NGINX App Protect vs StackPath WAF comparison

F5 and StackPath are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. F5 is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.1, while StackPath is ranked #48. F5 holds a 2.2% mindshare in WAF, compared to StackPath’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of F5 users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StackPath users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between NGINX App Protect and StackPath WAF based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, F5, Imperva and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF).

To learn more, read our detailed Web Application Firewall (WAF) Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

March 2026

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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 ...

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 NGINX App Protect is 2.2%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StackPath WAF is 0.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall	5.4%
NGINX App Protect	2.2%
StackPath WAF	0.4%
Other	92.0%

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Featured Reviews

Dean Barisic

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.

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Valerio Guaglianone

Dev Ops Engineer at adesso AG

Long-term web protection has supported reliable traffic management but needs a simpler interface

NGINX App Protect is a good product. I have used both versions from F5 -also the free version- (I mean the NGINX/NGINX One/App Protect free trial period), and I think it is a good product. It's stable, affordable, and easy to manage. NGINX App Protect is a comprehensive security solution that combines advanced WAF, DoS protection, API security, and DevSecOps automation in a lightweight, scalable package ideal for modern cloud-native architectures. The adaptive machine learning capabilities are truly commendable, as the solution can establish traffic baselines and detect anomalies in real time. It automatically adjusts security policies, minimizing the need for manual intervention and reducing false positives. Additionally, it supports scalable deployment across diverse environments, including on-premises, cloud, Kubernetes, and containers, offering both flexibility and scalability I have experience with the web server, F5 load balancer, and similar products provided by Ergon, for eg. the web application firewall and the Microgateway for K8S. I'm also familiar with F5 BIG-IP products.

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Francesco MariaCompagnucci

RTD at Fidoka srl

Stable product with an easy setup process

We use StackPath WAF to protect small websites for our customers The product’s most valuable is WAF. The authentication feature helps us protect WordPress sites. The product’s performance for caching feature needs improvement. It could provide high security to handle large traffic volumes for…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."

"We like that there's load balancing, firewall capabilities, DDoS protection, et cetera, all covered by Cloudflare."

"Cloudflare has positively impacted my organization by making it easier for me to handle and set up DNS for multiple clients; I can easily go in and access their accounts, make changes they need, and it's a one-stop shop."

"There is a huge signature repository"

"The solution protects our application, which runs on the HTTP protocol, from DDoS attacks."

"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."

"Cloudflare WAF provides protection through rules and functionalities like Cloudflare's SDRAP."

"It's pretty convenient and pretty easy to set up and run. And then kind of for static content, it also offers caching."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

"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."

"We were looking for a product that is capable of complete automation and a container based solution. It's working."

"The most valuable feature of NGINX App Protect is its open source."

"NGINX App Protect's best features are auto-learning, which creates a profile of applications that are deployed, bot protection, and force protection, which lets you configure your brute force policy and alert for and prevent brute force attacks."

"It is a stable solution."

"The most valuable feature is that there is a link in the system that will help to analyze the security of an application when something abnormal is found."

"I would say that the most valuable feature is the ability to operate in a DevOps environment and to be configured through API and pipeline by the developers themselves."

"The stability of the product is very impressive since it handles 60,000 to 70,000 requests or transactions per second."

More NGINX App Protect pros

"The product’s most valuable is WAF. The authentication feature helps us protect WordPress sites."

Cons

"The learning curve was steep initially."

"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should improve visibility for a customer."

"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."

"We have noticed some latency when the call goes through the firewall. That could be improved."

"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 solution's learning curve can still be further reduced"

"Support can be challenging at times."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

"Setting policies and parameters through the UI should be more automated because the process is manual, where we can only edit one rule at a time."

"The configuration needs to be more flexible because it is difficult to do things that are outside of the ordinary."

"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."

"They could provide a better user interface."

"The price of NGINX App Protect could improve."

