Fastly vs NetScaler comparison

Fastly and NetScaler are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Fastly is ranked #19 with an average rating of 8.3, while NetScaler is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.3. Fastly holds a 1.6% mindshare in WAF, compared to NetScaler’s 3.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Fastly users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of NetScaler users who would recommend it.

Fastly

Read 7 Fastly reviews

898 Views
534 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NetScaler

Read 107 NetScaler reviews

2,586 Views
641 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Fastly

NetScaler

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

NetScaler and Fastly are products competing in digital delivery and application management. Data comparisons indicate NetScaler provides comprehensive pricing and support, while Fastly offers advanced feature sets and scalability, making it appealing for those seeking enhanced capabilities.

Features: NetScaler stands out with comprehensive load balancing, application firewall, and advanced cloud connectivity. Fastly is notable for real-time CDN capabilities, improved caching strategies, and dynamic content acceleration.

Room for Improvement: NetScaler could improve the scalability and modernization of user interfaces along with enhancing feature customizability for better user experience. Fastly may benefit from strengthening its customer support availability, offering more intuitive configuration options, and broadening integration capabilities to better meet diverse client needs.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetScaler is recognized for straightforward deployment and effective customer support, facilitating smooth integration. Fastly boasts rapid integration and a developer-friendly approach but may require additional technical expertise, presenting challenges for organizations that depend heavily on customer support.

Pricing and ROI: NetScaler usually has lower setup costs and offers an attractive ROI for traditional network management solutions. Fastly, despite a relatively higher initial investment, potentially provides a higher ROI with advanced features enhancing business performance. The decision between the two heavily relies on specific organizational requirements and strategic objectives.

To learn more, read our detailed Fastly vs. NetScaler Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Fastly vs. NetScaler

June 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

Fastly

Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)

19th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

CDN (7th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (12th)

NetScaler

Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)

14th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

107

Ranking in other categories

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (1st), Network Management Applications (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Fastly is 1.6%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetScaler is 3.3%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Featured Reviews

Nick Wilsdon

CEO at Torque

An easily scalable and stable product that provides exceptional support

The product should provide improved bot detection and management. The product should also provide support for code management. Everybody working in CDN is currently looking for ways to better manage code deployment with various authorization levels and synchronization with our lower environments. Matching up what's happening in CDN with what's happening on the origin regarding testing would always be useful.

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DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU

Cloud Consultant at Migros Ticaret A.Ş.

A tool for centralized management including inventory and sales tracking

Citrix ADM has the ability to implement policies to tighten security. For instance, you can restrict access to your network from outsiders or lack necessary security measures such as antivirus programs. Additionally, there's the Delivery Controller, which allows for comprehensive monitoring and management tasks such as remote restarts, maintenance, and registration. Another essential component is the Director, which provides detailed insights into sessions, including identifying session failures, connection issues, user lockouts, etc. It presents a list of problems to address, enabling you to click on them and resolve them efficiently.

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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

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

"Its initial setup process is straightforward."

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

"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."

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

"Compute@Edge features are valuable to me."

"The advantage of Citrix Web App and API Protection is just its graphic user interface for beginners. The solution is nothing special, but we have to use it for the corporation. Another advantage of Citrix Web App and API Protection is that we have our copy to test things and get the know-how of it."

"The most valuable features are for the ADMs and the overall monitoring environment."

"It is the best product out there."

"An essential component is the Director, which provides detailed insights into sessions, including identifying session failures, connection issues, user lockouts, etc. It presents a list of problems to address, enabling you to click on them and resolve them efficiently."

"Very stable."

"The NetScaler appliance has provided a lot of customers with greater high availability for their enterprise applications within a single site and across multiple locations."

"The solution is very stable. We don't have any downtime or issues of that nature."

"It's very easy to configure."

More NetScaler pros

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."

"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."

"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."

"Support is not that great."

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

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

"When a new version comes out, sometimes, my existing configuration gets wiped out. They should work on this so that my existing configuration doesn't get impacted with an upgrade to a newer version. There could also reduce frequent firmware upgrade activities and have a stable version so that once we upgrade it, we don't have to upgrade it for two to three years."

"The vendor provides frequent patches, however, the security of the website has room for improvement."

"Should offer more flexible cost-effective licensing for small to medium sized organizations."

"It was challenging explaining to customers that it's no longer NetScaler but ADC, and now it's not just ADC but also the rebranding from NetScaler."

"We have issues with the certificates. All authorization processes need certificates, however, every three months we needed to change certificates. This process iss complicated for us because Citrix does not have a not user-friendly interface and does not off user-friendly services. This needs a lot of improvement."

"I think there is always room for improvement in this type of solutions. For example, I think the GUI should be easy to understand."

"The solution should be able to scale more effectively than it does."

"An area for improvement in Citrix Web App and API Protection is for it to give real-time notifications and alerts. It would be practical if the solution warns you if there's an attack or if the load or traffic volume increases or decreases. An additional feature I'd like to see in Citrix Web App and API Protection is a prediction or artificial intelligence on what is happening, for example, attacks."

More NetScaler cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing has been very competitive."

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

"It is an expensive solution."

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

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

"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."

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

"You get the value for your money. There aren't any hidden fees."

"Citrix ADC could improve the price and make it less expensive, other competitors have a better prices. This would allow Citrix ADC to keep dominating the market."

"We get value for money. Its price is fair. I don't think it is overpriced."

"Our licensing fees including technical support are approximately $3,500 USD."

"The tool is cheap."

"Citrix NetScaler's pricing is slightly above average but not overly expensive. I would consider F5 BIG IP to be the most expensive, Citrix NetScaler to be the second most expensive, and then Kemp Load Balancer to be the third."

"The licenses for this product are payable as a yearly subscription, and carry a high price-point. The subscription scheme is quite complicated, and costs will increase with each additional feature that is required, outside of the basic setup."

"Costly product and complicated licensing."

More NetScaler pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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 help, live, engage, and ring when they respond. Very quickly.

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?

What I don't like about Fastly is that they charge a heavy price. The pricing is different per region. If you have a customer who is international and has deployments in different regions, it is ve...

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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 enters our environment.

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 expensive.

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 complexity. While it could be easier to manage, it is like transitioning from driving a ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 23% of the time

Cloudflare vs Fastly

Compared 19% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Fastly

Compared 8% of the time

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Fastly

Compared 7% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Fastly

Compared 6% of the time

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HAProxy vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler

Compared 10% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs NetScaler

Compared 9% of the time

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

Compared 8% of the time

NGINX Plus vs NetScaler

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fastly

June 2025

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Buyer's Guide

NetScaler

June 2025

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Also Known As

No data available

Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall

Overview

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

One platform for a consistent application delivery and security experience because nobody has time to learn multiple systems to manage ADC deployments. NetScaler is built with a single code base using a software-based architecture, so no matter which ADC form factor you choose — hardware, virtual machine, bare metal, or container — the behavior will be the same.

NetScaler

Sample Customers

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

June 2025

Free Report: Fastly vs. NetScaler

Find out what your peers are saying about Fastly vs. NetScaler and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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