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NetScaler vs Wallarm NG WAF comparison

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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)
5th
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)
15th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (2nd), Network Management Applications (14th)
Wallarm NG WAF
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
39th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
API Security (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 4.7%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetScaler is 3.5%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Wallarm NG WAF is 1.0%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall4.7%
NetScaler3.5%
Wallarm NG WAF1.0%
Other90.8%
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.
AR
IT Security Specialist at a educational organization with 201-500 employees
Allows students and lecturers access to necessary software for their courses cost-effectively
I am a consultant and do not recommend specific products. I work with customers, and they decide what they want to buy. I'm a CISO as a service, dealing with security. I'm from an integrator company, and they usually sell a few products. One customer uses NetScaler for a VDI system with Citrix…
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 product has improved our security posture by blocking bad actors."
"For us, the key feature of Cloudflare is DDoS protection and IP hiding, especially since we are a crypto company."
"I'm highly satisfied. It's remarkably user-friendly, enabling me to quickly identify issues, and deploy solutions, and it offers the necessary features."
"This is a good product; it's reliable and scales well."
"The integration of Cloudflare with Cloud Suite is its most valuable feature."
"The impact of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's integration with existing web technologies on our site's performance and security measures is quite great, actually."
"It protects web applications efficiently."
"The rate limiting features and customizations in terms of URL match and applying policies are valuable to me."
"It allows students to access required software for their studies."
"Available on any device and can be accessed on a wide area network."
"NetScaler is the underdog but it is very stable; I've seen it in hospital environments where lives matter, it has held its own, it does what it says it's going to do and it does it well, and it is certainly a top contender, if not an equal contender, with its counterpart F5."
"We use the solution's IP Reputation and bot protection features."
"The most valuable features of Citrix ADC are load balancing and application firewall."
"It has been a very useful solution for us, allowing us to manage application accessibility even during the pandemic with complete visibility of application accessibility and any malicious activities, along with analytics reports so we can support our infrastructure in a very secure manner."
"Its flexibility, agility, and robustness are the most valuable. Its management and implementation are also quite easy."
"The work balancing applications are the most valuable feature."
"Perimeter control and active vulnerability scanner are the most valuable features."
"Vulnerability scanner and WAF are valuable features."
"Helps us to monitor situation in regards to attacks to our sites and prevents a lot of them."
"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."
"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."
"With active threat detection, we are no longer over-swamped with tons of useless events."
 

Cons

"The learning curve was steep initially."
"Support can be challenging at times."
"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."
"If they add logs history within the Cloudflare offering, that would be a great benefit."
"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."
"They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long."
"Cloudflare should update the version of the ModSecurity core rule set that they run on."
"A key challenge arises when dealing with numerous integrations with HVAC systems. Depending on the specifics, there might be some configuration mismatches, which necessitate specific support."
"There's nothing special with the solution in terms of protection and no notification if there's an issue, so Citrix Web App and API Protection does not have much use."
"Needs configuration processes like disabling LB VIPs, automatically disabling the IPs used."
"The licensing model and technical support of the solution could be improved."
"The solution can improve their support and send tickets directly to a Citrix ADC engineer in order to avoid having to escalate each support call."
"Citrix should improve the documentation. It is not really clear how to set up many features to our advantage. When we setup Citrix NetScaler ADC, we have to figure it out by ourselves without a lot of documentation."
"The WAF component needs to be simplified so that it is easier to use."
"There are specific features that we like but are not available at our licensing level."
"ADC from Citrix has added functionalities from other products and the usability is very difficult for someone who is used to a simpler user interface, it's a little bit of a mess to use."
"The biggest problem for us was the stability and speed using the first version of Wallarm. Now, it is fine."
"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."
"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."
"Technical support is 6 or 7 out of 10. Sometimes we have had trouble with communication and understanding."
"It needs more customization in PDF reports."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not too pricey."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"The solution is expensive."
"The licensing costs for this solution vary depending on which model is being used."
"Citrix NetScaler's pricing is slightly above average but not overly expensive. I would consider F5 BIG IP to be the most expensive, Citrix NetScaler to be the second most expensive, and then Kemp Load Balancer to be the third."
"We have all the features and functions of Citrix because we have a premium license."
"We have a yearly licencing fee, and there are no additional costs."
"I give the price of the solution a seven out of ten."
"The tool is cheap."
"Price-wise, I feel that the solution is a little bit expensive."
"Citrix NetScaler VPX is not the cheapest solution out there, but you get what you pay for."
"​Pricing must be cheaper than the competition and the licensing must be good.​"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Government
12%
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 Business44
Midsize Enterprise24
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 advice do you have for others considering Citrix NetScaler?
Each product has its advantages, and combining certain features of F5 and NetScaler could be beneficial. I'd rate the...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADM?
Regarding pricing, educational institutes often receive better prices. In the context of virtualization, prices are i...
Ask a question
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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: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.