Fastly vs NGINX App Protect comparison

Fastly and F5 are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Fastly is ranked #18 with an average rating of 9.0, while F5 is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.5. Additionally, 100% of Fastly users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of F5 users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Fastly and NGINX App Protect are competitive solutions in the web performance and security category. Fastly holds the upper hand when it comes to rapid content delivery, while NGINX App Protect shines with its strong application security features.

Features: Fastly offers a robust edge cloud platform optimizing content delivery and scalability, supporting real-time data streaming and instant configurability. It provides a user-friendly CLI for efficient configuration and reliable log management. NGINX App Protect provides advanced threat mitigation for APIs and microservices, excelling in auto-learning for application profiling, bot protection, and flexibility with command-line interface and reverse proxy.

Room for Improvement: Fastly could enhance zero-trust security features and improve its broader market appeal. Advanced analytics and a more comprehensive CDN interface could bolster its standing. NGINX App Protect may require simplification in its setup process. Emphasizing ease of backend programming could improve deployment. Integration advice for hybrid networks could also be beneficial.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Fastly ensures seamless deployment with comprehensive documentation and responsive customer support. It integrates effortlessly with existing systems, promoting minimal downtime. NGINX App Protect focuses on security integration but might require more customization. It needs effective communication between security and developer teams to achieve optimal deployment.

Pricing and ROI: Fastly offers competitive pricing focused on performance improvement, ensuring good ROI through enhanced speed. NGINX App Protect generally has higher initial costs due to its security features, providing substantial ROI for security-focused businesses. Fastly is cost-effective for performance needs, while NGINX App Protect secures long-term investments in application protection.

To learn more, read our detailed Fastly vs. NGINX App Protect Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Fastly vs. NGINX App Protect

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

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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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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Jean-Marc Porchet

Project Manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Blocking IPs and detecting bots enhances security for medical websites

I was researching products like NGINX App Protect and F5 Advanced WAF for long-term options. I have some use for such a solution, but probably not before next year Detecting bots and blocking IPs have proven effective for securing applications. We were able to block groups of IP addresses that…

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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

"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."

"The tool is user-friendly."

"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."

"The UI is good."

"Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website."

"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."

"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."

"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"

More Cloudflare pros

"Its initial setup process is straightforward."

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

"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's initial setup phase is straightforward."

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

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

"Compute@Edge features are valuable to me."

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

More Fastly pros

"The most valuable feature is that I can establish different services from the firewall."

"The most valuable feature is that there is a link in the system that will help to analyze the security of an application when something abnormal is found."

"It has the best documentation features."

"It is a very good tool for load balancing."

"Overall, I rate NGINX App Protect between eight and nine."

"The initial setup was simple and took three to four days."

"NGINX App Protect's best features are auto-learning, which creates a profile of applications that are deployed, bot protection, and force protection, which lets you configure your brute force policy and alert for and prevent brute force attacks."

"The most valuable feature of NGINX App Protect is its flexibility."

More NGINX App Protect pros

Cons

"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."

"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."

"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 documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."

"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."

"Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."

"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."

"Cloudflare does not have an on-premise solution. If they had different approaches they could be better suited to accommodate more customers, such as on-premise and hybrid deployments. For example, hybrid deployments would be useful where you could move the traffic from the enterprise to the cloud."

More Cloudflare cons

"Support is not that great."

"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."

"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."

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

"The solution's pricing could be better."

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

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

"Areas for improvement would be if NGINX could scan for vulnerabilities and learn and update the signatures of DoS attacks."

"As far as scalability, it takes a long time for deployment."

"The price of NGINX App Protect could improve."

"They could provide a better user interface."

"The product's price is high, making it an area of concern where improvements are required. The tool's licensing model is also not good."

"The dashboard could provide a more comprehensive view of the status of the connections."

"The integration of NGINX App Protect could improve."

"NGINX App Protect would be improved with integration with Shape and F5 WAF, which would make it easy for users to manage all their web application security with a single solution."

More NGINX App Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free version."

"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."

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

"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."

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

"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

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

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

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

"It is an expensive solution."

"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."

"The pricing has been very competitive."

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

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

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

"The price of NGINX App Protect is not much different from the products that fall under the leader category of Gartner Magic Quadrant."

"NGINX is not expensive."

"Really understand the licensing model, because we underestimated that."

"Our licensing costs are about $40,000 a year."

"The price of NGINX App Protect is approximately $3,000 annually. All of our licenses are observed by a managed service partner."

"There is a monthly or annual subscription to use NGINX App Protect. There are not any additional costs to the subscription."

"There is a license needed to use NGINX App Protect."

"NGINX App Protect is expensive."

More NGINX App Protect pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

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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

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Retailer

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	11

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 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

What do you like most about NGINX App Protect?

It's very easy to deploy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX App Protect?

I don't know the pricing yet because in my other project, I was not part of the buying side and I was just starting t...

See all answers

What needs improvement with NGINX App Protect?

It would be better if it were easier to implement and if there was more information from F5 regarding hardware requir...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Myra Security DDoS Protection vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

AWS Shield vs Cloudflare

Compared 1% 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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Azure Front Door vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 12% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 9% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 7% of the time

AWS WAF vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 6% of the time

More NGINX App Protect Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

January 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Fastly

January 2026

Download Fastly product report

Buyer's Guide

NGINX App Protect

December 2025

Download NGINX App Protect product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

NGINX WAF, NGINX Web Application Firewall

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

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

NGINX App Protect application security solution combines the efficacy of advanced F5 web application firewall (WAF) technology with the agility and performance of NGINX Plus. The solution runs natively on NGINX Plus and addresses some of the most difficult challenges facing modern DevOps environments:

Integrating security controls directly into the development automation pipeline
Applying and managing security for modern and distributed application environments such as containers and microservices
Providing the right level of security controls without impacting release and go-to-market velocity
Complying with security and regulatory requirements

NGINX App Protect offers:

Expanded security beyond basic signatures to ensure adequate controls
F5 app‑security technology for efficacy superior to ModSecurity and other WAFs
Confidently run in “blocking” mode in production with proven F5 expertise
High‑confidence signatures for extremely low false positives
Increases visibility, integrating with third‑party analytics solutions
Integrates security and WAF natively into the CI/CD pipeline
Deploys as a lightweight software package that is agnostic of underlying infrastructure
Facilitates declarative policies for “security as code” and integration with DevOps tools
Decreases developer burden and provides feedback loop for quick security remediation
Accelerates time to market and reduces costs with DevSecOps‑automated security

Sample Customers

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

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Fastly vs. NGINX App Protect

December 2025

Free Report: Fastly vs. NGINX App Protect

Find out what your peers are saying about Fastly vs. NGINX App Protect and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

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