for learning NetScaler can be challenging, especially for beginners who prefer a web interface over command-line interfaces."

"The only thing customers told me that could be improved is that they would like to be able to purchase and receive the products in one box, rather than two boxes. This is something related to marketing, though."

"I would like to see them make it easier to do some of the more complex things. For example, a web re-direct requires two pieces to it. You have two ports and when people want to go to a web page, they just type in the webpage that on the backend it will redirect them to a secure link. The initial setup of that is cumbersome because you have to do it twice. There are things that can be replicated. The IP address, for example, is the same. This change would go a long way. Don't make me do it twice and don't make me have to read tons of documentation to figure out how to do it. Ease of configuration for some of the more complex processes would be a good improvement."

"ADC from Citrix has added functionalities from other products and the usability is very difficult for someone who is used to a simpler user interface, it's a little bit of a mess to use."

More NetScaler cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."

"It is not too pricey."

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

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

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

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

"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."

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

"The pricing has been very competitive."

"It is an expensive solution."

"The price for Citrix ADC here in Mexico was good, when you compare it with F5 and Radware."

"There isn't much of a difference between the cost of Citrix and that of other similar solutions."

"After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more expensive."

"I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."

"Its licensing cost is much higher than other products, but it is acceptable because it is a one-time investment, and we are getting our requirements fulfilled when we buy this product. So, there is no issue with the pricing."

"For the specific use case that my customers primarily engage with, I would give the pricing a rating of seven out of ten."

"The tool is cheap."

"It all depends on the features that will be used and the number of accesses."

More NetScaler pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

13%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

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	5
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	45
Midsize Enterprise	23
Large Enterprise	57

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...

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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

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 ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Citrix ADC?

The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic ente...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADC?

After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?

Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexi...

See all answers

Comparisons

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 8% of the time

Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 7% of the time

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

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 4% of the time

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall Competitors

Cloudflare vs Fastly

Compared 21% of the time

Akamai vs Fastly

Compared 21% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Fastly

Compared 8% of the time

Uplynk vs Fastly

Compared 5% of the time

Azure Web Application Firewall vs Fastly

Compared 2% of the time

More Fastly Competitors

Fortinet FortiADC vs NetScaler

Compared 9% of the time

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

Compared 7% of the time

HAProxy vs NetScaler

Compared 6% of the time

A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs NetScaler

Compared 6% of the time

More NetScaler Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

March 2026

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Download Cloudflare Web Application Firewall product report

Buyer's Guide

Fastly

March 2026

Download Fastly product report

Buyer's Guide

NetScaler

March 2026

Download NetScaler product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF

No data available

Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall, NetScaler VPX - Customer Licensed

Overview

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's intuitive dashboard enables users to build powerful rules through easy clicks and also provides Terraform integration. Every request to the WAF is inspected against the rule engine and the threat intelligence curated from protecting over 27 Million websites. Suspicious requests can be blocked, challenged or logged as per the needs of the user while legitimate requests are routed to the destination, agnostic of whether it lives on-premise or in the cloud. Analytics and Cloudflare Logs enable visibility into actionable metrics for the user.

Cloudflare

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

NetScaler is an advanced application delivery controller providing load balancing, SSL offloading, and enhanced network performance. Users benefit from its robust security features, seamless Citrix integrations, and cost-effective infrastructure.

Designed to optimize and secure application delivery, NetScaler offers high availability and supports data centers with its load balancing and reverse proxy capabilities. It ensures effective traffic management and provides valuable insights into network health while integrating easily with Citrix products. Users appreciate its centralized management via ADM and flexible deployment options tailored to their infrastructure needs. However, there is room for improvement in its management tools, interface, and documentation, alongside a need for security enhancements and better licensing flexibility.

What are the most important features of NetScaler?

Flexible Deployment: Allows adaptation to different environments and needs.
Load Balancing: Efficiently distributes traffic to enhance performance.
SSL Offloading: Offloads encryption to optimize server performance.
Content Switching: Enables tailored content delivery based on user needs.
Robust Security: Includes firewalling and AAA authentication.
Global Server Load Balancing: Distributes load across multiple locations for high availability.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Cost-effectiveness: Delivers an efficient infrastructure without high costs.
Reliable Performance: Ensures consistent delivery and resilience.
High Availability: Maintains network uptime and service quality.
Technical Support: Offers responsive assistance for operational issues.

NetScaler is implemented across sectors like healthcare, finance, and education to guarantee secure remote access, enhance application network management, and support virtual desktops. Its application gateways and VPN access capabilities make it ideal for industries needing secure and efficient connectivity solutions.

NetScaler

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

ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk

Buyer's Guide

Fastly vs. NetScaler

March 2026

Free Report: Fastly vs. NetScaler

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