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F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs NGINX App Protect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 4, 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 Distributed Cloud Services
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
21st
Ranking in API Security
8th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
CDN (10th)
NGINX App Protect
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
15th
Ranking in API Security
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (27th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of F5 Distributed Cloud Services is 1.7%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX App Protect is 2.1%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
NGINX App Protect2.1%
F5 Distributed Cloud Services1.7%
Other96.2%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

Mohan Janarthanan - PeerSpot reviewer
Assosiate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
Centralized security has protected APIs and optimized multi‑cloud traffic management
F5 Distributed Cloud Services has been used for two years for DDoS protection, and there is a particular feature called API protection. Within API protection, there is malicious user mitigation, which is one particular technology that has been implemented. This is a kind of advanced bot attack prevention. Malicious user mitigation is an AI/ML-based technology that was introduced by the F5 team, and this particular MUG protects rate limiting. If some users are having anomaly detection or someone is trying to do a bot attack, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge for that particular user alone and not for all users. For example, if someone is trying to act as a rogue, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge in the backend system on that particular system, so they cannot try again and again at the same time. It is for a concurrent session, and it will give the CAPTCHA challenge. This MUG, malicious user mitigation, prevents bot attacks. F5 Distributed Cloud Services includes the real-time intelligence feature, which helps with threat response strategies from a threat intelligence perspective. For example, if there are geo-restrictions or geo-based restrictions, sometimes people may come in through proxy-based servers, and it will prevent that. The load balancing feature optimizes application performance. Observability is the basic piece where F5 got introduced. This observability piece provides end-to-end visibility on the application performance. It gives complete end-to-end visibility across network latency and application performance issues. Sometimes when it is getting more than 200 pages, it throws errors such as 300, 400, or whatever has been configured, including 500 errors. F5 Distributed Cloud Services has helped improve traffic management efficiency. Most applications are hosted in the Check Point and F5 firewall, F5 web application firewall, where applications and traffic management can be accessed in a single dashboard. Automated threat detection is a basic feature of F5 Distributed Cloud Services meant for that purpose. There are two scenarios with automated threat detection, which is provided by F5. It is a completely machine learning solution that came from the bot defense, and it automatically protects against sophisticated attacks.
JP
Project Manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Blocking IPs and detecting bots enhances security for medical websites
I was researching products like NGINX App Protect and F5 Advanced WAF for long-term options. I have some use for such a solution, but probably not before next year Detecting bots and blocking IPs have proven effective for securing applications. We were able to block groups of IP addresses that…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In a multi-cloud or distributed cloud, there are many protection possibilities from data to web application or API protection, including bot mitigation."
"The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation."
"Technical support from F5 is good compared to Cisco and HP."
"F5 is known for being the best load balancer in the market. Customers with an existing module can easily adopt additional modules without investing in new hardware."
"The most valuable feature is that I can establish different services from the firewall."
"The initial setup was simple and took three to four days."
"The tool's most valuable feature is the OWASP certification. Additionally, the tool's ability to enforce strong passwords and OTP within minutes is impressive. With its analytics and recommendations, it is a very good solution."
"NGINX App Protect has complete control over the HTTP session."
"WAF is useful to track mitigation, inclusion, prevention, and the parametric firewall."
"It is a stable solution."
"The most valuable feature of NGINX App Protect is its flexibility."
"The most valuable feature of NGINX App Protect is the reverse proxy."
 

Cons

"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF. There are some problems, mainly from the perspective of implementation and customer expectations, which sometimes differ from reality."
"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF."
"Last year there was a downtime of 30 minutes across the cloud distributed console, and that was the only impact observed."
"The pricing could be adjusted to better meet the needs of typical customers in regions like Poland, where the product is considered too expensive."
"The product's price is high, making it an area of concern where improvements are required. The tool's licensing model is also not good."
"NGINX App Protect would be improved with integration with Shape and F5 WAF, which would make it easy for users to manage all their web application security with a single solution."
"Right now, the tool doesn't provide an option revolving around update feeds, specifically the signature update option in the UI."
"The price of NGINX App Protect could improve."
"Currently, the policies have to be handled manually, and you have to create from scratch, which can be a bit time-consuming, in a large environment."
"It's challenging if you need to go for a high throughput."
"It doesn't have more advanced features like no false-positive security, which you can configure in Advanced WAF."
"The solution needs to be improved in the e-commerce portal."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"NGINX App Protect is expensive."
"The price of NGINX App Protect is not much different from the products that fall under the leader category of Gartner Magic Quadrant."
"The solution's price is reasonable."
"There are not any additional costs we had to pay to use NGINX App Protect."
"There are no additional fees."
"There is a monthly or annual subscription to use NGINX App Protect. There are not any additional costs to the subscription."
"The product's price is high."
"Really understand the licensing model, because we underestimated that."
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881,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Insurance Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
I am not involved in sales, so I do not deal with the pricing aspect directly. I give the cost of the solution a four out of ten since it is not a cheap product.
What needs improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
It's a long way to be perfect, of course, as with all solutions. The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF. There are some problems, mainly from the pers...
What is your primary use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
There are two main use cases for Distributed Call Services: DDoS or Distributed attacks protection and WAF web application security or firewall.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX App Protect?
I don't know the pricing yet because in my other project, I was not part of the buying side and I was just starting to look at options.
What needs improvement with NGINX App Protect?
It would be better if it were easier to implement and if there was more information from F5 regarding hardware requirements and specifications to deploy the service, to avoid disruptions after impl...
 

Also Known As

No data available
NGINX WAF, NGINX Web Application Firewall
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs. NGINX App Protect and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.