F5 Advanced WAF vs NetScaler comparison

F5 and NetScaler are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. F5 is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.6, while NetScaler is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.3. Additionally, 98% of F5 users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of NetScaler users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

NetScaler and F5 Advanced WAF are competitors in the application delivery and security market. F5 Advanced WAF appears to have the upper hand in threat detection capabilities and comprehensive security features, including DDoS protection.

Features: NetScaler provides flexible deployment with optimal integration into Citrix products. Its key features include TriScale architecture, SSL offloading, and multitenancy, making it effective for load balancing and application delivery. F5 Advanced WAF boasts advanced security features such as API protection, behavior analysis, and automated policy suggestions, ensuring superior threat detection and mitigation.

Room for Improvement: NetScaler needs improvements in asymmetric web content optimization, scripting support, and OCSP stapling. Its cumbersome configuration is less flexible compared to F5's iRules. F5 Advanced WAF could improve its user interface, along with pricing and reporting capabilities, while its licensing model remains complex.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetScaler is effective for on-premises deployments with decent technical support, although response times can be slow. F5 Advanced WAF provides similar deployment options across various cloud types but experiences mixed customer service feedback, with some noting delays in issue resolution.

Pricing and ROI: NetScaler, though expensive, offers good ROI, especially when integrated with Citrix environments. F5 Advanced WAF is costly, potentially prohibitive for small businesses, but its excellent threat protection capabilities justify the price for those prioritizing security.

To learn more, read our detailed F5 Advanced WAF vs. NetScaler Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

F5 Advanced WAF vs. NetScaler

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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Richard Polyak

Sr. Architect at NBC Universal

Easy event identification, highly stable, and customizable

Generally, F5 Advanced WAF initial setup is straightforward. However, our environment was more complex and it took us a little more time to customize the solution to where we needed it to be. Additionally, the customization didn't rectify everything. We had to do customization to a certain event to prevent attacks that it wasn't catching, but that might not necessarily be the solutions' fault. It could be more of our setup than the solution's fault and not being able to run the latest version or the newer version could be more of a limitation on our ability to put it in the right place. The whole implementation to have the solution run at the level we wanted it to take approximately five months. Our company's environment is one that we can't put a canned solution in front of. Our environment, cannot have a canned solution that might fit everybody else because of how customized this environment is. It does need a lot of tuning to meet our environment's requirements. I rate the initial setup of F5 Advanced WAF a three out of five.

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DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU

Cloud Consultant at Migros Ticaret A.Ş.

A tool for centralized management including inventory and sales tracking

Citrix ADM has the ability to implement policies to tighten security. For instance, you can restrict access to your network from outsiders or lack necessary security measures such as antivirus programs. Additionally, there's the Delivery Controller, which allows for comprehensive monitoring and management tasks such as remote restarts, maintenance, and registration. Another essential component is the Director, which provides detailed insights into sessions, including identifying session failures, connection issues, user lockouts, etc. It presents a list of problems to address, enabling you to click on them and resolve them efficiently.

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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

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."

"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"

"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."

"The technical support is good."

"I like Cloudflare's application gateway and DDoS protection."

"It is a fast and secure DNS."

"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."

"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."

More Cloudflare pros

"F5's user-friendly interface and seamless integration stand out as the most valuable features for us."

"It is also quite intuitive and user-friendly. They have several webinars that are actually like labs. You can use these webinars to learn about how to use all features of the product."

"The anti-bot protection is the solution's most valuable feature. Safe-guard or credential staffing are also useful features."

"It is easy to obtain dashboard compliance because security policy views are included."

"F5 Advanced WAF has very good stability and scalability. Its initial setup was straightforward."

"One of the most valuable features is the Local Traffic Manager."

"F5 Advanced WAF is a stable solution, we are satisfied. It is more stable than ForiWeb."

"It's flexible and powerful, and the users can input their own rules to the system."

More F5 Advanced WAF pros

"The solution can scale."

"Content Redirection and SSO integration with Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop. The GUI was wonderful."

"For desktop application management, I recommend the NetScaler edition. This product is like a Swiss army knife. Citrix NetScaler ADC supports the education front-end."

"Manageability and visibility are good."

"The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic enters our environment."

"It is a stable solution. It crashed only once, four years ago...There is a return on investment using the solution."

"I like the monitoring ability as it enables me to identify when an internal (load-balanced) resource is having issues before it becomes a problem in production."

"It is the best product out there."

More NetScaler pros

Cons

"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."

"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."

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

"The pricing could be improved."

"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."

"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."

"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."

"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."

More Cloudflare cons

"The overall price of F5 Advanced WAF could improve."

"F5 Advanced WAF sells perpetual licenses as perpetual assets during sales without informing me that support ends after a few years."

"The GUI interface can be confusing due to similar-looking tabs for policy building, traffic learning, and event logs."

"One thing that can be improved, is to increase the quantity over predefine policy."

"For me, an area for improvement in F5 Advanced WAF is the reporting as it isn't so clear. The vendor needs to work on the reporting capability of the solution. What I'd like to see in the next release of F5 Advanced WAF is threat intelligence to protect your web application, particularly having that capability out-of-the-box, and not needing to pay extra for it, similar to what's offered in FortiWeb, for example, any request that originates from a malicious IP will be blocked automatically by FortiWeb. F5 Advanced WAF should have the intelligence for blocking malicious IPs, or automatically blocking threats included in the license, instead of making it an add-on feature that users have to pay for apart from the standard licensing fees."

