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Airlock vs NGINX App Protect comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Airlock
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
40th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
9.2
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NGINX App Protect
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
19th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (27th), API Security (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Airlock is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX App Protect is 2.0%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NGINX App Protect2.0%
Airlock0.8%
Other97.2%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

Tiodor Jovovic - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Business Officer at Sky Express
Provides endless features and can be adapted to every single application that exists in the world
WAF is the most beneficial feature for security posture. Our customers are more than satisfied with the user experience provided by the product. The level of detail of the configuration is the most significant aspect. We can adapt it to every single application that exists in the world. The product helps with the compliance processes.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Our customers are more than satisfied with the user experience provided by the product."
"The policies are flexible based on the technologies you use."
"It has the best documentation features."
"The most valuable feature of NGINX App Protect is the reverse proxy."
"I really love NGINX App Protect; I love the functionality, the ease of implementation, the very user-friendly Instance Manager, and its integration with DevOps, and as an NGINX Ingress controller using the Plus certificate it is working perfectly and making things a lot easier than the regular one while successfully stopping threats like injection, running scripts, and SQL injections."
"I would recommend this solution to others because it performs well."
"The solution is very good overall."
"I tested specific features and evaluated the solution against the Web Application Firewall. I conducted research to test different detection percentages. I did not use it directly for protection but for evaluation purposes."
"WAF is useful to track mitigation, inclusion, prevention, and the parametric firewall."
 

Cons

"The tool must be simplified."
"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."
"The integration of NGINX App Protect could improve."
"The dashboard could provide a more comprehensive view of the status of the connections."
"The product's price is high, making it an area of concern where improvements are required. The tool's licensing model is also not good."
"NGINX's technical support is good, but sometimes their response time is delayed, or they don't have the technical skills to resolve issues."
"I think NGINX App Protect could be improved by having it come out of the box with NGINX."
"It's challenging if you need to go for a high throughput."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is cheap."
"Our licensing costs are about $40,000 a year."
"NGINX App Protect is expensive."
"There is a license needed to use NGINX App Protect."
"The licensing fees for this solution are pretty expensive for what it does, but there is no alternative."
"The product's price is high."
"Really understand the licensing model, because we underestimated that."
"NGINX is not expensive."
"The solution's price is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
10%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

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

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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...
 

Also Known As

Airlock Suite
NGINX WAF, NGINX Web Application Firewall
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Raiffeisen, SGKB, Generali, Visana
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Imperva, Radware, F5 and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.