Fastly vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) comparison

Fastly and The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Fastly is ranked #18 with an average rating of 8.3, while The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is ranked #27 with an average rating of 7.7. Fastly holds a 1.5% mindshare in WAF, compared to The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Fastly users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 50% of The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) users who would recommend it.

Fastly

Read 7 Fastly reviews

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543 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (po...

Read 3 The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) reviews

664 Views
353 Comparison Views

50% willing to recommend

Fastly

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (po...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Fastly and Fastly Next-Gen WAF offer advanced web service capabilities, with WAF having an edge in terms of specialized security features, making it a strong choice for enhanced protection.

Features: Fastly provides content delivery network services, real-time configuration control, and impressive speed and scalability. Fastly Next-Gen WAF delivers advanced threat detection, customizable security rules, and robust protection not found in standard Fastly services.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Fastly is implemented easily, supported by responsive customer service facilitating swift adaptation. Fastly Next-Gen WAF integrates smoothly within existing infrastructures, featuring a security-focused support team that excels in navigating complex deployments.

Pricing and ROI: Fastly offers a cost-effective solution yielding significant ROI through efficient delivery speed. Fastly Next-Gen WAF requires a higher initial investment, but the enhanced security and reduced breach risks provide valuable ROI for organizations focused on security.

To learn more, read our detailed Fastly vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Fastly vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

June 2025

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Helped 858,038 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

Fastly

Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)

18th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

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

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (po...

Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)

27th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Fastly is 1.5%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is 1.0%, up from 0.7% 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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Archana Heeralal

Security Engineer at Amazon

A good solution to implement web application firewall for applications

There are some lags in Signal Sciences for the web application firewalls. Even if we create some custom rules, Signal Sciences cannot capture some of the malicious traffic. There is a little bit of complexity with custom rules that should be removed. Signal Sciences should add a feature called rate limiting with multiple options, wherein I can create a rate limiting based on the cookie request or the IP.

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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 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."

"Its initial setup process is straightforward."

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

"Compute@Edge features are valuable to me."

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

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

"The product's most valuable feature is its ability to set up the rules easily."

"Fastly (Signal Sciences) integrates and tags the intermittent traffic based on patterns. It generates signals and provides them in a dashboard where we can view them and decide whether to allow or deny traffic. It's a more advanced and easy-to-navigate dashboard."

"When configuring a web application firewall using Signal Sciences, we configure a rule whereby no one except a few people can access the application."

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 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."

"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."

"Support is not that great."

"The solution's pricing could be better."

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

"The areas that could be improved in Signal Sciences include the effectiveness of rules, as many didn't function optimally and required custom rule-writing to address bypasses for WAF."

"Fastly don't support caching for China users. That's the only feature lacking compared to Akamai."

"Even if we create some custom rules, Signal Sciences cannot capture some of the malicious traffic."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive solution."

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

"The pricing has been very competitive."

"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."

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

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

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

"The pricing is 50% less than Akamai."

"Signal Sciences is pretty cheap compared to other solutions."

"The product has an affordable cost."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Signal Sciences?

The product's most valuable feature is its ability to set up the rules easily.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Signal Sciences?

The pricing is 50% less than Akamai.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Signal Sciences?

Fastly don't support caching for China users. That's the only feature lacking compared to Akamai.

See all answers

Comparisons

Akamai vs Fastly

Compared 22% 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 6% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Fastly

Compared 6% of the time

More Fastly Competitors

Cloudflare vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 19% of the time

AWS WAF vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 15% of the time

Azure Front Door vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 11% of the time

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 9% of the time

Akamai App and API Protector vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 8% of the time

More The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fastly

June 2025

Download Fastly product report

Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

June 2025

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) report

Download The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) product report

Also Known As

No data available

Signal Sciences Next-Gen WAF, Signal Sciences RASP

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

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) provides web application and API protection, RASP, rate limiting, bot protection and DDoS purpose built to eliminate the challenges of legacy WAF.

Fastly

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

Chef, Adobe, Datadog, Etsy, GrubHub, Vimeo, SendGrid, Under Armour, Duo, AppNexus

Buyer's Guide

Fastly vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

June 2025

Free Report: Fastly vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Find out what your peers are saying about Fastly vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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858,038 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Fastly vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) report.

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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.