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F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs Orca Security 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

F5 Distributed Cloud Services
Ranking in API Security
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
CDN (6th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (16th)
Orca Security
Ranking in API Security
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Security (7th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (6th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (5th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (6th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (2nd), AI Security (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the API Security category, the mindshare of F5 Distributed Cloud Services is 3.8%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Orca Security is 5.7%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Orca Security5.7%
F5 Distributed Cloud Services3.8%
Other90.5%
API Security
 

Featured Reviews

Mohan Janarthanan - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate 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.
Nykole Denoo - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Analyst at BNY
Cloud risk visibility has transformed how I prioritize threats and reduce unnecessary spend
From my perspective, Orca Security is a really good tool. I would say one area I would like to see CNAPP platforms get is more intelligence when it comes to risk prioritization, which correlates with vulnerability, exposing assets, identities, and active threats to help the security team focus on risks that are more likely to be exploited. I am a huge advocate for automation. I also think deeper automation for remediation or stronger integration with ticketing and CI/CD pipelines or more customization would help. Executive reporting would help the security team respond significantly faster and communicate risk more effectively if those kinds of improvements are made.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides a single unified console for security operations, network operations, and DevOps across all environments."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services is the market leader in load balancers and manages traffic really well."
"In a multi-cloud or distributed cloud, there are many protection possibilities from data to web application or API protection, including bot mitigation."
"Elastic environments are the most valuable features because I can pull these apps and migrate the on-premises environment to the Distributed Cloud environment, and this capability is very strong and the security regarding the apps is really very powerful."
"The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation."
"I appreciate the UI of F5 Distributed Cloud Services and the backend cost, alongside the actual value proposition that they provide with the load balancer, which is excellent."
"Orca Security is the best one for me because it delivers all the things that I need and more."
"Overall, I think Orca Security is the leader because of the strategic features I mentioned."
"Orca Security has positively impacted my organization by improving our security posture and hardening our services and resources."
"Orca Security has helped me in preventing risks and attacks across my application life cycle by being the base of the whole secure development life cycle I implemented in my previous experience, which was crucial for detecting vulnerabilities both in development and runtime."
"Overall, I'm thoroughly impressed with this product, which is the best way I can put it."
"Orca Security saves resources because it provides the actual output on the screen with the package path."
"I find Orca Security's CIEM feature invaluable, as it focuses on entitlement and posture management, identifying assets with older OS versions, and asset misconfiguration."
"In our opinion, Orca Sensor is the best solution available at the moment, and it significantly affects the visibility and protection of environments."
 

Cons

"One area where F5 Distributed Cloud Services can be improved is in API security, which can be enhanced."
"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 worst experience is that with so many solutions available, it is very complicated to know all of the solution modules, and the offers from F5 Distributed Cloud Services are vast."
"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."
"For small players, it is completely not worth it."
"Last year there was a downtime of 30 minutes across the cloud distributed console, and that was the only impact observed."
"I would like to see an option to do security checks on a code level. This is possible because they have access to all of the code running in the cloud provider, and combining their site-scanning solution with that would be a nice add-on."
"Orca Security could improve its ticket creation process. Currently, it allows for creating tickets in only one bucket, which requires monitoring to redirect tickets to the appropriate team."
"I think the downside of Orca Security is the reports."
"The solution could improve by making the dashboards more elaborative and more descriptive."
"A few things could potentially be improved, particularly regarding false positives and the UI."
"Customer support is very poor, in my opinion, because when I have a few problems, the customer support says your solution is bad or it is easier."
"Orca Security could support its own ticketing tool, which would be helpful for security personnel so they would not need to integrate with any other ticketing tool."
"It's not all clouds that they are currently onboarded with. For instance, they are not yet with public cloud and many other private clouds."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I think their pricing model is aligned with market demand. Of course, Orca could probably better align their pricing model with the needs of smaller businesses as well as some larger-scale enterprises with millions of assets. But in all fairness, I think the Orca sales team has been accommodating and ensured that we're happy with the pricing."
"Orca Security charges are based on cloud workloads. So, it's based on workloads. If we look at one feature, it might be expensive."
"Its license is a bit expensive."
"Orca Security is cheaper compared to other solutions in the same space."
"The price is a bit expensive for smaller organizations."
"The most expensive solution is Palo Alto. They claim to be very robust. The next most expensive is Wiz, followed by Orca and all the rest."
"We have a total of 25 licenses for this solution. The solution is on a pay-and-you-use model."
"The pricing depends on how many assets you have running in your cloud and how many environments you have. If you have a dev environment, test environment, and a production environment then it's really important that you have coverage for all of them."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
F5 Distributed Cloud Services is affordable. I think it is very affordable. I do not think it is expensive.
What needs improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
One area where F5 Distributed Cloud Services can be improved is in API security, which can be enhanced.Specifically, the confidence level on API security that F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides...
What is your primary use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
My main use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services is WAF protection.I am using F5 Distributed Cloud Services primarily for securing my infrastructure with layer 7 protection, which F5 provides. Th...
What needs improvement with Orca Security?
From my perspective, Orca Security is a really good tool. I would say one area I would like to see CNAPP platforms get is more intelligence when it comes to risk prioritization, which correlates wi...
What is your primary use case for Orca Security?
I have used Orca Security for continuous cloud assessment visibility, identifying and prioritizing vulnerabilities and misconfigurations. I also monitor compliance against frameworks, whether it's ...
What advice do you have for others considering Orca Security?
Regarding Orca Sensor, I personally have not used it, but I do know of it. I have not used it directly, but my experience has been more about how it collaborates with the AWS environment, which is ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
BeyondTrust, Postman, Digital Turbine, Solarisbank, Lemonade, C6 Bank, Docebo, Vercel, and Vivino
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs. Orca Security and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.