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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

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
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 June 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 4.5%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Advanced WAF is 4.7%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Wallarm NG WAF is 1.0%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 Advanced WAF4.7%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall4.5%
Wallarm NG WAF1.0%
Other89.8%
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.
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

"The solution protects our application, which runs on the HTTP protocol, from DDoS attacks."
"The initial setup process is simple."
"This is a good product; it's reliable and scales well."
"I'm highly satisfied. It's remarkably user-friendly, enabling me to quickly identify issues, and deploy solutions, and it offers the necessary features."
"The impact of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's integration with existing web technologies on our site's performance and security measures is quite great, actually."
"It's pretty convenient and pretty easy to set up and run. And then kind of for static content, it also offers caching."
"The Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."
"I have not had any issues with this solution, and I would recommend it to others who are interested in using it."
"The most valuable features of F5 Advanced WAF are the overall capabilities, there is not a comparable solution on the market."
"My favorite feature of F5 is the ability to play around with the ciphers. I also like the ability to have an immediate display of the support IDs when a real blockage occurs. The protection offered is great."
"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 solution isn't too expensive. The license allows you to license what you need and leave out what you don't need."
"I like the security features, especially against SQL injection."
"I like them because I like the security solution. They get extra marks compared to other solutions or competitors. There are more features than any other product I can think of. They're always monitoring, and the security features offer more than other, lesser products."
"There is no need to worry about updating signatures because WAF will automatically update the signatures for you."
"We have an SOC, and for collecting logs we are also using the F5 logs to analyze the securities and events, so having a central log management and F5 really helped us to analyze the security logs."
"Vulnerability scanner and WAF are valuable features."
"With active threat detection, we are no longer over-swamped with tons of useless events."
"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."
"Helps us to monitor situation in regards to attacks to our sites and prevents a lot of them."
"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."
"Perimeter control and active vulnerability scanner are the most valuable features."
 

Cons

"The notification part could be improved. It's very much connected to Web Application Firewall, rate-limiting, and DDoS protection."
"The user interface is very simple and straightforward, but users need knowledge about DNS to accomplish tasks."
"We have noticed some latency when the call goes through the firewall. That could be improved."
"The rate limiting functionality could be enhanced, as we find it somewhat limited."
"Cloudflare should update the version of the ModSecurity core rule set that they run on."
"They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long."
"Support can be challenging at times."
"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."
"The solution should include RASP for another level of protection at the code itself."
"The BIG-IQ is supposed to centralize the management for all of the boxes but it's not very effective."
"The deployment side is quite complex."
"The reporting portion of F5 Advance WAF is not great. They need to work out something better, as it is very basic. You only see the top IPs, I think there is more they can offer."
"The DDoS capabilities should be enhanced."
"Nevertheless, F5 products are generally considered to be hard to deploy."
"We get false positives sometimes."
"The solution is very expensive so should only be used in the right environment."
"The biggest problem for us was the stability and speed using the first version of Wallarm. Now, it is fine."
"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."
"There were several stability issues during the first pilot."
"It needs more customization in PDF reports."
"Technical support is 6 or 7 out of 10. Sometimes we have had trouble with communication and understanding."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"The solution is expensive."
"It is not too pricey."
"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."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"I would rate the pricing as seven out of ten"
"It is a little bit costly, but it has all the features that are required."
"As far as the pricing of F5 Advanced WAF I would rate it a four out of five depending on what features I am looking for. Imperva is more expensive."
"There is an annual subscription for this solution."
"The price of the solution is reasonable when compared with other products, such as FortiWeb. I am very satisfied with the price."
"I am not sure about pricing but licenses are available on Google."
"F5 Advanced WAF technical support comes at a cost, and it's expensive."
"It is expensive. Its price should be better. Its licensing is on a yearly basis. Its licensing is also based on the model. There are no additional costs."
"​Pricing must be cheaper than the competition and the licensing must be good.​"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Government
11%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
No data available
Wallarm NG-WAF
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
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: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.