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Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 26, 2025

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

Barracuda Web Application F...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
17th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Barracuda Web Application Firewall is 2.1%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is 1.7%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks1.7%
Barracuda Web Application Firewall2.1%
Other96.2%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

Shahzad Abid - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
reviewer2776578 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Image scanning has supported consistent security practices during cloud deployment
On a scale of ten, we would say people are happy with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks for the part we use. People are okay with it. We probably would give an eight. We don't give ten because if we don't use the other parts of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, it's because it was difficult to implement from an operational point of view. We could have deployed the runtime monitoring with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, but within our organization at our company, it was very difficult to find who would be the owner for the alerts. People have other tools and in the end, we don't use the full capabilities of a product that we pay for. It's partially related to the difficulty to integrate Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks runtime in our company's support process. We don't use the real-time monitoring part of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks. We don't know about the automated remediation feature of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is user-friendly and easy to set up."
"Has a good dashboard."
"It's very simple and predictable, because Barracuda provides a vision of the current state of your application. It gives you an understanding of what is happening on your site and any attempts against you at your source. This is the main value that Web Application Firewall provides our company. These aspects are also the main reason for this documentation process."
"I find the solution very stable."
"The solution ensures layer seven is secure from attacks."
"The most valuable feature is the rule set."
"The stability of the product is good. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"There is no one special feature, but the WAF itself is valuable: user-friendly protection against web attacks etc., authentication, reporting, accountability, alerting, and hardened OS."
"Prisma Cloud stands out as a user-friendly and powerful CSPM solution thanks to its comprehensive capabilities, built-in features, and flexible tagging system."
"Prisma Cloud's real-time detection and monitoring of our entire system is the most useful."
"The solution's dashboard looks very user-friendly."
"Configuration monitoring and alerting is the most valuable feature; it happens at the cloud's speed, allowing our development team to respond quickly. If a configuration goes against our security best practices, we're alerted promptly and can act to resolve the issue. As cloud security staff, we're not staring at the cloud all the time, and we want to let the developers do their jobs so that our company is protected and work is proceeding within our security controls."
"I found the network queue sets useful. I also liked the Workload Protection Module, the vulnerability findings, and how the rule sets handle the vulnerabilities based on severity."
"The solution offers very good configuration capabilities."
"Prisma Cloud's comprehensive platform offers a range of features, including runtime security and vulnerability assessments, through its Prisma Cloud Compute component."
"The visibility on alerts helps you investigate more easily and see details faster."
 

Cons

"They could improve their performance, support, and their upgrades. Their updates used to be good. Their improvements were right on the money but nowadays, the updates are minor."
"There are some vulnerabilities that are reported across the tools offered by Barracuda for some devices, which need to be taken care of from an improvement perspective."
"In the Barracuda Web Application Firewall, there should be more affordable options for WAF as a service."
"I would suggest that someone implementing this product is knowledgeable in the IT field, and with the network needs. It is complex."
"I would like to see an improved capacity to store logs so that they will be available for a longer time."
"Barracuda Web Application Firewall's load balancing feature could be improved."
"It is not stable nor mature."
"They should improve their features, so they easily compare to the competition."
"While Prisma provides a lot of visibility, it also creates a ton of work. Most customers that implement Prisma Cloud have thousands of alerts that are urgent."
"When it comes to compliance, the issue is that when we are exporting the reports, there is only a single compliance option. If I need to report on multiple compliance requirements, that feature isn't available. For example, I made a single report for ISO 27000 but I can't correlate it with GDPR."
"The IM security has room for improvement."
"Runecast gave us more visibility into VMware's private cloud. We have more environments there, but Prisma's lack of visibility into the private cloud was a downside—there weren't many."
"The alignment of Twistlock Defender agents with image repositories needs improvement. These deployed agents have no way of differentiating between on-premise and cloud-based image repositories. If I deploy a Defender agent to secure an on-premise Kubernetes cluster, that agent also tries to scan my ECR image repositories on AWS. So, we have limited options for aligning those Defenders with the repositories that we want them to scan. It is scanning everything rather than giving us the ability to be real granular in choosing which agents can scan which repositories."
"These tools have a set of signatures or rules that will alert you whenever something meets the criteria. In the future, they might include some machine learning or AI feature that allows you to ask questions about the context of the alert, and it will provide you answers based on the data that they have. Most vendors are doing it, and I believe they will do it in the future. The reporting bar could also use AI to add context based on the environment."
"Prisma Cloud's dashboards should be customizable. That's very important. Other similar solutions are more elastic so you have the power to create customized dashboards. In Prisma Cloud, you cannot do that."
"They need to make the settings more flexible to fit our internal policies about data. We didn't want developers to see some data, but we wanted them to have access to the console because it was going to help them... It was a pain to have to set up the access to some languages and some data."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product pricing was competitive for the value it offers regarding security features."
"The product is expensive."
"The product is inexpensive."
"The Barracuda Web Application Firewall is quite expensive."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"They have competitive pricing."
"Our licensing fees are paid annually and the cost is between €600 and €800 (approximately $665.00 to $885.00 USD)."
"The pricing is less compared to other web applications."
"Prisma Cloud licensing works on credits."
"Prisma Cloud is remarkably expensive."
"From my exposure so far, they have been really flexible on whatever your current state is, with a view to what the future state might be. There's no hard sell. They "get" the journey that you're on, and they're trying to help you embrace cloud security, governance, and compliance as you go."
"Prisma Cloud is cost-efficient, but the credits are on the higher end."
"The cost depends on the pricing model. Compared to other solutions, the cost isn't that bad."
"The pricing is competitive. From what I have seen in the past, it is on par with the others."
"The pricing and licensing are expensive compared to the other offerings that we considered."
"The licensing cost is a bit high on the compute side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise56
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
It significantly improved our overall web security posture, addressing intrusions and enhancing control over web URLs in our environment.
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 Firewall. I use a second procedure for API, which is point-to-point VPN connectiv...
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 overcome that price factor, I excluded some features or subscriptions to align with ...
What is your primary use case for Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?
Prisma Cloud helps support DevSecOps methodologies, making those responsibilities easier to manage.
What Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform do you recommend?
We like Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, since it offers us incredible visibility into our entire cloud system. We are able to easily see where our container vulnerabilities lie and and where cl...
What do you think of Aqua Security vs Prisma Cloud?
Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valuable feature and their speed of integration is very good. The initial setup was ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Prisma Public Cloud, RedLock Cloud 360, RedLock, Twistlock, Aporeto
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Oracle, CBS, Pioneer, Hyundai, Publix, Barnes Noble, Calzedonia, Nordstrom, Samsung, Nascar
Amgen, Genpact, Western Asset, Zipongo, Proofpoint, NerdWallet, Axfood, 21st Century Fox, Veeva Systems, Reinsurance Group of America
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.