Fastly vs NGINX App Protect comparison

Fastly and F5 are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Fastly is ranked #23 with an average rating of 9.0, while F5 is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.1. Fastly holds a 1.4% mindshare in WAF, compared to F5’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Fastly users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of F5 users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

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: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Fastly vs. NGINX App Protect

March 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 885,311 peers since 2012

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 NGINX App Protect is 2.2%, up from 1.7% 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%
NGINX App Protect	2.2%
Fastly	1.4%
Other	91.0%

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

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.

Read full review

Valerio Guaglianone

Dev Ops Engineer at adesso AG

Long-term web protection has supported reliable traffic management but needs a simpler interface

NGINX App Protect is a good product. I have used both versions from F5 -also the free version- (I mean the NGINX/NGINX One/App Protect free trial period), and I think it is a good product. It's stable, affordable, and easy to manage. NGINX App Protect is a comprehensive security solution that combines advanced WAF, DoS protection, API security, and DevSecOps automation in a lightweight, scalable package ideal for modern cloud-native architectures. The adaptive machine learning capabilities are truly commendable, as the solution can establish traffic baselines and detect anomalies in real time. It automatically adjusts security policies, minimizing the need for manual intervention and reducing false positives. Additionally, it supports scalable deployment across diverse environments, including on-premises, cloud, Kubernetes, and containers, offering both flexibility and scalability I have experience with the web server, F5 load balancer, and similar products provided by Ergon, for eg. the web application firewall and the Microgateway for K8S. I'm also familiar with F5 BIG-IP products.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10."

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

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

"It protects web applications efficiently."

"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."

"Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before."

"Very glad the WAF rulesets works out of box, and requires very little tuning or maintenance."

"Does a good job preventing web application attacks."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

"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."

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

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

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

"Compute@Edge features are valuable to me."

"Its initial setup process is straightforward."

"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."

More Fastly pros

"This solution provides perfect protection for the published services against all application attacks."

"I would recommend this solution to others because it performs well."

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

"There's a cache, or it works like a proxy, so it can speed up applications."

"The solution is very good overall."

"We have seen a return on investment using NGINX App Protect."

"The solution has helped us greatly during this Covid period."

"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."

More NGINX App Protect pros

Cons

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

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

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

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

"The reporting could be more granular."

"The learning curve was steep initially."

"The notification part could be improved. It's very much connected to Web Application Firewall, rate-limiting, and DDoS protection."

"The user interface is very simple and straightforward, but users need knowledge about DNS to accomplish tasks."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

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

"The solution's pricing could be better."

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

"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."

"Support is not that great."

"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."

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

More Fastly cons

"The price of NGINX App Protect could improve."

"The support from NGINX App Protect is too expensive."

"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."

"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."

"The integration of NGINX App Protect could improve."

"The GUI and web GUI configuration could be improved to be easier to manage and use."

"They could provide a better user interface."

"This solution is not really scalable. Both the virtual appliance and the physical appliance are limited in terms of how much traffic they can handle."

More NGINX App Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

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

"The solution is expensive."

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

"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."

"It is not too pricey."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"The pricing has been very competitive."

"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."

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

"It is an expensive solution."

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

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

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

"The product's price is high."

"The licensing fees for this solution are pretty expensive for what it does, but there is no alternative."

"The solution's price is reasonable."

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

"NGINX App Protect is expensive."

"There are not any additional costs we had to pay to use NGINX App Protect."

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

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

More NGINX App Protect pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

17%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing 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	5
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	12

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?

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

I will not be able to answer about my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for NGINX App Protect, as so...

See all answers

What needs improvement with NGINX App Protect?

I think NGINX App Protect could be improved by having it come out of the box with NGINX.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for NGINX App Protect?

My main use case for NGINX App Protect is primarily in our infrastructure layer with Kubernetes, as I am using it to ...

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

F5 Advanced WAF vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall Competitors

Cloudflare vs Fastly

Compared 21% of the time

Akamai vs Fastly

Compared 20% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Fastly

Compared 8% of the time

Uplynk vs Fastly

Compared 5% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Fastly

Compared 3% of the time

More Fastly Competitors

Fortinet FortiWeb vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 8% 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

Haltdos Enterprise WAF vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 6% of the time

Azure Front Door vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 5% of the time

More NGINX App Protect 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

NGINX App Protect

March 2026

Download NGINX App Protect product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF

No data available

NGINX WAF, NGINX Web Application Firewall

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

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

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Fastly vs. NGINX App Protect

March 2026

Free Report: Fastly vs. NGINX App Protect

Find out what your peers are saying about Fastly vs. NGINX App Protect and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Fastly vs. NGINX App Protect report.

See our list of best Web Application Firewall (WAF) vendors.

We monitor all Web Application Firewall (WAF) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.