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Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) vs HAProxy comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 16, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.6
Cloudflare WAF offers quick ROI, crucial protection for e-commerce, saves bandwidth, and balances cost with valuable free features.
Sentiment score
6.2
Check Point WAF users gain security, cost, and efficiency benefits, with ROI ranging from 40% to 90%.
Sentiment score
7.2
HAProxy boosts efficiency by reducing costs and staff needs, offering speed, reliability, and enhanced scalability for traffic management.
My experience with the pricing or licensing of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is that many features can be accessed for free, so the pricing is definitely reasonable.
Owner at Hga consulting
When we are attacked, we can understand how important the solution is.
Cyber security manager at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
When you migrate to the cloud, it feels like saving 90% of your time.
Manager, Managed Security Services at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Most of the operations happen in the background, so I do not spend much time on it.
Principal Cybersecurity Specialist at Unitel S.A.
Operational efficiency has improved; we no longer have staff consistently monitoring backend servers during deployment or scaling events, as HAProxy's health checks and hitless reloads allow us to push changes with minimal manual intervention.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
This resulted in a drastic decrease in costs and, at the same time, the accuracy of the hits coming on HAProxy was almost around 100% or 99.99%.
Head of DevOps at TripFactory
I estimate seeing a return on investment with HAProxy, as it significantly reduced staff requirements and enhanced scaling capabilities, particularly when transitioning from NGINX, which faced issues.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.3
Cloudflare WAF support is mixed; responsive for some, but Indian customers face call availability and administrative issues.
Sentiment score
6.5
Check Point WAF customer service is rated highly for efficiency and responsiveness, despite occasional delays and improvement areas.
Sentiment score
6.3
HAProxy's support is praised for responsiveness and skill, though some suggest improved documentation and communication for better efficiency.
I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to contact them.
Owner at Hga consulting
The technical support of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall rates between five and seven at maximum.
IT Manager at Amla Commerce
They need to increase the number of people for 24/7 support.
Principal Cybersecurity Specialist at Unitel S.A.
They were responsive even before we committed to buying their solution.
Infrastructure Manager at FPMH
I also received full technical support, especially during the implementation.
Cyber security manager at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Since we are utilizing the open-source edition, community forums, mailing lists, and GitHub have been invaluable, with typically someone having encountered the same problems we faced.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
My interactions with HAProxy's customer support were limited, but the feedback from my team indicated satisfactory service.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall offers impressive scalability and automated management, but additional features may incur costs for smaller organizations.
Sentiment score
7.2
Check Point WAF provides excellent scalability and flexibility, highly rated for its ease of management and adaptability.
Sentiment score
7.7
HAProxy is highly scalable, adaptable for small to medium businesses, efficiently handling substantial connections and diverse user volumes.
The scalability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall rates between 8 to 9, as it depends upon the use cases and what exactly the client needs.
IT Manager at Amla Commerce
If I need to scale, I open a Whatsapp group with the director and the team, and we quickly proceed to do so.
Cyber security manager at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
They have sufficient resources, and there are no challenges from a scalability perspective.
Project Manager at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Check Point CloudGuard WAF's scalability is very good.
Sr. VP of Creative & Development at a non-tech company with 51-200 employees
We manage an automatic load balancing feature where we add HAProxy servers dynamically behind the application load balancer to handle more traffic.
Head of DevOps at TripFactory
HAProxy's scalability is excellent; as our traffic expands, it handles load increases effortlessly.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
For scalability, HAProxy meets my needs, supporting our initial horizontal scaling and then adapting to vertical scaling in a VMware environment.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is praised for stability, high performance, effective protection, daily use, and minimal downtime.
Sentiment score
8.2
Check Point WAF is highly stable, with users experiencing zero downtime, making it a reliable choice for financial institutions.
Sentiment score
8.1
HAProxy offers high stability and reliable performance, enhancing system uptime with minimal downtime and frequent functionality updates.
The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10.
IT Manager at Amla Commerce
It is very stable.
Team Leader, Cloudops & Cloud Architect at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees
It is very stable, never crashing or giving me an error that I can see.
Sysadmin at a government with 501-1,000 employees
I did not have any issues in the last three years during which I had more than ten critical services running on CloudGuard.
Information Technology - Infrastructure and Security at Cyprus Development Bank
This reliability serves as a key reason for our choice, providing us with confidence even when faced with heavy traffic.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The hot reload feature of HAProxy also really helped us so that we never had to shut it down to reload it.
CEo at CloudPositive
We have reduced a lot of servers, replacing them with one or two HAProxy servers which deliver better performance, accuracy, and an almost 100% success rate with requests.
Head of DevOps at TripFactory
 

