Key Takeaways
- Fortinet’s SASE Firewall business grew 34% to more than $2 billion in the second quarter of 2026.
- CrowdStrike’s Falcon Flex adoption remains strong, but revenue growth has moderated from prior years.
- Fortinet trades at 13.50X forward sales, well below CrowdStrike’s 33.28X, offering an attractive valuation.
CrowdStrike (CRWD – Free Report) and Fortinet (FTNT – Free Report) are well-known players in the cybersecurity domain. While CrowdStrike specializes in endpoint protection and extended detection and response, offering AI-native cloud security through its Falcon platform, Fortinet combines a variety of hardware and cloud-based security solutions.
Both CRWD and FTNT are riding the key industry trends, driven by the mounting incidents of credential theft, remote desktop protocol breaches and social engineering-based strikes by malicious actors. However, from an investment point of view, one stock offers a more favorable outlook than the other right now. Let’s break down their fundamentals, growth prospects, market challenges and valuation to determine which stock offers a more compelling investment case.
The Case for CrowdStrike Stock
CrowdStrike provides its cybersecurity services mainly through its Falcon platform. CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform is renowned for being the industry’s first multi-tenant, cloud native, intelligent security solution. The Falcon platform helps secure workloads across on-premise, cloud-based and virtualized environments running on several endpoints, such as desktops, laptops, servers, virtual machines and IoT devices.
CrowdStrike’s cloud-based Falcon platform currently provides 33 cloud modules via a software-as-a-service subscription model that is categorized under three categories: Endpoint Security, Security & IT Operations and Threat Intelligence. The share of subscription-based sales to CrowdStrike’s total revenues grew from 72% in fiscal 2017 to 95% in fiscal 2026.
CrowdStrike’s Falcon Flex subscription model is becoming an important driver of its growth. Falcon Flex makes it easier for customers to access multiple modules of the Falcon platform through a single contract. This makes it easier for customers to deploy additional security products over time and expand their use of the Falcon platform, which has now become the company’s primary go-to-market model.
In the first quarter of fiscal 2027, Annual recurring revenue (ARR) from Flex accounts crossed $1.9 billion, up more than 99% year over year, which shows strong adoption across enterprise customers. In the first quarter of fiscal 2027, CrowdStrike added more than 300 Flex customers and ended the first quarter with over 1,900 customers who have adopted Falcon Flex.
However, CrowdStrike’s recent quarterly reports have shown a deceleration in its growth rate. The company’s revenue growth, while still robust, is not as explosive as in previous years. CrowdStrike had enjoyed more than 35% year-over-year top-line growth till fiscal 2024. The growth rate decelerated to 29% in fiscal 2025 and to 22% in fiscal 2026. For fiscal 2027, CrowdStrike expects total revenues to be in the range of $5.915 billion to $5.959 billion. This indicates that the top-line growth is expected to stay around 23% to 24%, which is way lower than the explosive growth enjoyed by the company in the previous years.
The Case for FTNT Stock
Fortinet is seeing strong demand for its SASE Firewall as enterprises upgrade network security to support AI workloads, cloud environments and distributed workforces. In the second quarter of 2026, Fortinet’s SASE Firewall business grew 34% to more than $2 billion. Unified SASE billings increased 35%, while FortiSASE billings grew more than 100% year over year. FortiSASE adoption also reached 90% of Fortinet’s large-enterprise installed base.
Fortinet believes its SASE Firewall can address a larger market than cloud-only SASE solutions. The company combines firewall, SASE and hybrid mesh capabilities on its FortiOS platform and supports both cloud and on-premise deployments. Management believes this opportunity could be two to three times larger than the cloud-only SASE market. Demand for sovereign SASE is also increasing as enterprises and service providers look for better data privacy, local processing and performance.
AI is adding another growth driver. As AI applications increase machine-to-machine and data-center traffic, customers need better visibility and control over network traffic. Fortinet said AI is accelerating the convergence of networking and security. The company is also seeing AI data center wins, including an eight-figure deal with a cloud provider offering generative AI infrastructure.
The growth in SASE could also support Fortinet’s financial performance. Product revenue increased 52% year over year in the second quarter of 2026, while service revenue grew 14% year over year. Service billings increased 26% year over year, and management expects service revenue growth to improve in the second half of 2026. New SASE and SD-WAN services can add to Fortinet’s recurring service revenue as customers expand their deployments. With strong SASE demand, AI-driven security needs and growing adoption of sovereign SASE, the SASE Firewall could become an important driver of Fortinet’s product and service revenue growth.
CRWD vs. FTNT: Earnings Estimate Trend
The earnings estimate revision trend for the two companies reflects that analysts are turning more bullish toward FTNT.
CRWD Earnings Estimate Revision Trend
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
FTNT Earnings Estimate Revision Trend
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
CRWD vs. FTNT: Price Performance and Valuation
Year to date, shares of CRWD and FTNT have surged 82.6% and 96.2%, respectively.
CRWD Vs. FTNT: YTD Price Return Performance
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Currently, FTNT is trading at a forward sales multiple of 13.50X, significantly lower than CRWD’s forward sales multiple of 33.28X. FTNT’s reasonable valuation makes it more attractive for investors looking for value and stability.
CRWD vs. FTNT: Forward 12-Month P/S Ratio
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Conclusion: Buy FTNT, Hold CRWD Right Now
Both CrowdStrike and Fortinet are key players in the cybersecurity space, but CrowdStrike is witnessing a slowdown in its sales growth. In contrast, Fortinet shows steadier execution, where the company is witnessing strong adoption of FortiSASE, Unified SASE and sovereign SASE. Further, FTNT’s reasonable valuation offers some downside protection as well, making the stock an attractive buy, particularly for investors seeking exposure to cybersecurity growth at a fair price.
Currently, Fortinet sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), making the stock a stronger pick over CrowdStrike, which has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
