Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall comparison

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. Barracuda Web Application Firewall

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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 ...

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 5.4%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service is 0.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda Web Application Firewall is 1.9%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall	5.4%
Barracuda Web Application Firewall	1.9%
Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service	0.9%
Other	91.8%

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Featured Reviews

Dean Barisic

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.

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Tarandeep Kaur

DevOps Manager at Flash.co

Security management has reduced ransomware risk and now protects cloud workloads efficiently

The best features that Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service offers are an intuitive centralized dashboard, allowing us to manage policies, Internet protocol servers, antiviruses, anti-DDoS attacks, and traffic shaping across multiple sites. This feature enables seamless scaling of our environments, especially as we work within Amazon Web Services. Additionally, real-time threat intelligence helps us to detect threats in real-time. Another major feature I love is application control and VPN support, providing granular visibility and protection without needing separate appliances. The centralized dashboard is helping us streamline visibility across our admin panels and provides site-to-site visibility deployed directly to our AWS environment, securing VPC traffic and ensuring the firewall is in place. The real-time threat intelligence is an advanced feature helping us track real-time attacks, such as anti-DDoS attacks, ransomware, or viruses that can compromise system integrity. Through the intuitive centralized dashboard, we can manage policies and set rules, assisting us effectively.

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Shahzad Abid

Director Information Technology at College of Physicians & Surgeons Pakistan

Has protected our legacy applications effectively but has required constant manual filtering due to false positives

I assess the effectiveness of the machine learning-driven threat detection in Barracuda Web Application Firewall as sometimes behaving abnormally, often showing me false positive attacks, so I have to fix these attacks from time to time. From a stability point of view, I would definitely rate Barracuda Web Application Firewall a seven out of ten. There is definitely some room for improvement; nothing is perfect in the world. I am not satisfied with the technical support from Barracuda. I am somewhat disappointed with the technical support that I have received so far. Whenever I generate a ticket for my problem, it goes to the Indian support team, and they all the time start with the most junior team member, consuming all my precious time. At the end, I have to close that ticket without any satisfactory solution. I have complained that they should shift my support to any other region because I don't need Indian support; they are simply pathetic and not up to mark. To improve Barracuda Web Application Firewall, customers should be given ongoing training opportunities regarding the product and its features. I am not familiar with many features that are available, only using those which are necessary for my applications. I believe Barracuda must provide clearer product information or training sessions to make it more user-friendly, as sometimes its interface can be rigid and lacking in helpful resources or user tutorials about its features. For it to get closer to a ten, I think advanced reporting is missing because, as I mentioned earlier, there are many false positive events being recorded. Often, when I analyze these attacks, they turn out to be genuine customers or users interacting with my product, but Barracuda tags them as attackers. Reducing false positives must be a priority.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."

"Does a good job preventing web application attacks."

"The most valuable part of the solution for us overall is exactly that it is a Software-as-a-Service product."

"The rate limiting features and customizations in terms of URL match and applying policies are valuable to me."

"Technical support has a very fast response time and they are helpful."

"Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before."

"The integration of Cloudflare with Cloud Suite is its most valuable feature."

"The Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

"Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service's real-time attack detection feature has improved our customers' threat response strategies significantly."

"Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service has positively impacted our organization by reducing cyber threats like ransomware and phishing by ninety-five percent."

"I like its ability to identify known attacks, including DDOS attacks. It's valuable because software must be able to stop known attacks. Application attacks are evolving all the time. When it comes to software-as-a-service, we need to have software that knows about all the latest attacks. It should also protect against major unknown attacks."

"The product's bot protection feature is valuable for our company."

"The solution can be used for threat prevention or as a cloud-to-cloud backup system"

"It provides an ease of policy management."

"The most valuable features of the solution are it is plug and play, has automated policies, a simple configuration, and is easy to create rules."

"The solution has been quite stable. It's reliable."

"The initial setup is easy."

"The solution offers multiple security features. There are machine learning features and great URL encryption. It also offers multi-protocol support against DDoS attacks."

"The initial setup was very straightforward, and we applied what we needed to use and added different features, configuring more each time as necessary."

"One of the best aspects of the solution is the support provided."

