Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

NetScaler vs Wallarm NG WAF comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

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 Web Application ...
Sponsored
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetScaler
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (2nd), Network Management Applications (6th)
Wallarm NG WAF
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
40th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
API Security (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 5.4%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetScaler is 3.8%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Wallarm NG WAF is 0.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall5.4%
NetScaler3.8%
Wallarm NG WAF0.8%
Other90.0%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

DB
CTO at PlayNirvana
Advanced security reporting has protected high-traffic betting platforms from constant attacks
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we have a dedicated IT team for that, and I'm not involved with Cloudflare much anymore. But if I were to compare them to F5, I would like to see more features that F5 offers. F5 has an option to bring the whole infrastructure, the whole WAF and all their packages, Bot Management, and everything else on your infrastructure. You need to install certain services from their side, and then you can choose if you would like requests to hit your servers immediately or if requests need to be proxied through F5 backbone. That would be a nice addition because we have 90% of the traffic as legit traffic coming from whitelisted servers. If it comes from whitelisted servers, I don't need to go every request through the backbone; I could easily just IP whitelist everything. Then I could maybe have Bot Management on my infrastructure that drastically reduces the price of Cloudflare. I would like to see Push CDN more improved in the next release of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. And maybe something similar to Pushpin that Fastly has, which is an option where you can push messages that then can be scaled globally over the network. From our perspective, if we have a listener that listens for stock updates, I would just need to have one processor that pushes those updates to the Cloudflare API, and then Cloudflare would broadcast that message to all listeners. Cloudflare will check the order of the message, and if you, as a customer, are not connected or have some kind of network issue, when you reconnect, you will receive the latest state and missing updates.
LD
Information Technology Division Director at Ethiopian Roads Administration
Offers better visibility into user sessions compared to other solutions
Improvements are needed to address the issue of machines becoming unregistered, ensuring stability for end users. Troubleshooting with Citrix support can be challenging, so clearer diagnostics would be beneficial. As for global server load balancing, it works well on-premises, depending on user volume and service stability. Overall, it's satisfactory for us.
it_user796242 - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Helps us to monitor attacks to our sites and prevents a lot of them
Set up Wallarm as a reverse proxy. Do not replace your web server. Use Wallarm first in monitoring mode, then learn from Wallarm which type of request is false positive and which type of request is not. This process takes a couple of weeks for very highly-loaded web applications (few millions of unique visitors in one month). Then you can turn Wallarm into blocking mode and everything will be fine. Do not forget to build a monitoring system, the wave, and API for it. Before we started using Wallarm, I already knew Ivan (CEO) and Stepan (COO) from a couple of years before. Ivan had his own security company and Stepan was working on a Russian security magazine called Xakep. They told us that they wanted to create a new WAF and already had a working version of it. They asked me to test it. We did tests, and it was really good. After few month after testing, we signed an agreement. Our choice was made not because we knew these guys for a long time, but because the product was really cool and we were glad to start using it as one of the first on the market!

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution protects our application, which runs on the HTTP protocol, from DDoS attacks."
"The Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."
"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."
"The product has a valuable security control functionality."
"Technical support has a very fast response time and they are helpful."
"I'm highly satisfied. It's remarkably user-friendly, enabling me to quickly identify issues, and deploy solutions, and it offers the necessary features."
"The setup process is very simple for me."
"Does a good job preventing web application attacks."
"The solution's technical support is good."
"This solution increases the backend network service performance, which is one of the things that we like the most."
"Content Switching provides flexibility for routing traffic as desired to designated real servers. It also provides good geo capabilities through its GSLB feature."
"It is simple for both IT specialists and customers."
"The most valuable feature would be the Citrix permanent server, as it is cost-effective if you consider the permanent server and the management is easy with no downtimes."
"When our primary link goes down I can still get to my Cisco devices and the NetScaler devices on-prem because of the SDN solution. If the internet connection at one of the branches goes down, we can still route them, they still get internet based on the SDN solution through one of the other sites. They can carry on working."
"The most valuable features are for the ADMs and the overall monitoring environment."
"The work balancing applications are the most valuable feature."
"Vulnerability scanner and WAF are valuable features."
"With active threat detection, we are no longer over-swamped with tons of useless events."
"Helps us to monitor situation in regards to attacks to our sites and prevents a lot of them."
"They are the only solution that fits our success criteria and business objectives: WAF must have a low (<5%) false negative rate and be ready to protect from all well-known web attacks."
"Perimeter control and active vulnerability scanner are the most valuable features."
"The most powerful feature is the ability to first learn what type of query to make to your web application when it is attacked and what type of query creates a false positive to your app."
 

