No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

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

NGINX App Protect
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
17th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (29th), API Security (10th)
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 NGINX App Protect is 2.1%, up from 1.7% 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 (%)
NGINX App Protect2.1%
The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)1.2%
Other96.7%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

Valerio Guaglianone - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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

"NGINX App Protect has improved the flexibility of services in our company and distributed new escalation applications."
"The most valuable feature of NGINX App Protect is the reverse proxy."
"Overall, I rate NGINX App Protect between eight and nine."
"Based on my experience, this solution is better than the other choices on the market."
"This solution provides perfect protection for the published services against all application attacks."
"It's very easy to deploy."
"The tool's most valuable feature is the OWASP certification. Additionally, the tool's ability to enforce strong passwords and OTP within minutes is impressive. With its analytics and recommendations, it is a very good solution."
"There's a cache, or it works like a proxy, so it can speed up applications."
"The product's most valuable feature is its ability to set up the rules easily."
"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."
"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

"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."
"The contributions I think sometimes take a toll on you like you're going to spend a lot of time on the right contributions."
"As far as scalability, it takes a long time for deployment."
"The setup of NGINX App Protect is complex. The full process took one week to complete. Additionally, we had to change the network infrastructure platform which took one month."
"The price of NGINX App Protect could improve."
"The dashboard could provide a more comprehensive view of the status of the connections."
"It doesn't have more advanced features like no false-positive security, which you can configure in Advanced WAF."
"The configuration needs to be more flexible because it is difficult to do things that are outside of the ordinary."
"Even if we create some custom rules, Signal Sciences cannot capture some of the malicious traffic."
"Fastly don't support caching for China users. That's the only feature lacking compared to Akamai."
"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."
"The UI is not very intuitive and could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of NGINX App Protect is approximately $3,000 annually. All of our licenses are observed by a managed service partner."
"The pricing is reasonable because NGINX operates on an instance basis."
"There are no additional fees."
"There is a license needed to use NGINX App Protect."
"The price of NGINX App Protect is not much different from the products that fall under the leader category of Gartner Magic Quadrant."
"There is a monthly or annual subscription to use NGINX App Protect. There are not any additional costs to the subscription."
"The solution's price is reasonable."
"NGINX App Protect is expensive."
"The product has an affordable cost."
"The pricing is 50% less than Akamai."
"Signal Sciences is pretty cheap compared to other solutions."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise14
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 something different handles that in my team.
What needs improvement with NGINX App Protect?
I did not face any issues with NGINX App Protect. The only issue that we had is that someone was trying to install the POC for the customer, and he by mistake installed the Instance Manager on the ...
What is your primary use case for NGINX App Protect?
I have been dealing with NGINX App Protect and the WAF policy. I usually recommend NGINX App Protect for banking and telecom, and for anyone that has their own database or servers that they host we...
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

NGINX WAF, NGINX Web Application Firewall
Signal Sciences Next-Gen WAF, Signal Sciences RASP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Chef, Adobe, Datadog, Etsy, GrubHub, Vimeo, SendGrid, Under Armour, Duo, AppNexus
Find out what your peers are saying about NGINX App Protect vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.