"The updating and signature features are my primary use case for the solution, and these features are beneficial to my organization."

"The Barracuda Networks Web Application Firewall can protect your vital web applications from various exploits by hackers."

"The volumetric DDoS defense is very good because I had a problem with a lot of volumetric DDoS attacks on my servers. After using Barracuda, those attacks have stopped and all the traffic is going smoothly to my servers and the system is working really well."

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall pros

Cons

"There could be an option to duplicate the cluster to maintain the consistency of rules."

"The ModSecurity core rules need to be updated."

"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."

"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well. They have documentation for everything you're looking for, but they lack a single piece of documentation to tie everything together. As a new user or beginner, it took us a little bit of time to figure out how to put all these things in place."

"We don't even use Cloudflare Bot Management because it's too expensive; you need to pay per request, and it's much cheaper to get one or two additional machines."

"Its stability could be better."

"The learning curve was steep initially."

"A key challenge arises when dealing with numerous integrations with HVAC systems. Depending on the specifics, there might be some configuration mismatches, which necessitate specific support."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

"The stability of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"We found it a bit slow when accessing it through the web browser. The URL also exposed the user name and the hashed password. When I log into my Barracuda WAF user portal, I could see the username and the hashed password on the URL itself. So, it is not very secure, and it is important to take that off."

"One significant area for improvement in Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service lies in its market positioning and pricing strategy."

"The price of their licensing model is a bit steep, and the pricing and SIEM integration sometimes create challenges, and we need to get professional help with those areas."

"It's a very specific solution that is only requested for a customer's web code or their global IT policy."

"The solution can improve by bundling Security Operation Center (SOC) with the WAF-as-a-Service, it would provide a lot more value to customers."

"I have found F5 more stable than Barracuda Web Application Firewall. They should improve the stability."

"Barracuda Web Application Firewall's load balancing feature could be improved."

"We've had some blocks of the application and some false positives."

"This product could easily progress to be among the industry leaders. I think they need to improve enterprise level automation. It integrates with a small number of vulnerability scanners, so report results should be imported manually; same for SIEM integration."

"They should improve their features, so they easily compare to the competition."

"The usability of the interface could be improved."

"If you know nothing about networks, then you can't set it up."

"I have issues with the load balancing of the solution which is slow. The connection pooling in Barracuda also doesn't work. There is an issue when someone needs access to a site quickly. The issue is with HTTPS services. I am not sure if they have changed all these in the solution’s latest version."

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not too pricey."

"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."

"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"

"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."

"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."

"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."

"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"I rate the product's price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high. There are no additional costs to be paid apart from the standard licensing fees attached to the solution."

"It's very difficult for me to give an estimate of the cost. All I know is that we sell the box itself as a service."

"The product is expensive but it offers flexible pricing. It could be affordable."

"The pricing is less compared to other web applications."

"Cost is a bit on the higher side. Big companies can afford it."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"The solution is based on a licensing model and might be $360 for the hybrid version."

"Our licensing fees are paid annually and the cost is between €600 and €800 (approximately $665.00 to $885.00 USD)."

"They have competitive pricing."

"The price of this solution is okay."

"For small companies, the price is very expensive because the WAF is an enterprise-level application, not intended for smaller businesses. In my opinion, the price is right for enterprise-level use."

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.

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884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Government

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Marketing Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Large Enterprise	2

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	26
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	11

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

The price of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is reasonable.

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 needs improvement with Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?

I see that cost can be a limitation for small businesses. Additionally, if they can provide more advanced features an...

What is your primary use case for Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?

We primarily use Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service for raising security incidents by proactively blocking malware, ransomwar...

What advice do you have for others considering Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?

I rate Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service a five out of five overall. The reason I choose five out of five is that all the th...

What is your primary use case for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?

I am not using the API protection feature right now because I don't host any APIs through Barracuda Web Application F...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?

At the time I was acquiring Barracuda Web Application Firewall, I found it costly compared to other products. To over...

What needs improvement with Barracuda Web Application Firewall?

I assess the effectiveness of the machine learning-driven threat detection in Barracuda Web Application Firewall as s...

