Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway comparison

Barracuda Networks and Microsoft are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Barracuda Networks is ranked #24 with an average rating of 8.0, while Microsoft is ranked #7 with an average rating of 7.6. Barracuda Networks holds a 1.0% mindshare in WAF, compared to Microsoft’s 3.8% mindshare. Additionally, 83% of Barracuda Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway and Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service compete in providing web application firewall solutions. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has an upper hand in cost-effectiveness and integration, while Barracuda excels in security and features despite a higher cost.

Features: Microsoft Azure Application Gateway offers robust load balancing, SSL termination, and seamless integration with Azure services for scalability. Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service provides comprehensive security features, automated threat updates, and detailed reporting tools, offering a proactive security management approach.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Azure Application Gateway could improve by enhancing advanced threat protection, more customizable reporting, and better multi-cloud support. Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service needs improvement in cost-effectiveness, streamlined integration with non-native cloud services, and more intuitive user management interfaces.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is straightforward for existing Azure users due to its integration and excellent documentation, facilitating a smooth setup process. Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service provides a cloud-native deployment model with quick installation and responsive customer support for diverse infrastructures.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is seen as cost-effective, especially for Azure-dependent businesses, with scalable pricing based on usage. Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service, while having higher initial costs, justifies the expense with substantial ROI due to its advanced security features and long-term application protection benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

April 2026

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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 May 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 4.7%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is 3.8%, down from 9.2% 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	4.7%
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway	3.8%
Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service	1.0%
Other	90.5%

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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reviewer5599486

Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Mutual TLS has secured our web services and now needs broader protocol support

The most valuable feature we have found in Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is mutual TLS. We find mutual TLS valuable because we can verify the client securely by setting up the trust certificate of the client, and also if we do it at the client side as well. This successfully develops mutual trust, ensuring that we know the client who is calling our service is a legitimate client. That is a very nice feature.Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has helped manage our traffic efficiently because we have many web services that we can put behind the same URL, and we can have different URLs with the same Application Gateway with a limited number of listeners. We can do host-based routing as well as URL-based routing or path-based routing. It supports both, so we can have even a single URL supporting many applications, or we can have different URLs for different applications respectively. We have both use cases.

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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

"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."

"The solution protects our application, which runs on the HTTP protocol, from DDoS attacks."

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

"It's pretty convenient and pretty easy to set up and run. And then kind of for static content, it also offers caching."

"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."

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

"The security features are valuable. The particular feature we use is called OWASP."

"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."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

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

"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."

"It provides an ease of policy management."

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

"The solution covers a lot of major protection or threat management functions in the feature itself."

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

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

More Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service pros

"The solution was very easy to configure. It wasn't hard at all to adjust it to our needs."

"The solution has built-in rules that reduce alerts and are easy to configure."

"We chose this solution in the first place because it has access to Layer 7. I can control the requests and the content, which I can access on my network if I want to even if it's forbidden access to other external resources. If I want to monitor, for example, traffic, and apply this rule on Layer 7, I can do so. This was our main goal when implementing this application. We wanted to take advantage of the Gateway capabilities."

"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway impacts our cost savings while maintaining higher performance."

"The most valuable feature is WAF."

"The solution's most valuable feature is an HTTP solution and SSL certificate. It is also easy to use."

"The best features for Microsoft Azure Application Gateway basically protect your application and provide security-related features and also divert the traffic to different instances of your application."

"I like the tool's stability and performance."

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway pros

Cons

"I have experienced some difficulties with Cloudflare's support as a customer based in India."

"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."

"The reporting could be improved if it were more granular."

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

"Support can be challenging at times."

"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well."

"The rate limiting functionality could be enhanced, as we find it somewhat limited."

"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

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

"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."

"We found it a bit slow when accessing it through the web browser."

"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."

"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."

More Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service cons

"The configuration is very specific right now and needs to be much more flexible."

"One of the challenges we faced was the solution does not support any other PCP protocols apart from HTTP and HTTPS."

"Microsoft needs to work on their documentation."

"Customer service can be improved. There is room for improvement, specifically in paid support, by providing more direct contact."

"The support can be improved when you are configuring the system rules. The Disaster Recovery feature can be added in the next release. The price of the solution can be reduced a bit."

"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is harder to manage than Imperva. It is not intuitive and stable compared to other products."

"The working speed of the solution needs improvement."

"The main drawback of the solution is that it's only for Azure."

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"The solution is expensive."

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

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

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

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

"It is not too pricey."

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."

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

"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."

"There is some additional cost, such as extended support."

"The solution is paid monthly. The solution is highly expensive."

"The solution is cheaper than Imperva. I rate it four to five out of ten."

"The cost is not an issue."

"I would rate the pricing a three out of ten, with ten being cheap and one being expensive."

"Between v1 and v2, there is a lot of change in the pricing. It is very costly compared to AWS."

"The solution is fairly priced."

"I rate the pricing seven out of ten because some third-party solutions are even costlier than this."

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

17%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

11%

Construction Company

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

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	23
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	24

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.

See all answers

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...

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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...

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

I assess the impact of Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service on compliance efforts regarding security events as good in terms of...

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

I deal with Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service and usually recommend it for private and government companies.

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

The price of their licensing model is a bit steep, but for other features such as web application threat detection an...

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What's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?

We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides...

See all answers

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...

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What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?

