Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Imperva Web Application Firewall comparison

Cloudflare and Imperva are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Cloudflare is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.4, while Imperva is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.9. Additionally, 95% of Cloudflare users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Imperva users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Imperva and Cloudflare compete in the web application firewall category. While Imperva impresses with robust security features, Cloudflare stands out due to ease of use and comprehensive service integration.

Features: Imperva offers features like correlated attack validation, threat radar, and virtual patching, with the profiling feature enabling customization of security policies for specific applications. Cloudflare is known for its easy configuration and bundled services, including DDoS protection, load balancing, and caching, providing comprehensive utility to users.

Room for Improvement: Imperva users face challenges with complex policy management, limited security insights, and high costs. Cloudflare users seek updates to its ModSecurity core rule set, better log integration, and improved documentation, especially for beginners.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Imperva offers flexibility with on-premises, hybrid, and cloud options, though on-premises can be complex. Cloud deployment is straightforward. Cloudflare, being cloud-based, is easy to deploy and manage. Imperva has responsive support with variable experiences, while Cloudflare's support is effective but can improve on response times.

Pricing and ROI: Imperva's costs are high but promise significant ROI for enterprises, especially those in critical sectors. Cloudflare's subscription model is more affordable, appealing to businesses for its cost efficiency, scalability, and feature-rich SaaS model, offering a good ROI for budget-conscious enterprises.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall

March 2025

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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

Cloudflare

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes

Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

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SachidDoshi

Senior Enterprise Security Architect at HGS - Hinduja Global Solutions

Offers a huge signature repository and is superiorly effective in mitigating DDoS attacks

The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced, which presently stands at two or three months. The product has a custom rule set that users can modify and manifest as needed. The vendor can probably shorten the learning curve using cutting-edge technologies like AI. The solution provider can also work around the web applications and identify the toolset that needs to be implemented to deploy the solution in less time. The vendor has launched a SASE product that can function with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall, but many improvements are needed in terms of features, such as the web filtering feature, and CASB has not yet been added.

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Abdullah Jin

Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Offers bot protection and DDoS Protection and protects public-facing portals

Support is one thing I wish Imperva could improve. They follow the phone model and keep rotating you from one customer service person to another. The layer one support isn't very clear about the workings of the product. My feedback is primarily about Imperva Cloud, not on-premise. On-premise is a whole new story. Support is the issue for Imperva Cloud. It's also a bit pricey. It's a premium service and very expensive. The licensing model is not very straightforward. Every feature is priced separately, and to enjoy maximum protection, you'll have to spend a lot of money. The licensing model is a bit complex, and each feature is very pricey. For example, API security and web application protection are two separate license packages.

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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

"Centralized, full-featured DNS."

"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."

"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."

"Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations."

"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"

"What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering, so it's a valuable tool."

"Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. You don't necessarily need a certificate if you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host."

More Cloudflare pros

"The setup process is very simple for me."

"I'm highly satisfied. It's remarkably user-friendly, enabling me to quickly identify issues, and deploy solutions, and it offers the necessary features."

"Cloudflare WAF provides protection through rules and functionalities like Cloudflare's SDRAP."

"The solution protects our application, which runs on the HTTP protocol, from DDoS attacks."

"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."

"The integration of Cloudflare with Cloud Suite is its most valuable feature."

"Does a good job preventing web application attacks."

"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

"Configuration for different application sources is most valuable. We can segregate the traffic that an application is carrying and identify the sizing in Imperva."

"It mitigates all of the availabilities of risks around web applications."

"It has fewer false positives"

"The tool's profiling feature maps all the web application directories and related components on the profile directory. It has improved the security of my client's website applications."

"There is a quick switch between any of the the nodes if something goes wrong, where there's a there's an attack against a specific area. The security setup is reasonably easy. It's not a problem to do setups and rules and integrations. And, yeah, just the the back end team is also very willing to insist if there's questions that that we cannot answer or with these questions that we do have"

"The solution can scale."

"Imperva WAF's strongest features are the detection of web application threats and vulnerabilities in the source code."

"The solution is cloud-based and offers us good uptime. It has combined web and API security. Therefore, with one license, you access both application security and also API security."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pros

Cons

"Cloudflare does not have an on-premise solution. If they had different approaches they could be better suited to accommodate more customers, such as on-premise and hybrid deployments. For example, hybrid deployments would be useful where you could move the traffic from the enterprise to the cloud."

