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F5 Advanced WAF vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) comparison

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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

F5 Advanced WAF
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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 September 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of F5 Advanced WAF is 3.6%, down from 8.0% 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 (%)
F5 Advanced WAF3.6%
The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)1.2%
Other95.2%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2797602 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Security Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Granular security policies have protected critical applications and ensure safe user and admin access
Improvements could be made regarding the log information from the backend CLI. There are enhancements needed; if a request gets blocked on the TCP layer, there should be traces or data to verify which source generated these requests, including the source and port information for initiation. These data are missing from F5 Advanced WAF. Besides that, another improvement could be refining the bot detection to minimize false positives; it should be able to verify more granularly between legitimate and non-legitimate clients. Overall, I find everything else good. A wish list feature I have is for the Technical Assistance Center (TAC) to respond more promptly. Their response time needs improvement; while they do not take excessive time, it can be enhanced, especially given it is a security product.
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

"We chose this product because we believe it is the best product for us."
"As far as I am concerned, F5 Advanced WAF is one of the most stable solutions I've ever used, so it's good to implement."
"I definitely recommend this solution because of the time you save on analysis."
"What a WAF is happens to be exactly what we are using F5 WAF for: a firewall for our web applications."
"Good technology for mitigating different application attacks, e.g. DDoS, DNS, and layer seven attacks."
"The solution is stable."
"The AOF solution provides numerous security features."
"The most valuable feature of F5 Advanced WAF is its grand unity of the implementation, where you have the freedom to configure based on how it affects your use case or your organization. With the default setting of implicit deny, you can gradually start defining and deploying the tool to align with your environment, whether it is outdated, recent, or futuristic. This allows you to customize the solution to protect you from threat actors. You have the ability to define what the advanced threat act should do - whether it should alert, deny, or both - and it will deliver based on your configuration. Unlike other online solutions, F5 Advanced WAF provides flexibility to deliver to your unique environment the way you want."
"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."
"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

"The tool needs to improve its pricing."
"The Sandbox integration feature could be improved."
"The solution should include protection against web page attacks like what is available in FortiWeb."
"One of our customers is a bit unhappy about the reporting options."
"While F5 Advanced WAF does limit the number of partners in certain regions to ensure successful business transactions, they could also benefit from expanding their partnerships and making it easier for more people to learn about and become experts in F5 Advanced WAF. By doing so, they could increase the reach and exposure of their solution, similar to how Cisco has become widely recognized in the security industry."
"We usually use a third-party tool for logging and reporting. It would be nice if we could do that right on this solution. They have one, but it's not very stable. Logging and reporting effectively would be a big enhancement."
"The pricing of F5 Advanced WAF is more expensive than other solutions like Radware and CD18, it is quite high."
"We get false positives sometimes."
"The UI is not very intuitive and could be better."
"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."
"Even if we create some custom rules, Signal Sciences cannot capture some of the malicious traffic."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are different licenses available to use F5 Advanced WAF, such as BT, ASM, and LPM."
"F5 Advanced WAF technical support comes at a cost, and it's expensive."
"The pricing is too high."
"The price of the solution is reasonable when compared with other products, such as FortiWeb. I am very satisfied with the price."
"As far as the pricing of F5 Advanced WAF I would rate it a four out of five depending on what features I am looking for. Imperva is more expensive."
"The solution is very expensive so should only be used in the right environment."
"There are various plans available for Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF as a Service, including a trial version."
"It is expensive. Its price should be better. Its licensing is on a yearly basis. Its licensing is also based on the model. There are no additional costs."
"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
Financial Services Firm
15%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise31
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced WAF?
F5 Advanced WAF is somewhat costly compared to other vendors, but it is worth the investment due to the stability it provides to the environment and infrastructure.
What needs improvement with F5 Advanced WAF?
Improvements could be made regarding the log information from the backend CLI. There are enhancements needed; if a request gets blocked on the TCP layer, there should be traces or data to verify wh...
What is your primary use case for F5 Advanced WAF?
My main use case for F5 Advanced WAF is to protect external and internal applications from cyber attacks and to prevent malicious payloads and malicious data from reaching servers. Even if maliciou...
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

No data available
Signal Sciences Next-Gen WAF, Signal Sciences RASP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

MAXIMUS, Vivo, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office, City Bank
Chef, Adobe, Datadog, Etsy, GrubHub, Vimeo, SendGrid, Under Armour, Duo, AppNexus
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Advanced WAF vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
911,952 professionals have used our research since 2012.