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F5 Advanced WAF vs Wallarm NG WAF comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

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

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
Wallarm NG WAF
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
39th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
API Security (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of F5 Advanced WAF is 3.6%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Wallarm NG WAF is 1.1%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 Advanced WAF3.6%
Wallarm NG WAF1.1%
Other95.3%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
it_user796242 - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Helps us to monitor attacks to our sites and prevents a lot of them
Set up Wallarm as a reverse proxy. Do not replace your web server. Use Wallarm first in monitoring mode, then learn from Wallarm which type of request is false positive and which type of request is not. This process takes a couple of weeks for very highly-loaded web applications (few millions of unique visitors in one month). Then you can turn Wallarm into blocking mode and everything will be fine. Do not forget to build a monitoring system, the wave, and API for it. Before we started using Wallarm, I already knew Ivan (CEO) and Stepan (COO) from a couple of years before. Ivan had his own security company and Stepan was working on a Russian security magazine called Xakep. They told us that they wanted to create a new WAF and already had a working version of it. They asked me to test it. We did tests, and it was really good. After few month after testing, we signed an agreement. Our choice was made not because we knew these guys for a long time, but because the product was really cool and we were glad to start using it as one of the first on the market!

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This solution is an enterprise-class firewall that provides both load-balancing and security, and once it's deployed, it works smoothly and without issue."
"F5 Advanced WAF secures our connectivity and combines both the main functions of WAF (balancing and web application security)."
"It's scalable and very easy to manage."
"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."
"I like the security features, especially against SQL injection."
"The most valuable feature of F5 Advanced WAF is its grand unity of the implementation, where you have the freedom to configure based on how it affects your use case or your organization. With the default setting of implicit deny, you can gradually start defining and deploying the tool to align with your environment, whether it is outdated, recent, or futuristic. This allows you to customize the solution to protect you from threat actors. You have the ability to define what the advanced threat act should do - whether it should alert, deny, or both - and it will deliver based on your configuration. Unlike other online solutions, F5 Advanced WAF provides flexibility to deliver to your unique environment the way you want."
"F5 Advanced WAF is a comprehensive community platform with a strong commitment, making it valuable for businesses."
"F5 helped to meet compliance and regulatory requirements."
"With active threat detection, we are no longer over-swamped with tons of useless events."
"The most powerful feature is the ability to first learn what type of query to make to your web application when it is attacked and what type of query creates a false positive to your app."
"They are the only solution that fits our success criteria and business objectives: WAF must have a low (<5%) false negative rate and be ready to protect from all well-known web attacks."
"Perimeter control and active vulnerability scanner are the most valuable features."
"Vulnerability scanner and WAF are valuable features."
"Helps us to monitor situation in regards to attacks to our sites and prevents a lot of them."
 

Cons

"The user interface (UI) seems a bit outdated. Making it more user-friendly would be beneficial."
"F5 Advanced WAF sells perpetual licenses as perpetual assets during sales without informing me that support ends after a few years."
"We get false positives sometimes."
"F5 Advanced WAF is not a cost-effective solution."
"One area for improvement in the product is its SSO integration, which posed challenges and required significant effort to resolve."
"I think the solution is already being phased out."
"The product could be more user-friendly for administrators."
"I would like to see additional controls."
"Technical support is 6 or 7 out of 10. Sometimes we have had trouble with communication and understanding."
"There were several stability issues during the first pilot."
"The biggest problem for us was the stability and speed using the first version of Wallarm. Now, it is fine."
"It needs more customization in PDF reports."
"Wallarm uses a learning mechanism to detect attacks and to avoid false positives. If Wallarm blocks some illegitimate request, then you can go to the management console and mark this request as false positive, but sometimes this does not work properly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The way we deployed it, I would rate it a four out of five in terms of pricing."
"There are different licenses available to use F5 Advanced WAF, such as BT, ASM, and LPM."
"There are various plans available for Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF as a Service, including a trial version."
"The price of the solution is reasonable when compared with other products, such as FortiWeb. I am very satisfied with the price."
"I think the price is very high."
"After buying the program, you just pay for the support every year."
"There is an annual subscription for this solution."
"It's more expensive than other solutions and depending on the modules, there can be additional fees."
"​Pricing must be cheaper than the competition and the licensing must be good.​"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise31
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 provides to the environment and infrastructure.
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 request gets blocked on the TCP layer, there should be traces or data to verify wh...
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 prevent malicious payloads and malicious data from reaching servers. Even if maliciou...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

No data available
Wallarm NG-WAF
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

MAXIMUS, Vivo, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office, City Bank
Panasonic. Miro. Rappi. Wargaming. Gannett. Omio. Acronis. Workforce Software. Tipalti. SEMRush.
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Advanced WAF vs. Wallarm NG WAF and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.