"The pricing could be improved."

"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."

"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."

"DNS Management."

"It would be good if Cloudflare could have more servers for better traffic routing or an increase in the traffic routed. This is what I'd like to improve in Cloudflare."

"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."

"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."

More Cloudflare cons

"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should improve visibility for a customer."

"The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced"

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should include port forwarding features."

"The reporting could be more granular."

"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."

"The ModSecurity core rules need to be updated."

"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

"In the past, I have bugs on the WAF. I've contacted Imperva about them. Future releases should be less buggy."

"I think that better bot protection is needed in this solution."

"The solution works for particular zones but isn't always the best solution for all zones."

"The Imperva Web Application Firewall automations are good, but there is still room for improvement with them."

"The signature updates could be faster. Sometimes we have to upload signatures to the Imperva portal for checking and analysis before we can use them."

"Support is one thing I wish Imperva could improve."

"Some of the features should be included in the next release is a file integrating monitoring tool. This feature should be improved."

"Sometimes, support tickets don't get addressed quickly."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"We are using the free tier of the solution."

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."

"We are using the free version."

"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."

"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."

"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."

"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"

"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."

"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."

"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."

"What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I believe the pricing is not the best, but it's reasonable and acceptable. We also use the McAfee system in parallel. In terms of pricing, its okay - not great, but not bad either. It falls in the middle, which is acceptable. In terms of support licensing, last time, we were searching for a solution, and we considered products from resellers rather than directly from the cloud provider. However, the pricing we encountered was exceptionally high. As a result, we are inclined to select support from the reseller."

"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"The price of this solution is a little bit high compared to competitors."

"It is very costly, but the return on investment is very high. Its cost was around $70,000, and we got it back in just six months."

"The price of Imperva Web Application Firewalls is expensive compared to others."

"Licensing can range from one to twenty thousand dollars annually. Additionally, some features, including software support, require an annual subscription as well."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall is expensive."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall price is higher compared to other solutions. However, everything is included in the price."

"There is a license for this solution and we purchase the license annually with no additional fees."

"We sell three-year licenses for Imperva Web Application Firewall to our customers. The price is a little expensive."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

20%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

24%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

13%

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...

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Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?

Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...

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What do you like most about Cloudflare?

Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.

See all answers

What do you like most about Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

The product has a valuable security control functionality.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available. This improvement wo...

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Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

My recommendation is Imperva.

See all answers

Is Citrix ADC (formerly Netscaler) the best ADC to use and if not why?

For ADC, any ADC can do a good job. But in case if you want to add WAF functionality to the same ADC hardware you hav...

See all answers

DDoS solutions: Any other solutions to consider aside from Radware DDoS Protection Service and F5 Silverline DDoS Protection?

You can have a look to Imperva Cloud WAF, the anti-DDoS mitigation is under 1s and works very well. I observed a lot ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

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Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 18% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 15% of the time

AWS WAF vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 12% of the time

Akamai App and API Protector vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 9% of the time

Atomic ModSecurity Rules vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 4% of the time

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 16% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 12% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 11% of the time

AWS WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 10% of the time

Azure Web Application Firewall vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 3% of the time

More Imperva Web Application Firewall Competitors

Product Reports

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Cloudflare

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

April 2025

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

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Buyer's Guide

Imperva Web Application Firewall

March 2025

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Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Cloudflare WAF

No data available

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's intuitive dashboard enables users to build powerful rules through easy clicks and also provides Terraform integration. Every request to the WAF is inspected against the rule engine and the threat intelligence curated from protecting over 27 Million websites. Suspicious requests can be blocked, challenged or logged as per the needs of the user while legitimate requests are routed to the destination, agnostic of whether it lives on-premise or in the cloud. Analytics and Cloudflare Logs enable visibility into actionable metrics for the user.

Cloudflare

Imperva Web Application Firewall is a versatile solution that protects web applications and databases from various attacks, including DDoS, cross-site scripting, and SQL injection attacks. It offers data security, availability, and access control and can be deployed on-premises or on the cloud.

The solution has good security against web attacks and offers advanced bot protection, API security, and mitigation features. Imperva WAF is easy to configure and deploy; it has good customer service and an excellent user interface.

Imperva

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk

BlueCross BlueShield, eHarmony, EMF Broadcasting, GE Healthcare, Metro Bank, The Motley Fool, Siemens

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall

March 2025

Free Report: Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall

Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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