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Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services comparison

 

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

Check Point CloudGuard WAF
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (5th)
F5 Distributed Cloud Services
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
21st
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
CDN (10th), API Security (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Check Point CloudGuard WAF is 2.6%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Distributed Cloud Services is 1.7%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Check Point CloudGuard WAF2.6%
F5 Distributed Cloud Services1.7%
Other95.7%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2751468 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Robust threat protection improves security and operational efficiency
Areas where Check Point CloudGuard WAF can improve include simple policy tuning, as the protection seems strong, though initial rule tuning can be complex. More guided workflows or templates would help speed up deployment, along with deeper integration with the DevOps pipeline, and while it handles API well, more dedicated API security would add value. In addition, it could be improved with better integration with the DevOps pipeline, more granular reporting, as the dashboards provide good high-level visibility, but sometimes digging into specific attack patterns or trends requires manual effort, and simple tuning of the ML models would be beneficial.
Mohan Janarthanan - PeerSpot reviewer
Assosiate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
Centralized security has protected APIs and optimized multi‑cloud traffic management
F5 Distributed Cloud Services has been used for two years for DDoS protection, and there is a particular feature called API protection. Within API protection, there is malicious user mitigation, which is one particular technology that has been implemented. This is a kind of advanced bot attack prevention. Malicious user mitigation is an AI/ML-based technology that was introduced by the F5 team, and this particular MUG protects rate limiting. If some users are having anomaly detection or someone is trying to do a bot attack, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge for that particular user alone and not for all users. For example, if someone is trying to act as a rogue, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge in the backend system on that particular system, so they cannot try again and again at the same time. It is for a concurrent session, and it will give the CAPTCHA challenge. This MUG, malicious user mitigation, prevents bot attacks. F5 Distributed Cloud Services includes the real-time intelligence feature, which helps with threat response strategies from a threat intelligence perspective. For example, if there are geo-restrictions or geo-based restrictions, sometimes people may come in through proxy-based servers, and it will prevent that. The load balancing feature optimizes application performance. Observability is the basic piece where F5 got introduced. This observability piece provides end-to-end visibility on the application performance. It gives complete end-to-end visibility across network latency and application performance issues. Sometimes when it is getting more than 200 pages, it throws errors such as 300, 400, or whatever has been configured, including 500 errors. F5 Distributed Cloud Services has helped improve traffic management efficiency. Most applications are hosted in the Check Point and F5 firewall, F5 web application firewall, where applications and traffic management can be accessed in a single dashboard. Automated threat detection is a basic feature of F5 Distributed Cloud Services meant for that purpose. There are two scenarios with automated threat detection, which is provided by F5. It is a completely machine learning solution that came from the bot defense, and it automatically protects against sophisticated attacks.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It helps me sleep at night, providing peace of mind."
"The communication between the on-premises device and the cloud for analysis and feedback is a valuable feature."
"CloudGuard WAF has been great."
"The DirectStorage gives me a vision that I did not have of the check that occurs on the web servers."
"User attitude reviews help us keep all online users compliant with company regulations and policies."
"Support is the same with on-premise devices, and it is very good. Since it is cloud-based, I do not need them as much."
"With the introduction of AI in general, Check Point CloudGuard WAF provides very high accuracy on the data, allowing me to avoid a lot of false positives and saving me time in determining if what I'm seeing is a possible attack."
"Check Point CloudGuard WAF has improved our organization by providing protection against web application attacks such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and bot threats."
"Technical support from F5 is good compared to Cisco and HP."
"The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation."
"In a multi-cloud or distributed cloud, there are many protection possibilities from data to web application or API protection, including bot mitigation."
"F5 is known for being the best load balancer in the market. Customers with an existing module can easily adopt additional modules without investing in new hardware."
 

Cons

"I am pretty happy with the current version. I have not yet used it to its full potential, but there could be improvements as I explore it further."
"The learning curve was a challenge due to initially incorrect configurations. It took approximately a month and a half to understand how the solution works because of inadequate documentation."
"It doesn't detect user activity like some of its competitors. It's not a vulnerability, but it's a legitimate activity that it doesn't detect. It only detects vulnerabilities or misconfigurations."
"They need improved latency in the main window."
"It was costlier than other solutions."
"There are occasions when it interfaces with other systems, leading to a loss of visibility."
"When I migrate the traffic from our mobile application to CloudGuard, we are not getting what we expected."
"We would like to have a solution of this type for the administration of applications from mobile devices."
"The pricing could be adjusted to better meet the needs of typical customers in regions like Poland, where the product is considered too expensive."
"Last year there was a downtime of 30 minutes across the cloud distributed console, and that was the only impact observed."
"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF."
"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF. There are some problems, mainly from the perspective of implementation and customer expectations, which sometimes differ from reality."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Check Point CloudGuard Application Security's pricing is not friendly."
"Considering all the benefits we've observed, we find the price to be satisfactory."
"I work for an Indian banking client. In India, companies are on a budget. The company liked Check Point very much, but it was a little bit costly compared to FortiWeb. However, it had more features compared to FortiWeb."
"Check Point CloudGuard Application Security's pricing is comparable to other products in the market."
"I find the pricing to be reasonable."
"Check Point CloudGuard WAF is expensive compared to Azure WAF."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly and competitive."
"It is not cheap, but it is worth it."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Insurance Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise17
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about CloudGuard for Application Security?
We have not had any incidents. We could realize its benefits immediately. We watched and monitored the traffic, and it was amazing to see the results.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudGuard for Application Security?
The setup cost was taken with the head of the department, who handled the pricing and everything.
What needs improvement with CloudGuard for Application Security?
Currently, there is nothing in the areas of Check Point CloudGuard WAF that I would like to see improved or enhanced in the future. If there is anything in the roadmap, I would definitely like to t...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
I am not involved in sales, so I do not deal with the pricing aspect directly. I give the cost of the solution a four out of ten since it is not a cheap product.
What needs improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
It's a long way to be perfect, of course, as with all solutions. The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF. There are some problems, mainly from the pers...
What is your primary use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
There are two main use cases for Distributed Call Services: DDoS or Distributed attacks protection and WAF web application security or firewall.
 

Also Known As

Check Point CloudGuard Application Security, CloudGuard Application Security, CloudGuard AppSec
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Orange España, Paschoalotto
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs. F5 Distributed Cloud Services and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.