Cequence Security vs NGINX App Protect comparison

Cequence Security and F5 are both solutions in the API Security category. Cequence Security is ranked #7 with an average rating of 10.0, while F5 is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.4. Cequence Security holds a 9.2% mindshare in APIS, compared to F5’s 2.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cequence Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of F5 users who would recommend it.

Cequence Security

Read 1 Cequence Security review

541 Views
260 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NGINX App Protect

Read 24 NGINX App Protect reviews

219 Views
115 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Cequence Security

NGINX App Protect

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cequence Security and NGINX App Protect based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai, Salt Security, F5 and others in API Security.

To learn more, read our detailed API Security Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

API Security

June 2025

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Helped 860,592 peers since 2012

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

Cequence Security

Ranking in API Security

7th

Average Rating

10.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (23rd), Bot Management (5th)

NGINX App Protect

Ranking in API Security

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Web Application Firewall (WAF) (16th), Container Security (22nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the API Security category, the mindshare of Cequence Security is 9.2%, up from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX App Protect is 2.6%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

API Security

Featured Reviews

reviewer2395431

Technology Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Detect and mitigate attacks with API protection

Compliance with standards like those in Europe often requires ensuring that APIs adhere to OAuth and other security protocols. Many organizations need to verify that their APIs meet these compliance requirements. We can include information about where an API was first recorded and create a detailed chart. Some competitors already offer this feature. It is simple to integrate. Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

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Tomaz Sobczak

Security System Engineer at Ascomp S.A.

Signature-based detection, DOS protection, and bot protection

NGINX App Protect is easier to automate and configure, or manage from an API. This is good for securing applications. However, it's not suitable for more complex tasks. NGINX App Protect positively impacted performance changes. There's a cache or it works like a proxy, so it can speed up applications. It can also offload some functions from servers, which NGINX can handle faster.

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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 uses machine learning algorithms to detect attacks and manage API inventory."

"It is a very good tool for load balancing."

"The most valuable feature of NGINX App Protect is its flexibility."

"The tool is not complex and is very user-friendly."

"The initial setup was simple and took three to four days."

"NGINX App Protect's best features are auto-learning, which creates a profile of applications that are deployed, bot protection, and force protection, which lets you configure your brute force policy and alert for and prevent brute force attacks."

"The policies are flexible based on the technologies you use."

"There's a cache, or it works like a proxy, so it can speed up applications."

"WAF is useful to track mitigation, inclusion, prevention, and the parametric firewall."

More NGINX App Protect pros

Cons

"It is expensive."

"Currently, the policies have to be handled manually, and you have to create from scratch, which can be a bit time-consuming, in a large environment."

"Its technical support could be better."

"The product's price is high, making it an area of concern where improvements are required. The tool's licensing model is also not good."

"Areas for improvement would be if NGINX could scan for vulnerabilities and learn and update the signatures of DoS attacks."

"The product's user interface is an area with shortcomings as it can be quite confusing for users, making it an area where improvements are required."

"Setting policies and parameters through the UI should be more automated because the process is manual, where we can only edit one rule at a time."

"They could provide a better user interface."

"It doesn't have more advanced features like no false-positive security, which you can configure in Advanced WAF."

More NGINX App Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The licensing fees for this solution are pretty expensive for what it does, but there is no alternative."

"Our licensing costs are about $40,000 a year."

"There is a license needed to use NGINX App Protect."

"The price of NGINX App Protect is approximately $3,000 annually. All of our licenses are observed by a managed service partner."

"There are no additional fees."

"The product's price is high."

"There are not any additional costs we had to pay to use NGINX App Protect."

"There is a monthly or annual subscription to use NGINX App Protect. There are not any additional costs to the subscription."

More NGINX App Protect pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Comms Service Provider

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

How does Cequence Security establish a baseline of normal application behavior and detect anomalies?

Cequence Security employs advanced machine learning and AI techniques to analyze the behavior of our applications in real-time. By continuously monitoring and processing data from user interactions...

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What is Cequence Security's API Spartan and how can it help defend our company's infrastructure from bot attacks?

Cequence Security's behavior-based bot defense relies on the industry's largest threat database of bot behaviors, enabling users to track and block automated attacks with unparalleled efficacy rate...

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What is API inventory and how does Cequence Security utilize it?

API inventory processes are essential, and Cequence Security recognizes their significance, both from a security and management perspective. The developers of the solution understand that you canno...

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What do you like most about NGINX App Protect?

It's very easy to deploy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX App Protect?

