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AWS WAF vs Atomic ModSecurity Rules 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

Atomic ModSecurity Rules
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
29th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
AWS WAF
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
63
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 Atomic ModSecurity Rules is 0.8%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS WAF is 3.9%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AWS WAF3.9%
Atomic ModSecurity Rules0.8%
Other95.3%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

Vahid Babaey - PeerSpot reviewer
PhD Student at University of North Carolina at Charlott
Open rules have enabled me to secure web apps against obfuscated SQL injection and XSS attacks
The best feature Atomic ModSecurity Rules offers is the open source aspect. I believe that because it's open source, all of the developers, programmers, and security experts are able to update this WAF and provide more rules, creating a more secure WAF for all of the clients and customers around the world. By accessing Atomic ModSecurity Rules, it has helped me significantly. Because of this open source feature, I am able to generate new rules and update the WAF and use this WAF in my research and also give it to other clients and customers to use the updated WAF. All of this is done just because of the open-source feature, because it can be updated.
Azam S M - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
Has successfully filtered malicious traffic and allowed country-specific access controls
For improvement in AWS WAF, we can have better monitoring. One of the things that should be improved in AWS WAF is the monitoring; we need to identify the requests and where they are coming from. If it's a bot, we should differentiate the requests, whether they are automated or not. The way we see it now is just mentioned as a percentage from bots and actual users, which should include proper graphs and detailed information. We also need a feature where we can filter specific requests. If there are scripts in the requests, we should be able to filter those requests to see if there are any scripts running from them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best feature Atomic ModSecurity Rules offers is the open source aspect, because all of the developers, programmers, and security experts are able to update this WAF and provide more rules, creating a more secure WAF for all of the clients and customers around the world."
"We can host any DB or application on the solution."
"The most valuable feature is the security, making sure that files are protected, preventing unauthorized users from accessing the system."
"This is not a product that you need to install. You just use it."
"If hackers try to insert bugs, the tool blocks it."
"The most valuable feature is the capability to limit access based on geographical location by restricting specific IP addresses."
"The performance is excellent."
"The most valuable features are the geo-restriction denials and the web ACL."
"AWS WAF acts as a barrier, analyzing HTTP communications between external users and web applications."
 

Cons

"Additionally, I know that ModSecurity can block only SQL injection and XSS attacks, no more types of attacks."
"I am not satisfied with AWS technical support."
"The product should improve the DDoS-related features."
"The area of reporting in the product needs to have a proper format."
"AWS WAF can be improved by not being too sensitive for some data because with some XML, it is sometimes very sensitive."
"The pricing should be more affordable, especially as it pertains to small clients."
"I would like to see it more tightly integrated with other AWS services."
"We need more support as we go global."
"The solution is cloud-based, and therefore the billing model that comes with it could be more intuitive, in my opinion. It's very easy to not fully understand how you tag things for billing and then you can quite easily run up a high bill without realizing it. The solution needs to be more intuitive around the tagging system, which enables the billing. Right now, I have a cloud architect that does that on our behalf and it isn't something that a business user could use because it still requires quite a lot of technical knowledge to do effectively."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Its price is fair. There is a very fair amount that they charge. It has a pay-as-you-go model, so it pretty much depends on how much a user uses it. As per the cloud norms, the more you use, the more you pay. I would rate it a five out of ten in terms of pricing."
"There are different scale options available for WAF."
"For our infrastructure, we probably pay around $16,000 per month for AWS WAF. Because alternative WAF solutions provide even more features, I think the AWS WAF is a bit pricey"
"The price is average."
"I would rate AWS WAF's pricing a seven out of ten."
"AWS WAF has reasonable pricing."
"The solution's cost depends on the use cases."
"It's cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
27%
Hospitality Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise28
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Atomic ModSecurity Rules?
Atomic ModSecurity Rules can be improved by first studying and reading the structure of new obfuscated attacks, then trying to generate more specific and better rules to block these attacks, and th...
What is your primary use case for Atomic ModSecurity Rules?
My main use case for Atomic ModSecurity Rules is in my research, which tries to make websites secure against web attacks like SQL injection and XSS attacks. On one side, I try to generate some obfu...
What advice do you have for others considering Atomic ModSecurity Rules?
I would rate Atomic ModSecurity Rules nine out of ten. I chose nine out of ten because I have not studied other WAFs. I know that ModSecurity is the only open source WAF, but I believe that the oth...
What are the limitations of AWS WAF vs alternative WAFs?
Hi Varun, I have had experienced with several WAF deployments and deep technical assessments of the following: 1. Imperva WAF 2. F5 WAF 3. Polarisec Cloud WAF Typical limitations on cloud WAF is t...
How does AWS WAF compare to Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Web Application Firewall or Microsoft Azure Application Gateway web application firewall software was the better fit ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS WAF?
AWS WAF is affordable; it depends on the number of rules you apply. The licensing cost for AWS WAF is just pay-as-you-go; it is a service-based model.
 

Also Known As

No data available
AWS Web Application Firewall
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
eVitamins, 9Splay, Senao International
Find out what your peers are saying about Imperva, Radware, F5 and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.