Application Gateway automatically redirects unwanted users and takes care of the security aspect. It also handles the...

See all answers

Comparisons

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 7% of the time

Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 7% of the time

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

Compared 12% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Compared 11% of the time

AWS WAF vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Compared 8% of the time

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

Compared 7% of the time

Akamai App and API Protector vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Compared 5% of the time

More Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service Competitors

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 7% of the time

HAProxy vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 6% of the time

NetScaler vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 6% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 6% of the time

AWS WAF vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

May 2026

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Download Cloudflare Web Application Firewall product report

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

May 2026

Download Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

April 2026

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

Download Microsoft Azure Application Gateway product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF

Barracuda WAF as a Service

Azure Application Gateway, MS Azure Application Gateway

Overview

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall integrates DDoS protection, load balancing, and firewall capabilities. Its ease of use, configurability, and robust security measures make it a versatile choice for protecting web applications.

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall provides a comprehensive defense against threats with advanced reporting and robust security measures. It includes DNS integration, rate limiting, and extensive rule sets, all within a SaaS model that allows API configurability. Users value its caching, scalability, and pricing, although enhancements are needed in rate-limiting and third-party integration. Improvements in customer support, especially in India, real-time controls, and user documentation are also desired. Users seek a more intuitive dashboard, better log management, and improved alert systems, along with multitenancy capabilities and enhanced reporting.

What are the key features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

DDoS Protection: Shields applications from denial-of-service attacks
Load Balancing: Ensures efficient traffic distribution
DNS Integration: Enhances domain name system security
Rate Limiting: Controls traffic flow and reduces abuse
Extensive Rule Sets: Offers customizable security rules

What benefits and ROI can users find in reviews?

Scalability: Easily adapts to growing business needs
Pricing: Offers reasonable pricing structure
Caching: Improves application performance and speed
Configurable Security: Provides customizable defense settings
Efficient Management: Simplifies security and application control

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall finds application in industries like banking and retail by acting as a comprehensive security gateway, managing authentication and authorization while protecting web applications from malicious Layer 7 traffic. It also implements load balancing, CDN, and zero-trust policies, supported by advanced reporting, analytics tools, and threat scoring to meet specific industry needs.

Cloudflare

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service streamlines cloud security with features like automatic updates, real-time detection, and bot protection. It enhances AWS environments with simplified management and threat intelligence.

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service provides robust application security, leveraging automatic security updates and real-time attack detection to defend against threats. Its centralized dashboard offers an intuitive management experience, complemented by automated policies. Real-time threat intelligence, application control, and VPN support contribute to its security efficacy. Its capabilities to detect and prevent DDoS, application, and unknown OS attacks ensure comprehensive protection. Although licensing complexity, high costs, stability concerns, and regional compliance issues pose challenges, it effectively secures websites and email systems against malware, phishing, and ransomware, and simplifies cloud migration.

What are the key features of Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?

Automatic Security Updates: Keeps protection current to combat emerging threats.
Real-Time Attack Detection: Identifies attacks as they occur for immediate response.
Bot Protection: Shields applications from malicious bots and automated threats.
Centralized Dashboard: Simplifies management with an intuitive interface.
Threat Intelligence: Continuously updates to address potential vulnerabilities.

What benefits should users consider in reviews?

Streamlined Management: Reduces complexity through an intuitive dashboard.
Enhanced Security: Offers comprehensive defense against various cyber threats.
Scalability: Easy scaling across AWS environments ensures growing demands are met.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces hardware costs by replacing on-premises infrastructures.

In industries like e-commerce and finance, Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service is implemented for its effectiveness in securing cloud-based applications while reducing the need for on-premises equipment. Its strength in protecting both websites and email systems makes it a preferred choice for businesses migrating to cloud solutions.

Barracuda Networks

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway offers advanced traffic management and security features for web applications. It includes built-in rules, Layer 7 control, autoscaling, and integration options, providing flexibility and security for managing application traffic efficiently.

Azure Application Gateway is utilized by organizations for securing and managing web traffic with its comprehensive web application firewall, load balancing capabilities, and Layer 7 firewall rules. Known for its ease of setup and integration, the platform facilitates external application access and deploys secure services. While it enhances security with customized configurations, users note areas for improvement such as configuration complexity, pricing, third-party tool integration, and automation. Addressing these aspects can improve user experience and performance.

What are the key features of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?

Built-in Rules: Pre-configured rules help streamline traffic management and enhance security.
Layer 7 Control: Offers detailed traffic routing and policies based on application-level information.
Real-Time Autoscaling: Automatically adjusts resources to meet demand and optimize performance.
Comprehensive WAF Protection: Guards against web vulnerabilities and potential threats.
Seamless Integration: Easily integrates with Azure services for enhanced workflow efficiency.

What benefits do users look for in reviews?

Traffic Routing: Efficiently directs application traffic based on defined rules for improved performance.
Security: Provides robust protection for internet-facing applications.
Ease of Setup: Simplifies deployment and management of applications.
Flexibility: Supports different application scenarios with customizable configurations.

Industries such as finance, healthcare, and retail implement Azure Application Gateway to protect sensitive data and manage significant web traffic. Its application deployment support and security capabilities make it suitable for businesses needing to ensure secure data exchange and reliable access to online services.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk

Salvation Army

Lilly, AccuWeather, AIRFRANCE, Honeywell

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

April 2026

Free Report: Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.

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