F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs Neustar UltraDDoS [EOL] comparison

F5 and TransUnion are both solutions in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category. Additionally, 95% of F5 users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of TransUnion users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

Neustar UltraDDoS [EOL] and F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) are competing products in the cybersecurity field. F5 BIG-IP AFM has the edge with its advanced features and capabilities.

Features: Neustar UltraDDoS [EOL] includes strong DDoS mitigation, real-time threat intelligence, and efficient performance under traffic stress. F5 BIG-IP AFM offers comprehensive firewall protection, improved traffic management, and integrated threat intelligence. It excels in security features and integration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Neustar UltraDDoS [EOL] provides straightforward deployment and responsive customer service, ensuring efficient implementation. F5 BIG-IP AFM requires a more detailed deployment process and is supported by robust service, though it may take longer to apply.

Pricing and ROI: Neustar UltraDDoS [EOL] has a competitive pricing structure offering good value for investment for budget-sensitive businesses. F5 BIG-IP AFM incurs a higher initial cost but yields substantial ROI through its enhanced security features, providing significant long-term value.

To learn more, read our detailed Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Report (Updated: May 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

May 2026

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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

M.A. Faisal

General Manager at bKash Limited

Advanced protection has secured critical web workloads and provides clear traffic visibility

From a security perspective, there remains a security loophole, as some browsers in the market can bypass the Turnstile solution, which requires approximately 40 seconds to do so. From a performance perspective, this is acceptable. We also tried Google reCAPTCHA, and that can also be bypassed. From a security perspective, I would say neither solution is completely secured. Regarding uptime, we have faced a couple of incidents due to Cloudflare in recent years, so I cannot say we receive 100% uptime for our region. We sometimes face challenges, including downtime and other issues. As a result, we are not receiving 100% uptime from Cloudflare's solution. Since most of our customers are in this region, we need alternatives. We need something more competitive than Cloudflare. Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, Cloudflare has three points of presence already, and we cannot find any other solution provider in Bangladesh as an alternative, which presents another challenge. Competitor solutions have more attack signatures, which ensure better security compared to Cloudflare's predefined configurations. Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements. Cloudflare could improve in this area. Additionally, regarding visibility, Cloudflare has static visibility, but they could adopt dynamic graph features for their customers.

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Nawapol Boonlerd

Information Security Engineer at BigFish Enterprise Ltd.

Comprehensive network protection has mitigated DDoS risks and supports secure on-prem operations

Currently, there are no weaknesses or disadvantages in F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) that I have identified. It is a little bit expensive, and I think about additional features they could have in the future to make it even better. For example, I have thoughts about the price. Currently, it does not integrate, and I would assess the importance of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)'s integration with cloud services as significant. Currently, I use only one site, and I cannot tell you about F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) centralized security policies. I have not used F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)'s Threat Intelligence capabilities. I have not used their dynamic traffic shaping feature. So far, the only thing that could be improved is the pricing of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM).

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Justin Thomas

Manager Strategic Planning at Endurance International Group

Identifies a request that comes up multiple times, block holds that particular IP, and lets the genuine traffic pass through

Genuine traffic coming in is still getting better. While I understand that it's some sort of algorithm that is written in this scale, that algorithm can be a little bit better because sometimes while we are doing DDoS mitigation, genuine traffic does get blocked. While it is one of the greatest features it can still be improved. I would like to see a dashboard that shows you the data that is transferred from which end. It's where people start looking at abuse management. People keep questioning when the mitigation is on what service it is and how many GBs are passing through. An end user dashboard that will help you identify all of these questions and that can be visible in your entire organization is something that would make sense.

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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

"DDoS attacks target unprotected machines. Cloudflare detects and stops these attacks using internal systems. It identifies incoming DDoS attacks, issuing challenges or blocking them immediately."

"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."

"I have not had a DDOS attack since, or at least not become unavailable due to DDOS which means my ROI is pretty good."

"This solution has improved the security of our organization."

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

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

"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."

"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."