Cons

"The learning curve was steep initially."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well. They have documentation for everything you're looking for, but they lack a single piece of documentation to tie everything together. As a new user or beginner, it took us a little bit of time to figure out how to put all these things in place."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should include port forwarding features."
"We don't even use Cloudflare Bot Management because it's too expensive; you need to pay per request, and it's much cheaper to get one or two additional machines."
"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."
"Its stability could be better."
"The reporting could be more granular."
"The notification part could be improved. It's very much connected to Web Application Firewall, rate-limiting, and DDoS protection."
"Quality assurance could improve by ironing out security vulnerabilities before releasing upgrades."
"The interface could be improved, some customers struggle with that."
"We had some bugs in the previous firmware. These were not big issues, but more testing on the firmware would be key to happier customers."
"The main areas for improvement would be around documentation and support. If a feature can be used in two or three ways, show that feature being used in all of those ways. Documentation seems to only cover the primary use case and leaves you to either run through trial and error or consult the user community. In terms of support, I have never actually had them solve any of my issues. I have always solved them myself and then provided the resolution to support."
"The tool needs to add a feature where we can access the network policy access manager."
"There are some drawbacks, such as using EUG for specific configurations. It could be improved."
"Reducing the overhead required for AppFlow data collection, specifically for HDX Insight, would be a huge improvement."
"Citrix ADC is a complex product, and it takes time to understand these things. But the documentation is poor, and the deployment is difficult. Integration could also be better because what I find is that you cannot easily integrate the panel in the second sector. What I have found is that in the last index, there is a limitation when getting validated. Technical support could also be better."
"Technical support is 6 or 7 out of 10. Sometimes we have had trouble with communication and understanding."
"The biggest problem for us was the stability and speed using the first version of Wallarm. Now, it is fine."
"Wallarm uses a learning mechanism to detect attacks and to avoid false positives. If Wallarm blocks some illegitimate request, then you can go to the management console and mark this request as false positive, but sometimes this does not work properly."
"It needs more customization in PDF reports."
"The biggest problem for us was the stability and speed using the first version of Wallarm."
"There were several stability issues during the first pilot."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I believe the pricing is not the best, but it's reasonable and acceptable. We also use the McAfee system in parallel. In terms of pricing, its okay - not great, but not bad either. It falls in the middle, which is acceptable. In terms of support licensing, last time, we were searching for a solution, and we considered products from resellers rather than directly from the cloud provider. However, the pricing we encountered was exceptionally high. As a result, we are inclined to select support from the reseller."
"It is not too pricey."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"The solution is expensive."
"It's not for startups or SOHO."
"The solution is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"Its price is comparable to others and affordable."
"The pricing for Citrix Web App and API Protection is unreasonable. I don't know the exact price, but I heard it's tens of thousands and it's a bit too much for the small country I live in."
"Citrix ADM costs us approximately $5000 per month."
"I do not have any experience with the pricing of the product."
"I give the price of the solution a seven out of ten."
"When compared to other solutions, the cost is high."
"​Pricing must be cheaper than the competition and the licensing must be good.​"
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise57
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
We are using Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools with their Zero Trust, so e...
What do you like most about Citrix ADC?
The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic ente...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADC?
After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more...
What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?
Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexi...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall, NetScaler VPX - Customer Licensed
Wallarm NG-WAF
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk
Panasonic. Miro. Rappi. Wargaming. Gannett. Omio. Acronis. Workforce Software. Tipalti. SEMRush.
Find out what your peers are saying about NetScaler vs. Wallarm NG WAF and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.