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F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway comparison

 

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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.2
Organizations using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition see improved performance, reduced costs, streamlined operations, and enhanced efficiency up to 40%.
Sentiment score
6.1
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway enhances ROI by reducing infrastructure costs, simplifying setup, and using cost management tools for accurate assessments.
Overall, I can say the ROI includes a twenty-five to thirty percent cost reduction, with some areas achieving forty percent cost reduction in our expenses.
Network Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
There is a significant performance improvement in the website and website speed.
IT consultant at Beginning Solutions IT
With F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we have not faced any RMAs, which has made a positive operational impact.
Senior Network And Security Engineer at Mobily
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway significantly impacts our cost savings while maintaining higher performance.
IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital
If we can use a shared resource, then the return on investment is really nice.
Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
We have seen a return on investment in terms of time-saving and cost-saving by not creating our own infrastructure.
Information Security and Compliance Officer at Carnation
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition support is highly rated for speed and knowledge, but service satisfaction may vary and costs can be high.
Sentiment score
6.4
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway support experiences vary; some praise expertise, while others criticize delays and inconsistent quality.
I would rate the customer support on a scale of one to ten as a perfect ten based on all of the experience I have had so far.
Senior Network And Security Engineer at Mobily
Customer support for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is excellent.
IT consultant at Beginning Solutions IT
F5 support is knowledgeable and helpful for complex LTM and ASM issues.
Cybersecurity Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
I would say they provide the best support for Application Gateway because they own the product, so their support is top-notch.
Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
There is room for improvement, specifically in paid support, by providing more direct contact.
Information Security and Compliance Officer at Carnation
I would rate Microsoft support as good because they have a very skilled technical support team in the background
Cloud Head at White-Spunner & Associates
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition efficiently scales resources in cloud and on-prem environments, adapting to user growth with ease.
Sentiment score
7.4
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway provides scalable solutions but has mixed reviews regarding cost and ease of scaling and upgrades.
It is the most scalable and reliable system.
Cybersecurity Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Within ten minutes of time, we can scale and boot as many virtual machines as needed in the environment.
Network Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We can scale F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition very quickly in public cloud environments and also in our on-premise private environment.
IT consultant at Beginning Solutions IT
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is a very scalable product.
IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital
It has the autoscaling feature, so there is not much concern around performance; it can scale significantly.
Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is a scalable solution.
Cloud Head at White-Spunner & Associates
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.7
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is praised for stability and performance, with rare instabilities linked to environmental factors.
Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is stable and reliable, with high ratings, despite occasional issues due to misconfiguration.
The load balancing module still performed admirably.
Sr network engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
The performance increased significantly and the response times of the application improved.
Senior Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The uptime improvements with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition are almost close to 100%, as it only goes down if a failover happens.
Senior Network & Security Administrator at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We have been using it for the past two to three years, and there have been good results with no problems so far.
Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
The stability is good, and except for a few instances, I don't see the non-availability of Azure Cloud services.
Cloud Head at White-Spunner & Associates
 

Room For Improvement

F5 BIG-IP VE struggles with pricing, support, scalability, integration, security, and requires improvements in usability and resource demands.
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is criticized for high costs, complexity, lacking documentation, and needing improvements in security, scalability, and support.
The primary concern I noted regarding F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is its scalability during high-load situations.
Sr network engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
It is a somewhat expensive solution, and the price needs to be improved based on what our customers have told us.
IT consultant at Beginning Solutions IT
With FortiWeb, we have a dashboard where I can check the policy status with just one click, and everything is easily accessible.
Senior Network And Security Engineer at Mobily
One feature I mentioned is the support for non-HTTPS protocols such as TCP, which could allow one endpoint for all kinds of protocols.
Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
There is room for improvement in terms of support, such as assigning agents directly for more straightforward engagement.
Information Security and Compliance Officer at Carnation
In future releases of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, I would like to see more AI functionalities and a better dashboard as well as some customizations.
IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital
 