I don't know the pricing yet because in my other project, I was not part of the buying side and I was just starting to look at options.

See all answers

What needs improvement with NGINX App Protect?

It would be better if it were easier to implement and if there was more information from F5 regarding hardware requirements and specifications to deploy the service, to avoid disruptions after impl...

See all answers

Comparisons

Akamai API Security vs Cequence Security

Compared 42% of the time

Salt Security vs Cequence Security

Compared 34% of the time

Traceable AI vs Cequence Security

Compared 13% of the time

Cloudflare vs Cequence Security

Compared 11% of the time

More Cequence Security Competitors

Azure Front Door vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 19% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 18% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 12% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 8% of the time

AWS WAF vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 7% of the time

More NGINX App Protect Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Application Security Tools

June 2025

Download Cequence Security product report

Buyer's Guide

NGINX App Protect

June 2025

Download NGINX App Protect product report

Also Known As

Cequence ASP, Cequence Unified API Protection Platform

NGINX WAF, NGINX Web Application Firewall

Overview

Cequence, a pioneer in API security and bot management, is the only solution that delivers Unified API Protection (UAP), uniting discovery, compliance, and protection across all internal, external, third-party APIs to defend organizations against attacks, business logic abuse, and fraud. Needing less than 15 minutes to onboard an API without requiring any instrumentation, SDK, or JavaScript integration, the flexible deployment model supports SaaS, on-premises, and hybrid installations. Cequence solutions scale to handle the most demanding government, Fortune and Global 500 organizations, securing more than 8 billion daily API interactions and protecting more than 3 billion user accounts.

Cequence Unified API Protection Platform

The Cequence Unified API Protection (UAP) platform enables security teams to manage through the entire API protection lifecycle that includes support for discover, comply, and protect stages that defend against attackers and eliminates unknown and unmitigated API security risks. The Cequence UAP platform provides three integral components, API Spyder, API Sentinel, and API Spartan that target every stage of the API protection lifecycle, ensuring that customers have one platform to address all their API security issues.

API Spyder (Discover)

Cequence UAP starts with first understanding your API attack surface through API Spyder which discovers your external APIs across managed and unmanaged API infrastructure. This allows security teams to ensure that unmanaged APIs are brought under management to confirm they do not have security risks and have the proper API protection enabled. Once deployed, API Spyder provides a continuous mechanism to surface unmanaged shadow APIs that are newly implemented by internal departments but never notify the security team of their existence.

API Sentinel (Comply)

API Sentinel, a security posture management product enables security teams and development teams to work collaboratively to directly address surfaced security issues within your runtime APIs that could potentially lead to an API exploit. It can discover whether your APIs conform to Open API specifications, adhere to security and governance best practices, and test your pre-production APIs for vulnerabilities. API Sentinel lays the groundwork to ensure that you are fully aware of the risks inherent in your API applications and enables you to remediate critical security issues before they are exploited by an attacker.

Spartan (Protect)

Finally, API Spartan offers real-time detection and mitigation of automated threats and attacks, including those that are API-specific. Spartan is powered by an ML-based analytics engine that can determine in real time if application transactions are from malicious or legitimate end users. It can mitigate a wide variety of cyberattacks that include online fraud, business logic attacks, exploits, automated bot activity, and OWASP API Security Top 10 attacks.

Cequence Security

NGINX App Protect application security solution combines the efficacy of advanced F5 web application firewall (WAF) technology with the agility and performance of NGINX Plus. The solution runs natively on NGINX Plus and addresses some of the most difficult challenges facing modern DevOps environments:

Integrating security controls directly into the development automation pipeline
Applying and managing security for modern and distributed application environments such as containers and microservices
Providing the right level of security controls without impacting release and go-to-market velocity
Complying with security and regulatory requirements

NGINX App Protect offers:

Expanded security beyond basic signatures to ensure adequate controls
F5 app‑security technology for efficacy superior to ModSecurity and other WAFs
Confidently run in “blocking” mode in production with proven F5 expertise
High‑confidence signatures for extremely low false positives
Increases visibility, integrating with third‑party analytics solutions
Integrates security and WAF natively into the CI/CD pipeline
Deploys as a lightweight software package that is agnostic of underlying infrastructure
Facilitates declarative policies for “security as code” and integration with DevOps tools
Decreases developer burden and provides feedback loop for quick security remediation
Accelerates time to market and reduces costs with DevSecOps‑automated security

Sample Customers

American Express, Lbrands, Ulta Beauty

Information Not Available

Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai, Salt Security, F5 and others in API Security. Updated: June 2025.

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