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Check Point Quantum Force vs Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 22, 2026

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

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Ranking in Firewalls
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
591
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (2nd), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (1st), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st), ZTNA (1st), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
Check Point Quantum Force
Ranking in Firewalls
28th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Palo Alto Networks NG Firew...
Ranking in Firewalls
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
199
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Abhinandan Yadav - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Engineer at Arrow PC Network Pvt Ltd
Unified security and sd-wan have improved uptime and cut wan costs for multi-site branches
Users report stability issues in certain versions, which requires regular updates. Real-world attacks have also highlighted the need for urgent patching of vulnerabilities.Fortinet FortiGate, while a powerful and feature-rich web firewall, could improve in areas like firmware stability, documentation, and ease of use. The learning curve can be steep for some users. For beginners, support quality can vary, and frequent updates with occasional vulnerabilities call for careful patch management. However, once Fortinet FortiGate is configured, it remains highly reliable and efficient. Customer support needs improvement, as I find it very slow, with reports from other users reflecting that customer support is inadequate.
Abnet Tsegaye Belay - PeerSpot reviewer
Cybersecurity Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Has strengthened perimeter security through AI-driven protection and unified management
I have noticed some limitations with Check Point Quantum Force. There is a limitation in integrating with existing infrastructure, such as orchestration and logging, specifically with VPNs. VPNs are hard and sophisticated to deploy on this firewall. However, it is improving currently. Some performance aspects need higher resources. If you do not give it higher resources, it will slow down your network. It is a trade-off - if you have higher resources, you will have good performance. The complexity of configuring a VPN needs to be improved because we need to go back and forth to configure VPNs. It has to be simpler to understand.
Abhinandan Yadav - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Engineer at Arrow PC Network Pvt Ltd
Advanced visibility has transformed security policies and provides proactive threat prevention
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are powerful, but there are areas for improvement that could enhance their effectiveness, such as cost and licensing models. One of the main challenges we face is the high cost, especially for small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs), with licensing for features such as threat prevention, URL filtering, and WildFire being quite expensive. Additionally, centralized management with Panorama is a dependency for managing multiple firewalls, leading to added costs and complexity, and the built-in centralized management features could be made more user-friendly. Moreover, the learning curve associated with the initial setup and advanced configuration including NAT, decryption, and routing can be complex for new users, and enhancements in logging and reporting could also improve the user experience. There are a few more areas where improvements could streamline operations, such as optimizing commit times. Sometimes committing changes takes a noticeable amount of time, particularly for larger configurations, so a faster commit option would significantly help during urgent troubleshooting. Easier policy troubleshooting is necessary as well. Even though logs are detailed, finding the exact rule match and issue can still be time-consuming in complex environments, so having automated policy simulation and a recommendation tool would expedite troubleshooting. Additionally, better default templates and best practices for SMB data centers and branch offices would speed up deployment and reduce errors. Enhancing integration visibility through a unified dashboard would simplify monitoring, and improving the firmware upgrade process to allow for a more seamless zero downtime upgrade would also enhance operations, as upgrades are stable but typically require careful planning and downtime.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use a southern institution that's audited for IT security and the reporting that automatically comes off the unit makes it much easier to meet compliance standards and makes it easier as far as the amount of time that has to be spent to compile that information. If you get your reporting set up correctly when you initially set it up, you just select the one you want and hit print. The auditing trail on it is the best feature."
"Our company uses the solution to prevent traffic that is not supposed to be traveling through our firewalls, and when we find log issues, we easily fine tune the IPS to block that traffic so it cannot penetrate our environment."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The services on offer are just superb."
"I have found the decryption of Fortinet FortiGate IPS very good. It's called SSL deep inspection, it's working very well. This is how you decrypt access and traffic, and it is through the IPS antivirus center. Additionally, the UI is user-friendly."
"Great product with too many features at the right price."
"We are satisfied with this solution."
"Their proxy-based inspection is responsive and secure."
"The security features and layered security features are better compared to others."
"The outcomes from Check Point Quantum Force firewall gave us the ability to be fit and secure from the cyber world."
"In performance and threat prevention, it has benefited my cybersecurity strategy."
"The most valuable features I find in Check Point Quantum Force are the security policy features, including all security features that are provided by firewall, IPS/IDS."
"I recommend this solution to any engineer; technically speaking, it's the best product on the market."
"The application IDs, application controls, URL filtering, visibility, monitoring, and reporting are the most valuable features."
"Most features in Palo Alto are okay, but we have had some issues like publicity not working, comments have some delay, but overall, it's a good product."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to deeply analyze the connection or connection type."
"The interface is very nice. We generally like the UI the product offers."
"Flexible and integrates well with apps and other security tools."
"The scalability is very good."
"Palo Alto NG Firewalls embed machine learning in the core of the firewall to provide inline, real-time attack prevention, which is very important."
 