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Comparisons

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Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

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Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 6% of the time

Azure Web Application Firewall vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

Alibaba Cloud WAF vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 3% of the time

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Fortinet FortiWeb vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Compared 13% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Compared 12% of the time

AWS WAF vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Compared 10% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Compared 8% of the time

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Compared 6% of the time

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Fortinet FortiWeb vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 16% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 11% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 9% of the time

NetScaler vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 7% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 7% of the time

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall Competitors

Product Reports

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Download Cloudflare Web Application Firewall product report

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Download Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service product report

Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Download Barracuda Web Application Firewall product report

Barracuda Web Application Firewall report

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF

Barracuda WAF as a Service

No data available

Overview

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's intuitive dashboard enables users to build powerful rules through easy clicks and also provides Terraform integration. Every request to the WAF is inspected against the rule engine and the threat intelligence curated from protecting over 27 Million websites. Suspicious requests can be blocked, challenged or logged as per the needs of the user while legitimate requests are routed to the destination, agnostic of whether it lives on-premise or in the cloud. Analytics and Cloudflare Logs enable visibility into actionable metrics for the user.

Cloudflare

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service is a comprehensive solution designed to provide application security, DDoS protection, SSL authentication, protocol support, and application delivery. It is a plug-and-play solution with automated policies, simple configuration, and easy rule creation.

The solution can be used for threat prevention or as a cloud-to-cloud backup system based on email protection with cloud security. It is also a web application firewall and covers major protection and threat management functions. With Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service, customers can ensure the security of their web code and comply with global IT policies.

Barracuda Networks

Barracuda Web Application Firewall is a game-changing cloud-connected security solution that enables organizations to safeguard both their applications and their data from an ever-growing array of advanced cyber threats. It offers protection from cyber attacks that target not only data and applications stored on the cloud but also those that are housed on web servers. 43% of the time a breach takes place via a compromised application. Barracuda Web Application Firewall prevents these types of breaches from occurring.

Barracuda Web Application Firewall denies hackers the ability to penetrate your system by using a number of techniques to keep your organization safely insulated. The first method of protection consists of two parts. The first part involves a thorough scanning of all inbound web traffic. This solution monitors everything that comes into the system. It employs IP reputation intelligence, which filters all incoming data. If the source of the data has a bad reputation, it is blocked by the firewall. Administrators now have a way of locking out many common threats that could otherwise compromise sensitive networks. These scans can also allow administrators to protect their systems from within as DLP (Data Loss Prevention) protocols. If any sensitive data attempts to leave, administrators will automatically be alerted and the data will be blocked from exiting.

Barracuda Web Application Firewall can also be set up to apply the AAA (Authentication, Authorization & Accounting) framework to an organization’s network. If an intruder manages to get past the authentication stage, the authorization protocols kick in. After the authorization stage comes accounting, which works by tracking and logging users’ activities so that administrators will be in a position to prevent long-term damage from being done. This three-step process can be implemented without requiring administrators to make changes to their applications.

Key Features

Some of Barracuda Web Application Firewall’s key features include:

The ability to employ adaptive profiling. Administrators will have an easier time enforcing security policies once this feature is enabled. It takes data from safe sources and builds profiles that can be used to create whitelisting protocols that prevent unsafe actions from occurring on the system.
The ability to assess threats in real time. Barracuda Web Application Firewall uses machine learning to detect new threats and attacks as they emerge.
The ability to manage the Barracuda Web Application Firewall system from a single interface. Administrators can manage their Barracuda Web Application Firewall configurations from one centralized location.

Reviews from Real Users

Barracuda Web Application Firewall stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. One of the main ones is the robustness of the solution. Users are given access to a vast variety of security features in a single product.

PeerSpot user Muhammed S., a Presales Solutions Architect at Hilal Computers, notes this when he writes, "The solution offers multiple security features. There are machine learning features and great URL encryption. It also offers multi-protocol support against DDoS attacks."

Other reviewers note that Barracuda Web Application Firewall is user-friendly, easy to set up, stable, and reliable.

Barracuda Networks

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk

Salvation Army

Oracle, CBS, Pioneer, Hyundai, Publix, Barnes Noble, Calzedonia, Nordstrom, Samsung, Nascar

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. Barracuda Web Application Firewall