Room For Improvement

Cloudflare WAF needs feature enhancements, better usability, improved support, advanced DDoS protection, and solutions for latency and alerts.
Check Point WAF requires UI, integration, and reporting improvements, with better support, pricing, false positive handling, and user guidance.
Users recommend improved HAProxy documentation, management tools, dynamic configuration, cloud integration, APIs, and enhanced load-balancing and clustering capabilities.
The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available.
Network Architect at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
I think they're doing a good job with DNS and as support for any domains that I create or that my clients create, it's mandatory for me to ensure they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider.
Owner at Hga consulting
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.
CTO at PlayNirvana
The provider could improve by providing better guidance and support during the configuration process.
Infrastructure Manager at FPMH
Future releases should include better bot mitigation, behavioral anomaly detection, compliance templates, advanced threat intel integration, and streamlined multi-cloud support to boost protection and usability.
Senior Cyber Security Engineer at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
A machine learning-based adaptive mode could help the WAF learn over time and auto-tune policies.
Technical Support Executive at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
The configuration syntax is powerful yet can become overwhelming for newcomers; a more beginner-friendly interface or a native GUI without relying on third-party tools would ease the onboarding process.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
An easier desktop interface to connect to a remote server and make changes on my PC would be beneficial.
DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
The reloading functionality is effective as it allows soft reloads without interrupting traffic patterns.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall offers affordable, flexible pricing with no upfront costs, noted for competitiveness and included support services.
Check Point WAF is pricier than some competitors but offers justified value with flexible licensing and strong support.
Enterprise buyers find HAProxy cost-effective, with free open-source options and a pricier Enterprise Edition offering enhanced features.
It is more expensive than f5, where we purchased everything as bundles, and Check Point costs more, but it is worth the money.
Cyber security manager at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
It is less costly than Cloudflare, Fortinet, and other vendors.
Project Manager at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I know that its price is relatively expensive compared to other products but it gives benefits that are worth it.
Ciso at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Since we use the open-source edition, there are no licensing fees, with the main cost being the infrastructure running on EC2 instances in AWS, which helps maintain low expenses.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Setting up HAProxy didn't cost anything for me.
DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
The pricing remains competitive compared to other vendors.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall provides comprehensive security features, easy setup, scalability, and competitive pricing with praised performance and stability.
Check Point WAF offers signature-less threat detection, AI capabilities, and seamless integration, enhancing security and reducing costs.
HAProxy offers high performance load balancing with customization, scalability, and support for diverse environments, enhancing user experience and flexibility.
The custom rules and the geo-redundant geographical rule feature, which allows me to implement geographical rules for customers, add significant value.
Network Architect at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
The best features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall are multiple, including the WAF, rate limiter, and bot attack protection.
IT Manager at Amla Commerce
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools add a layer that we're able to visualize and see before it actually hits the local firewall.
Owner at Hga consulting
Upon implementation and evaluation with third-party penetration testing, it meets rigorous security standards required for dealing with financial institutions.
Infrastructure Manager at FPMH
It can protect against zero-day attacks and hidden anomalies.
Amministratore Della Sicurezza Di Rete at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
The solution preemptively blocks zero-day attacks and detects hidden anomalies effectively.
Information Technology - Infrastructure and Security at Cyprus Development Bank
By moving all SSL termination to the load balancer, I now manage certificates in a single place, and I can also utilize Let's Encrypt with HAProxy's built-in ACME support, making renewal automatic.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
HAProxy positively impacted our organization by exceeding scalability expectations, initially projected at 200k requests but ultimately handling over 15 million transactions per second without any issues.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
As a production engineer at that time, I definitely wanted to ensure that the system could handle massive connections, especially since we operated an e-commerce platform where we could not lose any customer calls.
CEo at CloudPositive
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare Web Application ...
Sponsored
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Check Point WAF (formerly C...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (5th)
HAProxy
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
15th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (2nd), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (6th), Bot Management (6th), Service Mesh (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 3.8%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) is 2.0%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HAProxy is 1.9%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF)2.0%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall3.8%
HAProxy1.9%
Other92.3%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

DB
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.
Krishnakumar Mahadevan - PeerSpot reviewer
CISO at Spink Solutions Private Limited
Cloud security has strengthened risk posture and improved advanced threat visibility
There are some API gateway and API securities I mentioned. If these are incorporated with AI-related features, particularly those seven key vulnerabilities I mentioned—token theft and tool poisoning—that would be beneficial. AI-related features are not included yet in Check Point CloudGuard WAF. However, they are present in FortiGate. That is the advantage of FortiGate now. FortiGate is stopping all AI-related vulnerabilities now. FortiGate has this capability. It is unfortunate that even Palo Alto also lacks one or two of these features. Check Point Quantum is very good, without a doubt. However, their capabilities are not in comparison with Palo Alto. There are some features, but there are some gaps in comparison with Palo Alto.
Shrinivas Devarkonda - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of DevOps at TripFactory
Handles high traffic efficiently and simplifies complex routing with rule-based logic
I think HAProxy is good as it stands now, but I believe there could be improvements. gRPC has recently been implemented, which is great, along with TLS 1.2 and 1.3 support, and HTTP 2.0 is also available. However, I'm unsure about the benchmark of those HTTP 2.0 requests on HAProxy. If there were any other protocol with better performance than HTTP 2.0, or perhaps mTLS and other similar features, including that in HAProxy would be really great. For improvements, I think that during setup and configuration, the steps provided are neat and clear. Anyone can easily install and configure it. There are many kernel tuning parameters also available, which is great. For specific improvement, in terms of logging, I think printing the full object of the request may help, or if there's a way to reference two requests, it would be beneficial to find a complete session history from a logged-in customer, as it would help analyze customer and user analytics.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
18%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
9%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise27
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudGuard for Application Security?
It is a little bit expensive, but the pricing model is acceptable, though a reduction would make it more competitive ...
What needs improvement with CloudGuard for Application Security?
The false positive rate is a concern, but I could recommend improvements where false positives have to be minimized b...
What is your primary use case for CloudGuard for Application Security?
The main purpose is to have network security through machine learning, which can offer threat detection and intellige...
Do you recommend HAProxy?
I do recommend HAProxy for more simple applications or for companies with a low budget, since HAProxy is a free, open...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HAProxy?
Since we used the open-source version, we were not concerned about pricing, setup cost, or licensing.
What needs improvement with HAProxy?
For the limited use that I have of HAProxy, I don't have any points to improve. I think I need more time with this to...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
Check Point CloudGuard Application Security, CloudGuard Application Security, CloudGuard AppSec
HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Orange España, Paschoalotto
Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) vs. HAProxy and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.