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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

Imperva Application Securit...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
148
Ranking in other categories
CDN (2nd), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (3rd), Bot Management (1st), API Security (1st)
The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (po...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
34th
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 November 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 7.2%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is 1.2%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Imperva Application Security Platform7.2%
The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)1.2%
Other91.6%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

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

"It's worth it. It's a fine solution for medium/big companies worried about attacks that happen in the wild."
"The solution has a very good interface."
"I have had a positive experience with Imperva Web Application Firewall's tech support so far. They are knowledgeable and respond on time."
"Imperva anti-DDoS protection has the well-known value of having lots of distributed nodes around the world, making it the best value for DDoS protection."
"We are using Incapsula as our web application firewall and for DDoS protection, and it performs really well at its job."
"I would encourage people to implement Imperva Incapsula, as it is a very mature, easy to use, and reliable solution."
"The solution is stable."
"Imperva has a complete picture of how the applications are utilizing it. It is handy. DDoS is good. It has an internally managed database. It is very easy to integrate. We have integrated it with SIEM services."
"When configuring a web application firewall using Signal Sciences, we configure a rule whereby no one except a few people can access the application."
"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."
"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

"It's quite expensive."
"At that moment, I miss being able to integrate the dashboard with other BI tools we are using. We have to export and import data to be able to present it, and doing so is a lot of work."
"Delivery services and information security."
"In the past, I have had bugs on the WAF."
"Learning capability of the device is quite weak."
"Imperva DDoS does not provide version control."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall can improve by providing better features, such as improved prevention of zero-day attacks. Additionally, it should include a VR meta-analysis."
"This is a very limited tool if you're looking to customize."
"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."
"The UI is not very intuitive and could be better."
"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 data packages are higher than our needs so we end up paying for data that we don't use."
"It's an excellent product, but it can be very costly."
"We sell three-year licenses for Imperva Web Application Firewall to our customers. The price is a little expensive."
"The cost is on par with other solutions such as Cloudflare and Akamai."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall's pricing is expensive."
"Imperva charges us based on bandwidth, which is better than other vendors that charge us according to data transfer."
"The cost of this solution depends on the platform."
"The pricing is somewhat expensive. It is actually a huge investment when compared to other countries."
"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
Outsourcing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business88
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise71
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 management.
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 provided. I would rate the pricing of Imperva DDoS as five, where one is very cheap a...
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 of compromise. For example, the initiation of an attack on the endpoint level cou...
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.
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.
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, ...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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: November 2026.
921,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.