"The delay times on firmware patches and software updates could be better and improved."

"Support is a little slow."

"F5 Advanced WAF could improve on its funding for WAF features. There is a need to be more advanced WAF features."

More F5 Advanced WAF cons

"Manageability and adaptability can also be challenging for end customers."

"I think the documentation should be improved."

"Getting to use some of the advanced tools, even with the assistance of Citrix support, can be challenging."

"Citrix ADC is a complex product, and it takes time to understand these things. But the documentation is poor, and the deployment is difficult. Integration could also be better because what I find is that you cannot easily integrate the panel in the second sector. What I have found is that in the last index, there is a limitation when getting validated. Technical support could also be better."

"There are some drawbacks, such as using EUG for specific configurations. It could be improved."

"If one device or switch fails, the failover to another device is not seamless which is painful."

"Citrix NetScaler has been recently acquired by another company and the support has been negatively impacted, the solution is at its end of life. The support for the solution could improve. The sales team needs to be improved."

"An area for improvement in Citrix Web App and API Protection is for it to give real-time notifications and alerts. It would be practical if the solution warns you if there's an attack or if the load or traffic volume increases or decreases. An additional feature I'd like to see in Citrix Web App and API Protection is a prediction or artificial intelligence on what is happening, for example, attacks."

More NetScaler cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is reasonable."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."

"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."

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

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

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"I would rate the pricing as seven out of ten"

"I rate F5 Advanced WAF's pricing a three out of ten."

"The pricing for F5 Advanced WAF is comparable to a Rolls-Royce. Its price is a bit high when you compare it with other vendors. F5 Advanced WAF is a bit expensive. The customer was on a three-year plan and it was around $560,000."

"I think the price is very high."

"The way we deployed it, I would rate it a four out of five in terms of pricing."

"The price of the solution is reasonable when compared with other products, such as FortiWeb. I am very satisfied with the price."

"The price of F5 Advanced WAF could improve it is expensive."

"There are different licenses available to use F5 Advanced WAF, such as BT, ASM, and LPM."

More F5 Advanced WAF pricing and cost advice

"Licensing is adequate. I wanted to have a more prominent license, but until I do they don't give enough support. The additional cost would be too much."

"I do not have any experience with the pricing of the product."

"Its price is comparable to others and affordable."

"NetScaler does the same thing as an F5 and it's cheaper."

"Citrix NetScaler VPX is not the cheapest solution out there, but you get what you pay for."

"The price for Citrix ADC here in Mexico was good, when you compare it with F5 and Radware."

"Its licensing cost is much higher than other products, but it is acceptable because it is a one-time investment, and we are getting our requirements fulfilled when we buy this product. So, there is no issue with the pricing."

"In Turkey, everything is good, but it seems expensive for us due to the currency exchange. I don't have a specific rating scale, but if I had to rate the price, I would say it's around a six out of ten."

More NetScaler pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

21%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Educational Organization

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 F5 Advanced WAF?

It's a fairly easy-to-use and user-friendly tool. My administrators and team also like its ability to customize the r...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced WAF?

Subscription models have competitive pricing, while perpetual licenses involve an upfront higher cost, leading to amb...

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What needs improvement with F5 Advanced WAF?

F5 Advanced WAF sells perpetual licenses as perpetual assets during sales without informing me that support ends afte...

See all answers

What do you like most about Citrix ADC?

The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic ente...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADC?

After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?

Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexi...

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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Fortinet FortiWeb vs F5 Advanced WAF

Compared 23% of the time

AWS WAF vs F5 Advanced WAF

Compared 15% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs F5 Advanced WAF

Compared 12% of the time

Imperva Web Application Firewall vs F5 Advanced WAF

Compared 6% of the time

F5 Silverline Managed Services vs F5 Advanced WAF

Compared 1% of the time

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Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler

Compared 12% of the time

HAProxy vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs NetScaler

Compared 9% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NetScaler

Compared 8% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

F5 Advanced WAF

March 2025

Download F5 Advanced WAF product report

Buyer's Guide

NetScaler

March 2025

Download NetScaler product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall

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

F5 Advanced WAF is a web application security solution for financial and government sectors, e-commerce, and public-facing websites. It offers protection against various attacks, including botnets, web scraping, and foreign entities. The solution can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud and is often used with other security tools. Its most valuable features include DDoS and DNS attack protection, SSL uploading, anomaly detection, and the ability to input custom rules.

F5 Advanced WAF has helped organizations to expose more services to the public while providing an extra layer of protection, preventing revenue loss, and securing connectivity.

One platform for a consistent application delivery and security experience because nobody has time to learn multiple systems to manage ADC deployments. NetScaler is built with a single code base using a software-based architecture, so no matter which ADC form factor you choose — hardware, virtual machine, bare metal, or container — the behavior will be the same.

NetScaler

Sample Customers

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

MAXIMUS, Vivo, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office, City Bank

ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk

Buyer's Guide

F5 Advanced WAF vs. NetScaler

March 2025

Free Report: F5 Advanced WAF vs. NetScaler

Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Advanced WAF vs. NetScaler and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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