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Imperva Application Security Platform vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 2026

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 ...
Sponsored
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Imperva Application Securit...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
147
Ranking in other categories
CDN (2nd), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (4th), Bot Management (1st), API Security (1st)
The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (po...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
33rd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.8
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 3.8%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 7.6%, up from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is 1.1%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Imperva Application Security Platform7.6%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall3.8%
The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)1.1%
Other87.5%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

DB
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.
reviewer2818155 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Associate at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Application protection has improved and reporting and dashboards still need refinement
I believe Imperva Application Security Platform should have a more interactive wizard. While the dashboard is good, it could be more eye-catching. Based on my perspective, I recommend modifying the dashboards, especially the main dashboard where I can see the traffic hit count, alerts, and other latest information. In terms of reporting, I find it challenging to create reports; in my earlier days, it was difficult. Over time, I have learned how to create reports, but it should be easier to do so. I have used other tools such as firewalls or SolarWinds, where creating a report is straightforward and does not take much time, unlike in Imperva, where I have to add many elements. Modifications in the integration aspects would also be beneficial.
reviewer2161107 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."
"This solution does a good job of preventing web application attacks, SQL injections, and cross-site scripting attacks."
"It's pretty convenient and pretty easy to set up and run. And then kind of for static content, it also offers caching."
"The Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."
"The rate limiting features and customizations in terms of URL match and applying policies are valuable to me."
"The security features are valuable. The particular feature we use is called OWASP."
"For us, the key feature of Cloudflare is DDoS protection and IP hiding, especially since we are a crypto company."
"The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10."
"We have seen a return on investment with Imperva Application Security Platform, as we started with a few devices and gradually increased the number of on-premises devices for Imperva Application Security Platform."
"I am impressed with the product's automatic bot mechanism. It also gives us the control to create our own custom bot rules."
"The most valuable features for us are the DDoS and Bot."
"It is a stable solution."
"On the activity log, I can see the exact details, the visit, and the threat."
"The valuable features of Imperva WAF include its effective security breach prevention through automatically updating rules."
"The solution is really stable; it's a product that I can stand by and recommend because I know it's going to work for the customer."
"We can prevent attacks or issues even before they happen."
"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."
"When configuring a web application firewall using Signal Sciences, we configure a rule whereby no one except a few people can access the application."
"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."
 

Cons

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should improve visibility for a customer."
"A key challenge arises when dealing with numerous integrations with HVAC systems. Depending on the specifics, there might be some configuration mismatches, which necessitate specific support."
"They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long."
"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."
"We don't even use Cloudflare Bot Management because it's too expensive; you need to pay per request, and it's much cheaper to get one or two additional machines."
"The user interface is very simple and straightforward, but users need knowledge about DNS to accomplish tasks."
"Support can be challenging at times."
"Its stability could be better."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is a good system, but we found that the visibility of the diverse-path server, e.g. where the traffic is coming from, the different IPs, etc., needs improvement."
"Improve reporting interface and filtering."
"Although we're only using it for the accelerator part, the purging of files and the way this feature functions could use improvement."
"There is nothing specific where the application firewall is falling short."
"Licensing should be improved. Most of the clients aren't happy. It's expensive."
"However, I'd like to be able to drill down more into the analytics that Incapsula collects."
"Some maintenance must be performed by our IT team."
"Its price could be improved. It is quite expensive. It will be good if we could export the configuration. Currently, to control the configuration, we need to go to each website, which is not very convenient."
"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

"The solution is expensive."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"It is not too pricey."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"It is not expensive compared to the other similar solutions in this category."
"The price of Imperva Web Application Firewalls is expensive compared to others."
"We are satisfied with the pricing."
"The data packages are higher than our needs so we end up paying for data that we don't use."
"The license is on a yearly basis."
"There are a couple of different licensing models."
"Everybody complains about the price of this solution."
"The tool's pricing is good."
"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
Construction Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business88
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise70
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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...
Which Web Application Firewall (WAF) would you recommend? R&S or Imperva?
Imperva is a strong choice, given their security focus and ongoing R&D into the product in areas such as bot mana...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Imperva DDoS?
The pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Imperva DDoS are reasonable for the amount of technical capabilities provi...
What needs improvement with Imperva DDoS?
I would like to see improvements in the pooling of threats and attacks, possibly to enlarge the scale of indicators o...
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-makin...
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 i...
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 ma...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
Imperva Bot Management, Imperva Web Application Firewall, Imperva API Security
Signal Sciences Next-Gen WAF, Signal Sciences RASP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Chef, Adobe, Datadog, Etsy, GrubHub, Vimeo, SendGrid, Under Armour, Duo, AppNexus
Find out what your peers are saying about Imperva Application Security Platform vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,877 professionals have used our research since 2012.