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AWS WAF vs Human Defense Platform 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

Cloudflare Web Application ...
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Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (6th)
AWS WAF
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (7th)
Human Defense Platform
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Fraud Detection and Prevention (32nd), Bot Management (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AWS WAF4.6%
Imperva Application Security Platform7.4%
Fortinet FortiWeb5.4%
Other82.6%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Fraud Detection and Prevention Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Human Defense Platform1.3%
ThreatMetrix4.9%
Riskified3.4%
Other90.4%
Fraud Detection and Prevention
 

Featured Reviews

DB
CTO at PlayNirvana
Advanced security reporting has protected high-traffic betting platforms from constant attacks
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we have a dedicated IT team for that, and I'm not involved with Cloudflare much anymore. But if I were to compare them to F5, I would like to see more features that F5 offers. F5 has an option to bring the whole infrastructure, the whole WAF and all their packages, Bot Management, and everything else on your infrastructure. You need to install certain services from their side, and then you can choose if you would like requests to hit your servers immediately or if requests need to be proxied through F5 backbone. That would be a nice addition because we have 90% of the traffic as legit traffic coming from whitelisted servers. If it comes from whitelisted servers, I don't need to go every request through the backbone; I could easily just IP whitelist everything. Then I could maybe have Bot Management on my infrastructure that drastically reduces the price of Cloudflare. I would like to see Push CDN more improved in the next release of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. And maybe something similar to Pushpin that Fastly has, which is an option where you can push messages that then can be scaled globally over the network. From our perspective, if we have a listener that listens for stock updates, I would just need to have one processor that pushes those updates to the Cloudflare API, and then Cloudflare would broadcast that message to all listeners. Cloudflare will check the order of the message, and if you, as a customer, are not connected or have some kind of network issue, when you reconnect, you will receive the latest state and missing updates.
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.
it_user785406 - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager/Team Leader at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
They ensure that our campaigns have run in the highest quality of settings, leading to savings on ad spending
Primary use case of this solution is to detect fraud traffic (also mark the network which is sending the fraud traffic) and block the fraud traffic. These metrics help us to minimize wasted ad spend and provide our clients an extra layer of confidence around our campaigns As a result of the…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product has improved our security posture by blocking bad actors."
"For us, the key feature of Cloudflare is DDoS protection and IP hiding, especially since we are a crypto company."
"The product has a valuable security control functionality."
"The most valuable part of the solution for us overall is exactly that it is a Software-as-a-Service product."
"The Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."
"Very glad the WAF rulesets works out of box, and requires very little tuning or maintenance."
"In general, it's a very good product: the solution is very stable, the performance is great, the product offers very good scalability, the pricing is very reasonable, the installation is very straightforward and quite simple, and technical support has a very fast response time and is helpful."
"We like that there's load balancing, firewall capabilities, DDoS protection, et cetera, all covered by Cloudflare."
"As a basic WAF, it's better than having nothing, so if you need something simple out of the box with default features, AWS WAF is good."
"The web solution effectively protects from vulnerabilities and cyber attacks."
"The tool’s stability is very good."
"What I like best about AWS WAF is that it's a simple tool, so I could understand the basics of AWS WAF in two to three hours."
"AWS WAF acts as a barrier, analyzing HTTP communications between external users and web applications."
"The access instruction feature is the most valuable. This is what we use the most."
"The performance is excellent."
"We preferred the product based on its cost. AWS WAF is an out-of-the-box solution and integrates with the AWS services that we use. It's natively integrated with AWS."
"PerimeterX helped us to ensure that our campaigns have run in the highest quality of settings, leading to savings on ad spending."
 

Cons

"If they add logs history within the Cloudflare offering, that would be a great benefit."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should improve visibility for a customer."
"Cloudflare should update the version of the ModSecurity core rule set that they run on."
"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."
"The platform's control features related to real-time authentication and response time need improvement."
"Support can be challenging at times."
"We have noticed some latency when the call goes through the firewall. That could be improved."
"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."
"AWS WAF should provide better protection to its users, and the security features need to improve."
"The rate at which AWS updates their managed rule sets could be better. Features like bot protection or DDoS mitigation, available with other WAF vendors, do not come natively with AWS WAF."
"We should be able to do proper whitelisting."
"They have to do more to improve, to innovate more features. They need to increase the security. It has to be more active in detecting threats."
"It's a bit difficult to apply the right rules for the right security."
"The price could be improved."
"The solution can improve its price."
"One area that could be improved is the DDoS protection."
"As bots are getting better and the product should keep getting updates in preventing new ways of attack and security."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I believe the pricing is not the best, but it's reasonable and acceptable. We also use the McAfee system in parallel. In terms of pricing, its okay - not great, but not bad either. It falls in the middle, which is acceptable. In terms of support licensing, last time, we were searching for a solution, and we considered products from resellers rather than directly from the cloud provider. However, the pricing we encountered was exceptionally high. As a result, we are inclined to select support from the reseller."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"It is not too pricey."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"For Kubernetes microservices, AWS is more expensive compared to OCI. AWS costs approximately 70 cents per hour, while OCI is 50% cheaper."
"I would rate AWS WAF's pricing a seven out of ten."
"The product is moderately priced."
"AWS is not that costly by comparison. They are maybe close to $40 per month. I think it was between $29 or $39."
"The solution's cost depends on the use cases."
"I rate the product price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is high price, and ten is low price"
"The product’s pricing is reasonable."
"The pricing is good and manageable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
University
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise28
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
We are using Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools with their Zero Trust, so e...
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. Im...
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...
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...
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Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
AWS Web Application Firewall
PerimeterX Bot Defender, BotGuard for Applications, HUMAN MediaGuard
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
eVitamins, 9Splay, Senao International
theTradeDesk
Find out what your peers are saying about Imperva, Fortinet, F5 and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: May 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.