More Cloudflare pros

"The most valuable features of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) are the web gateway, load balancing, services, and applications available."

"The protection is very useful."

"What I find most impressive about F5 is that, as long as you know what you want to do, as long as we know what you want to achieve, you find the solution there."

"The setup and functionality are fairly straightforward."

"I find the signature base is very helpful to see traffic, to see the increase in web traffic."

"Its performance and ease of use are valuable."

"It is stable."

"The most valuable features for me are stability, availability, and security, along with the ability to manage multiple features to secure my applications."

More F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) pros

"Scalability is awesome, and they have grown two folds or three folds since we started using them, with no concerns even as we protect close to 60,000 hosted sites for business and e-commerce customers."

"In the DDoS it's difficult to validate what is a genuine request from an end user. We've started being able to do that with the logistics that they have set up. With the protection that they have provided, they are able to identify what is valid and what is not valid. We see that a person who is getting DDoS Neustar service is able to block that particular user. However, while they are doing that it doesn't affect other customers on the server."

Cons

"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."

"With CDN loads, sometimes we get an error that the host server is unavailable when the connection between CloudFlare and the server timed out."

"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."

"The tool needs to improve caching of servers. The product needs to include PFX certificate as well."

"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."

"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."

"The one feature that is paid is the custom nameservers instead of using the default ones, I want to use a custom one."

"If they improve on the placement of their data centers, it would be better. I'm living in a remote area. I would like to connect to them without any kind of lag."

More Cloudflare cons

"It is a little bit expensive, and I think about additional features they could have in the future to make it even better."

"There is room for improvement in Advanced Firewall Manager's dashboard statistics, especially during attacks."

"F5 should increase its capability to prevent zero-day attacks. Having advanced technology similar to other vendors like Palo Alto for zero-day attack prevention would be valuable."

"The solution doesn't really meet our requirements for an edge firewall."

"Currently, we have eighty F5s and we need some kind of management software. It would be very helpful."

"If you compare it with the next-generation firewalls, then definitely this tool is not comparable."

"This would be absolutely the best network security solution if the price were not so high."

"Apart from the price, I feel no other areas need improvement."

More F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) cons

"Genuine traffic coming in is still getting better because sometimes while we are doing DDoS mitigation, genuine traffic does get blocked."

"I would like to see a dashboard that shows you the data that is transferred from which end. It's where people start looking at abuse management. People keep questioning when the mitigation is on what service it is and how many GBs are passing through. An end user dashboard that will help you identify all of these questions and that can be visible in your entire organization is something that would make sense."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free version."

"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."

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

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

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

"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 pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The solution is slightly on the higher priced side."

"As per pricing, I would not say cheap, but little higher than cheap, but not very expensive. So you can say kind of value for money solutions."

"We have purchased a five-year licensing package for the product."

"It is somewhat on the expensive side although it is worth the additional cost."

"The product is expensive."

"F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) is an expensive solution. They are one of the best in the market, but the price could be cheaper."

"F5 BIG-IP AFM is an affordable solution. There were not any additional fees other than the standard licensing."

"F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager is not an expensive solution."

More F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Construction Company

11%

Engineering Company

Comms Service Provider

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	26

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	14

No data available

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...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare DNS?

The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cloudflare are a bit on the higher side overall.

See all answers

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

The standard license is reasonably priced, but additional features like the WAF can be more expensive. There are plen...

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What needs improvement with F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?

Currently, there are no weaknesses or disadvantages in F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) that I have identifi...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?

I am starting to learn and working with F5 team to conduct a proof of concept, and I do have experience with F5 Rules...

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Compared 22% of the time

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Compared 17% of the time

Sucuri vs F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)

Compared 12% of the time

A10 Thunder TPS vs F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)

Compared 9% of the time

AWS Shield vs F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)

Compared 4% of the time

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Akamai App and API Protector vs Neustar UltraDDoS [EOL]

Compared 27% of the time

F5 Silverline Managed Services vs Neustar UltraDDoS [EOL]

Compared 25% of the time

Arbor DDoS vs Neustar UltraDDoS [EOL]

Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

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Cloudflare

June 2026

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F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)

June 2026

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) report

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Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

May 2026

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Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

F5 AFM, F5 Advanced Firewall Manager

Neustar UltraDDoS, UltraDDoS

Overview

Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.

Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.

What are Cloudflare's key features?

CDN Caching: Enhances website speed through content delivery network caching.
Web Application Firewall: Protects websites from online threats.
DDoS Mitigation: Shields against distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DNS Management: Offers easy-to-use and flexible domain management.
SSL Certificates: Ensures secure connections between users and servers.
Analytics: Provides insights with robust analytics tools.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Enhanced Security: Strengthening web security with DDoS and firewall protection.
Speed Improvement: Faster content delivery with CDN caching.
Operational Simplicity: Simplifies website optimization through a user-friendly interface.
Scalable Solutions: Scales with global reach, lowering latency for improved performance.
Cost Efficiency: Offers layers of valuable functionality with pricing options.

Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.

Cloudflare

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager provides robust network protection with advanced DDoS features and efficient load balancing. Its design prioritizes scalability and ease of management, catering to securing data centers and applications.

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager is a strategic choice for combating cyber threats, including DDoS attacks. With powerful network defenses, integrated WAF, and adaptable capabilities, it efficiently handles web services on-premise and in the cloud. Users value its application-level threat defense with IP blocking and AI-enhanced reporting. Advanced integration with SIEM solutions allows comprehensive monitoring and enhanced threat detection through dynamic resource allocation. However, areas for improvement include better dashboard statistics and pricing adjustments. Enhancing integration with BIG-IQ and intuitive configuration would streamline its operation. Automatic geolocation updates and improved support could address current challenges alongside its high cost and complex initial setup.

What are the standout features?

Integrated WAF: Enhances security by protecting applications from online threats.
DDoS Protection: Defends against large-scale DDoS attacks efficiently.
AI-Enhanced Reporting: Provides detailed insights through AI-driven analytics.
IP Blocking: Offers IP-based threat defense and geolocation capabilities.
Resource Allocation: Dynamically allocates resources for optimized performance.

What are the benefits and ROI to consider?

Ease of Management: Simplifies management processes with user-friendly features.
Comprehensive Monitoring: Through SIEM integration for better visibility.
Superior Threat Detection: Identifies and mitigates threats proactively.
Scalability: Adapts to evolving network needs and traffic demands.

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager is widely used in sectors requiring stringent security measures, such as finance and healthcare. These industries deploy it as a data center and web application firewall to protect against cyber threats, manage client connections, and ensure the security of on-premise and cloud applications.

Neustar UltraDDoS [EOL] is an enterprise-level DDoS protection service designed to safeguard online operations by mitigating attack risks. It provides comprehensive security features that ensure continuous online availability.

Neustar UltraDDoS [EOL] has been valued for its robust ability to protect against distributed denial-of-service attacks. It offers scalability and effective traffic analysis to detect potential threats swiftly. The system can be enhanced by addressing needs for customization and seamless integration with existing IT infrastructure. Despite being end-of-life, it set a standard for DDoS protection through proactive monitoring and advanced threat detection technologies.

What are the most important features of Neustar UltraDDoS [EOL]?

Advanced Traffic Analysis: Identifies and mitigates threats in real-time.
Scalability: Protects networks of all sizes from large-scale attacks.
Proactive Monitoring: Continuously scans for vulnerabilities and potential threats.

Which benefits and ROI should users look for in reviews?

Reduced Downtime: Ensures constant access to services during attacks.
Cost Efficiency: Limits financial losses by maintaining operations.
Enhanced Security: Provides peace of mind with comprehensive threat management.

In industries like finance and e-commerce, Neustar UltraDDoS [EOL] was crucial for maintaining transaction integrity and service reliability. It provided peace of mind to businesses by ensuring network stability, allowing them to focus on growth without disruption concerns.

TransUnion

Sample Customers

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

City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office

Choxi

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Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

May 2026

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