Setup Cost

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is costly due to its licensing, but its performance and security justify the price.
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway's cost is debated; appreciated for scalability but potentially expensive with additional fees compared to AWS.
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's pricing structure was significantly more advantageous and aligned with our budgetary considerations.
Sr network engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition solves a very significant problem of high availability and performance.
IT consultant at Beginning Solutions IT
To be honest, the cost of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is not low, but since it provides enterprise-level security and everything, it should have that price.
Cybersecurity Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
We would prefer to have it cheaper, but it is still expensive.
Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Azure solutions are quite expensive.
Information Security and Compliance Officer at Carnation
When it comes to pricing for Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, I would rate it a seven out of ten.
IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital
 

Valuable Features

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is praised for its scalability, ease of use, security, and performance, boosting cost savings and stability.
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway provides secure, efficient traffic management with integration, automation, and scalability benefits for straightforward application deployment.
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition helped our customers increase the high availability and performance of their applications, specifically their web applications.
IT consultant at Beginning Solutions IT
If ten thousand, fifty thousand, or even a million people want to access the application simultaneously, we have configured auto-scalability.
Network Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has impacted my organization positively with cost savings by saving public IP addresses, and its performance and stability, which give almost 100% uptime for the application because we have high availability.
Senior Network & Security Administrator at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We are using it for some of the security features for our applications, particularly for securing traffic in transit with SSL.
Information Security and Compliance Officer at Carnation
The Web Application Firewall (WAF) in Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has been very effective in protecting applications from security threats.
IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital
The gateway's Web Application Firewall feature enhances security as it is the first entry point to your network from the outside world.
Cloud Head at White-Spunner & Associates
 

Categories and Ranking

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
9th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure Application...
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
4th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is 0.7%. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is 6.3%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway6.3%
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition0.7%
Other93.0%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2800392 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Cloud deployment has simplified traffic distribution and now supports flexible multi-zone DR
Regarding F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's improvement areas, the current dashboard is very useful, but I believe the registration process should be simplified in the virtual edition. Especially in the Azure environment, many features are not currently aligned and working with Azure. We need to make efforts to ensure it is well integrated with Azure. Currently, if we want to integrate route tables with the virtual F5 edition, we need to deploy scripting inside the virtual F5 instances, and then that script performs the virtual IP route table changes in the Azure environment. This feature should be auto-configured, and efforts are needed to ensure the virtual edition is very much aligned with the Azure environment. I am expecting this improvement in the next edition. The failover capability is also not as good as it should be. We have tested the failover functionality, and sometimes we have observed that failover fails. F5 does not successfully fail over to other instances perfectly, so that also needs to be improved. Security should also be enhanced, as in the past I have seen some security loopholes. Tightening of security should be included in the new software. These improvements should be present in near future editions.
SS
Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Mutual TLS has secured our web services and now needs broader protocol support
The most valuable feature we have found in Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is mutual TLS. We find mutual TLS valuable because we can verify the client securely by setting up the trust certificate of the client, and also if we do it at the client side as well. This successfully develops mutual trust, ensuring that we know the client who is calling our service is a legitimate client. That is a very nice feature.Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has helped manage our traffic efficiently because we have many web services that we can put behind the same URL, and we can have different URLs with the same Application Gateway with a limited number of listeners. We can do host-based routing as well as URL-based routing or path-based routing. It supports both, so we can have even a single URL supporting many applications, or we can have different URLs for different applications respectively. We have both use cases.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise24
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition?
The integration capabilities of the product are easy to use, and there is no complexity involved in it.
What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition?
I believe F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition could be improved in terms of pricing and licensing transparency. However, customers who purchase through authorized partners may receive better pricing and lice...
What advice do you have for others considering F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition?
I would rate F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition 9/10 overall. Advice: Plan the sizing and licensing properly, deploy it in HA (Active/Standby) for high availability, and monitor license validity (especially...
What's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?
We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides excellent support. Azure Front Door can quickly detect abnormalities before the...
How does AWS WAF compare to Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Web Application Firewall or Microsoft Azure Application Gateway web application firewall software was the better fit ...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Application Gateway automatically redirects unwanted users and takes care of the security aspect. It also handles the performance side of things, which is why we use it.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Azure Application Gateway, MS Azure Application Gateway
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Lilly, AccuWeather, AIRFRANCE, Honeywell
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.