Cons

"The solution could improve by having some additional features, such as IBS and better cloud administration."
"Its reporting can be improved. Sometimes, I don't get proper reports."
"The room for improvement is about the global delivery time period. Usually I need to wait for almost one month to deliver it overseas."
"Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface."
"It needs more available central management."
"The AI with Fortinet FortiGate is not very well integrated on their devices, and their cloud infrastructure is not as good as Cisco's."
"One area for improvement is the performance on bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"Stability and technical support are the two major issues I have found with Fortinet."
"Check Point Quantum Force does not have strong local support. We are based in India, and Check Point Quantum Force does not have extensive local support in our region."
"I have observed weaknesses in Check Point Quantum Force, particularly when configuring tunnels from any point product to a peer, which has very complex configuration requirements."
"I see good competition which is less expensive."
"The complexity of configuring a VPN needs to be improved because we need to go back and forth to configure VPNs."
"The whole performance takes a long time. It takes a long time to configure."
"Palo Alto hardware is not equal to the level of the Cisco Device. The hardware is weak."
"The pricing of the solution is quite high. It's one of the most expensive firewall solutions on the market."
"Palo Alto NG firewalls can be improved in support of finance and banking. We need better affiliations for profiling the user."
"I would like Palo Alto Networks to provide a free virtual firewall."
"Unfortunately, Palo Alto Networks products aren't cheap, but you have to pay the price for good security technology. I don't know the exact price, but it's about $10,000 to $15,000 without a subscription. Cisco is priced similarly. FortiGate is inexpensive in Poland, so a lot of customers prefer that."
"PA-220 Next-Generation Firewall would be perfect if it has spam filtering."
"Its data loss prevention (DLP) feature is not good enough. Currently, this feature is very basic and not suitable for enterprises."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the pricing an eight and a half on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high."
"They are more expensive than others."
"It is more expensive than Sophos. Fortinet is overall more expensive than Sophos. The small range of Fortinet, such as 60F and 80F, is more expensive than the small range of Sophos. Sophos is cheaper. In addition, if you jump from 80F Series to 100F Series, the price doubles."
"The cost has increased since the update so I would rate it eight out of ten."
"Fortinet FortiGate is expensive."
"The price depends on the size of the company. From the beginning, you just want to know the internet bandwidths, speed, and the number of users to be able to offer the right product and model. They have a lot of products in FortiGate according to the size of the company, like 200D and 300D."
"Fortinet has more device options that are affordable for small businesses than Palo Alto, and its enterprise-level models are also cheaper. Palo Alto also has a separate license for VPN connections and SD-WAN, but FortiGate offers these features standard."
"My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Fortinet FortiGate is quite good. I don't have a public site, such as in Azure, where I can see the pricing. I always have to go through the distributor, and that could take some time to get the real price for each appliance."
Information not available
"The price of the solution is on the higher side compared to competitors."
"While Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls come at a premium, exceeding the cost of most competitors by 45 percent, their advanced security features, superior performance, and comprehensive threat prevention capabilities justify the investment."
"There are security licenses."
"Annually, the licensing costs are too much."
"Definitely look into a multi-year license, as opposed to a single-year. That will definitely be more beneficial in terms of cost... Palo Alto is definitely not the cheapest, but if you scale it the right way it will be very comparable to what's out there."
"The cost is quite high."
"If you compare Palo Alto with other firewalls, it's a bit expensive."
"Paul Alto is the most expensive solution in this category."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
No data available
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business367
Midsize Enterprise135
Large Enterprise193
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business77
Midsize Enterprise56
Large Enterprise85
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?
When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...
What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?
From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...
What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?
As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Check Point Quantum Force?
In terms of pricing, setup cost, and licensing, many users and clients say that the pricing is high. The license stru...
What needs improvement with Check Point Quantum Force?
I would assess Check Point Quantum Force's real-time threat intelligence in guarding against ransomware as not effect...
What is your primary use case for Check Point Quantum Force?
I am dealing mostly with firewalls and I am working with Check Point Quantum Force. I have utilized the capability to...
What is a better choice, Azure Firewall or Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls?
Azure Firewall Vs. Palo Alto Network NG Firewalls Both solutions provide stellar stability and security. Azure Firew...
Features comparison between Palo Alto and Fortinet firewalls
In the best tradition of these questions, Feature-wise both are quite similar, but each has things it's better at, it...
Which is better - Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls or Sophos XG?
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls have both great features and performance. I like that Palo Alto has regular threat si...
 

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall
No data available
Palo Alto NGFW, Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya
Information Not Available
SkiStar AB, Ada County, Global IT Services PSF, Southern Cross Hospitals, Verge Health, University of Portsmouth, Austrian Airlines, The Heinz Endowments
Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point Quantum Force vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.