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F5 Advanced WAF vs R&S Web Application Firewall (DenyAll) comparison

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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

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
F5 Advanced WAF
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
R&S Web Application Firewal...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
49th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 F5 Advanced WAF is 3.9%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of R&S Web Application Firewall (DenyAll) is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 Advanced WAF3.9%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall3.8%
R&S Web Application Firewall (DenyAll)0.5%
Other91.8%
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.
reviewer2797602 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Security Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Granular security policies have protected critical applications and ensure safe user and admin access
Improvements could be made regarding the log information from the backend CLI. There are enhancements needed; if a request gets blocked on the TCP layer, there should be traces or data to verify which source generated these requests, including the source and port information for initiation. These data are missing from F5 Advanced WAF. Besides that, another improvement could be refining the bot detection to minimize false positives; it should be able to verify more granularly between legitimate and non-legitimate clients. Overall, I find everything else good. A wish list feature I have is for the Technical Assistance Center (TAC) to respond more promptly. Their response time needs improvement; while they do not take excessive time, it can be enhanced, especially given it is a security product.
SS
General Manager at 3R Technologie
Geo-localization and IP reputation help to keep our clients secure and more available
The area that should be improved is licensing. When using an active/passive cluster, we have to pay 70% of the master appliance and license for the passive server that does not work. Since we know that only one server works at a time, we should pay only one license for the appliances and for the support as well. In my opinion, this has to be improved. If possible, the client software should be a web application instead of downloading software for the management. This can avoid login problems when they update or patch.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution protects our application, which runs on the HTTP protocol, from DDoS attacks."
"I have not had any issues with this solution, and I would recommend it to others who are interested in using it."
"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."
"For us, the key feature of Cloudflare is DDoS protection and IP hiding, especially since we are a crypto company."
"Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before."
"We extensively use the solution every day. The solution is very stable; we haven’t seen any glitches."
"It protects web applications efficiently."
"The product has a valuable security control functionality."
"F5 Advanced WAF is reliable."
"Across all of our customers, we have more than a million users at the same time with no issues."
"The most valuable feature of F5 Advanced WAF is its ability to have a pool of resources that can distribute your traffic, and that is a plus for me. My company tried to look into a competitor, Imperva, but it was lacking that capability, so F5 Advanced WAF outperforms Imperva."
"F5 Advanced WAF is a stable solution, we are satisfied. It is more stable than ForiWeb."
"I like all of the features, but the main one is the attack signatures."
"I appreciate the way F5 Advanced WAF builds policies by configuring a basic policy and queuing it in learning mode."
"There are a lot of good features."
"The level of configurability that I get with F5 Advanced WAF solution is immense, and I have to be a bit aware of how it works and all of its features, but at the end of the day, it is all about the administration expertise that I will require to have and use it to my liking based on the kind of services that I have onboarded on my solution itself."
"The three most valuable features that I noticed are the geo-localization of the user, the IP reputation, and the compartmental analysis."
"By publishing the application without fear, my customer has created new revenue by making the website available anytime and anywhere."
 

Cons

"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well. They have documentation for everything you're looking for, but they lack a single piece of documentation to tie everything together. As a new user or beginner, it took us a little bit of time to figure out how to put all these things in place."
"Its stability could be better."
"Cloudflare should update the version of the ModSecurity core rule set that they run on."
"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."
"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."
"The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced"
"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."
"Support can be challenging at times."
"F5 needs to improve API protection with a single F5 solution, without requiring additional modules."
"The BNS module needs improvement."
"F5 Advanced WAF could improve the reporting. It's a bit difficult to populate, them. If you're not so familiar with the functions, such as where to find the logs and other settings."
"The user interface (UI) seems a bit outdated. Making it more user-friendly would be beneficial."
"We usually use a third-party tool for logging and reporting. It would be nice if we could do that right on this solution. They have one, but it's not very stable. Logging and reporting effectively would be a big enhancement."
"You have to buy another module with an extra license, to have the authentication feature."
"F5 Advanced WAF needs better integration within the application, like remote dashboards."
"Users would like to have an additional IP intelligence license to handle this within WAF itself without needing to engage with the SOC team."
"The area that should be improved is licensing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not too pricey."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"The solution is expensive."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"The pricing is too high."
"F5 Advanced WAF is not a cost-effective solution. Although they are attempting to reduce prices with their VE and cloud options, they are more expensive than other solutions. The solution is more expensive on average."
"There are various plans available for Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF as a Service, including a trial version."
"I think the price is very high."
"The price of F5 Advanced WAF could improve it is expensive."
"The solution is very expensive so should only be used in the right environment."
"F5 bundles up services and the bundle is what you pay for rather than individual components."
"It's more expensive than other solutions and depending on the modules, there can be additional fees."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
8%
No data available
 

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 Business27
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise31
No data available
 

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 F5 Advanced WAF?
F5 Advanced WAF is somewhat costly compared to other vendors, but it is worth the investment due to the stability it ...
What needs improvement with F5 Advanced WAF?
Improvements could be made regarding the log information from the backend CLI. There are enhancements needed; if a re...
What is your primary use case for F5 Advanced WAF?
My main use case for F5 Advanced WAF is to protect external and internal applications from cyber attacks and to preve...
Which Web Application Firewall (WAF) would you recommend? R&S or Imperva?
Imperva is a strong choice, given their security focus and ongoing R&D into the product in areas such as bot mana...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
No data available
Rohde & Schwarz Web Application Firewall, R&S WAF, DenyAll Web Application Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
MAXIMUS, Vivo, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office, City Bank
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Imperva, Fortinet, F5 and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: August 2026.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.