"NGINX App Protect could improve security."

"Right now, the tool doesn't provide an option revolving around update feeds, specifically the signature update option in the UI."

"The product's user interface is an area with shortcomings as it can be quite confusing for users, making it an area where improvements are required."

More NGINX App Protect cons

"The product’s performance for caching feature needs improvement."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."

"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."

"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 starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."

"It is not too pricey."

"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."

"The solution is expensive."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"NGINX App Protect is expensive."

"NGINX is not expensive."

"The pricing is reasonable because NGINX operates on an instance basis."

"The product's price is high."

"There is a license needed to use NGINX App Protect."

"Really understand the licensing model, because we underestimated that."

"There is a monthly or annual subscription to use NGINX App Protect. There are not any additional costs to the subscription."

"The licensing fees for this solution are pretty expensive for what it does, but there is no alternative."

More NGINX App Protect pricing and cost advice

"The product is affordable."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	12

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

The price of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is reasonable.

See all answers

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...

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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...

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What do you like most about NGINX App Protect?

It's very easy to deploy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX App Protect?

I will not be able to answer about my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for NGINX App Protect, as so...

See all answers

What needs improvement with NGINX App Protect?

I think NGINX App Protect could be improved by having it come out of the box with NGINX.

See all answers

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Comparisons

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 6% of the time

Azure Web Application Firewall vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

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Fortinet FortiWeb vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 9% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 7% of the time

Haltdos Enterprise WAF vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 6% of the time

AWS WAF vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 6% of the time

open-appsec vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 5% of the time

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Sucuri vs StackPath WAF

Compared 23% of the time

Human Defense Platform vs StackPath WAF

Compared 23% of the time

open-appsec vs StackPath WAF

Compared 12% of the time

More StackPath WAF Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

March 2026

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Download Cloudflare Web Application Firewall product report

Buyer's Guide

NGINX App Protect

March 2026

Download NGINX App Protect product report

Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

March 2026

Download StackPath WAF product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF

NGINX WAF, NGINX Web Application Firewall

StackPath Web Application Firewall

Overview

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's intuitive dashboard enables users to build powerful rules through easy clicks and also provides Terraform integration. Every request to the WAF is inspected against the rule engine and the threat intelligence curated from protecting over 27 Million websites. Suspicious requests can be blocked, challenged or logged as per the needs of the user while legitimate requests are routed to the destination, agnostic of whether it lives on-premise or in the cloud. Analytics and Cloudflare Logs enable visibility into actionable metrics for the user.

Cloudflare

NGINX App Protect application security solution combines the efficacy of advanced F5 web application firewall (WAF) technology with the agility and performance of NGINX Plus. The solution runs natively on NGINX Plus and addresses some of the most difficult challenges facing modern DevOps environments:

Integrating security controls directly into the development automation pipeline
Applying and managing security for modern and distributed application environments such as containers and microservices
Providing the right level of security controls without impacting release and go-to-market velocity
Complying with security and regulatory requirements

NGINX App Protect offers:

Expanded security beyond basic signatures to ensure adequate controls
F5 app‑security technology for efficacy superior to ModSecurity and other WAFs
Confidently run in “blocking” mode in production with proven F5 expertise
High‑confidence signatures for extremely low false positives
Increases visibility, integrating with third‑party analytics solutions
Integrates security and WAF natively into the CI/CD pipeline
Deploys as a lightweight software package that is agnostic of underlying infrastructure
Facilitates declarative policies for “security as code” and integration with DevOps tools
Decreases developer burden and provides feedback loop for quick security remediation
Accelerates time to market and reduces costs with DevSecOps‑automated security

StackPath WAF integrates multiple technologies, including Advanced Browser Validation and IP Reputation and Custom Rules engines, into an intelligent firewall that can be customized to meet your specific protection profile.

StackPath

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk

Information Not Available

Robotics Cats, Jewlr

Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

March 2026

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