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 #20 with an average rating of 9.0, while The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is ranked #25 with an average rating of 8.0. Fastly holds a 1.4% mindshare in WAF, compared to The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Fastly users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 60% of The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) users who would recommend it.

Fastly

Read 9 Fastly reviews

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880 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (po...

Read 4 The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) reviews

992 Views
873 Comparison Views

60% willing to recommend

Fastly

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (po...

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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: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

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

February 2026

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Helped 881,821 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)

20th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

CDN (8th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (10th)

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (po...

Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)

25th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

4.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Fastly is 1.4%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is 1.2%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Fastly	1.4%
The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)	1.2%
Other	97.4%

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Featured Reviews

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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reviewer2161107

Staff Engineer at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

Room for improvement with user interface while competitive pricing impresses

It is managed through Infrastructure as Code, so all configurations can be managed in the code itself, which is beneficial. Because it uses rules, it is easy to set up, and we have many different sites where the configurations are straightforward. Though the UI is not very interactive, which is a downside, we can manage many things. The UI is not very intuitive and could be better. However, we manage all the configurations through code, which is easy to maintain. It has extensive anomaly detection capabilities, so the traffic is classified into several categories where thresholds can be defined and customized based on false positives and false negatives. This is advantageous because you do not need to tweak it very often. Once you set it up, an audit once a quarter would suffice. Because The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is API-driven, we have integrations with the CI/CD pipeline through GitHub Actions, making it easy to integrate.

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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 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."

"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 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."

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

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

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

More Fastly pros

"Because The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is API-driven, we have integrations with the CI/CD pipeline through GitHub Actions, making it easy to integrate."

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

"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."

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

Cons

"Support is not that great."

"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."

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

"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."

"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 product should provide improved bot detection and management."

"The solution's pricing could be better."

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

"The UI is not very intuitive and could be better."

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

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."

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

"It is an expensive solution."

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

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

"The pricing has been very competitive."

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

"The pricing is 50% less than Akamai."

"The product has an affordable cost."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Comms Service Provider

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

13%

Retailer

11%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Large Enterprise	5

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?

See all answers

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

The pricing is very competitive compared to other providers. The pricing is definitely a factor in our decision-making process.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Signal Sciences?

We do use it, but the UI can be improved as we mostly work through the CI/CD. It provides support, but sometimes it is hard to navigate unless you are very familiar with it.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Signal Sciences?

The CDN is for caching and The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is for protecting the servers from malicious traffic. They both perform different jobs and serve different purposes, ...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fastly

February 2026

Download Fastly product report

Buyer's Guide

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

January 2026

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)

February 2026

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: February 2026.

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