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F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs Prolexic comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall...
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Prolexic
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) is 2.0%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prolexic is 2.4%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)2.0%
Prolexic2.4%
Other95.6%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Nawapol Boonlerd - PeerSpot reviewer
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).
Gavin Pinho - PeerSpot reviewer
Privacy & Risk Management Vice President, Information Security at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
Has faced challenges with bot detection while benefiting from strong threat monitoring and compliance support
Akamai's most valuable features include being industry recognized and PCI compliant, which is really great; their cloud is PCI compliant, and having a vendor that is PCI certified is crucial for organizations focused on PCI compliance. We utilize the real-time monitoring of the solution. Real-time monitoring helps us identify network vulnerabilities by allowing us to see a spike in traffic and understand the traffic levels compared to this time last month or last week. If we notice a sudden increase, we investigate further to determine if it indicates a DDoS attack or a card testing situation. In terms of threat detection capabilities, they are very good because Akamai has a SOC service that we have tapped into for active threat detection and threat hunting, and they monitor everything carefully 24/7. Scrubbing is done by Akamai as a backend service, and we utilize their SOC, which is a service that you pay additional fees for, allowing us to have our queries prioritized. Prolexic features help maintain business continuity during high-volume attacks by having built-in threat detection capabilities in its bot detection and other functionalities, as attacks usually occur through intelligent bots trying to infiltrate the system.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It blocks various attacks and mitigates disasters from occurring."
"I find the signature base is very helpful to see traffic, to see the increase in web traffic."
"The customer service is excellent, and I rate it ten out of ten."
"It is stable."
"The setup and functionality are fairly straightforward."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the blocking of IPs and F5 has many advantages."
"With controllers plus the firewall, you will only need one device to protect everything."
"The decryption is great."
"The solution does not have hardware or maintenance requirements and is very easy to scale."
"The support from Akamai is great, and they provide excellent information and mitigation services."
"Akamai's most valuable features include being industry recognized and PCI compliant, which is really great; their cloud is PCI compliant, and having a vendor that is PCI certified is crucial for organizations focused on PCI compliance."
"Prolexic technical support is second to none."
"They've scrubbed DDoS traffic that was blasting us offline, thus allowing legitimate traffic through and letting our service return online."
 

Cons

"NGINX, which F5 purchased, has room for improvement in its features, particularly its load balancing or application load balancing features."
"The product is expensive."
"Currently, we have eighty F5s and we need some kind of management software. It would be very helpful."
"F5 could provide a distributed cloud version."
"It doesn't compare to next generation firewalls"
"We needed to protect the database but the solution didn't offer a certain feature to do so."
"There should be simplified and better integration with BIG-IQ."
"The interface for applying the features could use improvement. There are too many buttons."
"The solution needs additional product options for small and medium enterprises."
"The web portal for checking status and traffic needs improvements."
"It's expensive, though."
"In bot management, there are times when attackers find ways to bypass Akamai, which is a continuously evolving challenge."
"The reports provided don’t give detailed information about DDoS mitigations, bandwidth utilization, etc."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is somewhat on the expensive side although it is worth the additional cost."
"The product is expensive."
"F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager is not an expensive solution."
"The price of F5 BIG-IP AFM is a little more expensive than other firewalls on the market."
"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."
"It's very expensive, and you pay extra for the models."
"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."
"We have purchased a five-year licensing package for the product."
"The pricing is a pay-as-you-go model that is charged by the hour."
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 plenty of technical documents and a supportive community available, which helps mana...
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 identified. It is a little bit expensive, and I think about additional features they cou...
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 for AWS WAF. I have experience with BIG-IP, not BIG-IQ, and I may have experien...
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 GRE tunnels. We have decreased site load times on Mobile 3G from 8 to 1,6 seconds ...
What needs improvement with Akamai Prolexic Routed?
For the DDoS protection, I don't see any areas for improvement because they are pretty solid there, though in bot management, there are times when attackers find ways to bypass Akamai, which is a c...
What is your primary use case for Akamai Prolexic Routed?
The main use case for DDoS protection is to mitigate risks, and there are multiple ways Akamai provides DDoS protection; one is application-based DDoS protection and the other is volumetric DDoS pr...
 

Also Known As

F5 AFM, F5 Advanced Firewall Manager
Akamai Prolexic Routed
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
Fidor Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs. Prolexic and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.