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A10 Thunder TPS vs F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.2
Cloudflare enhances performance, reduces operational costs, and boosts revenue, with reported benefits of $903,000 over three years.
Sentiment score
6.8
A10 Thunder TPS reduced support tickets, improved satisfaction, and saved costs, acting like insurance against significant revenue losses.
Sentiment score
7.4
Organizations see positive ROI from F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager, particularly when integrated with other F5 tools, despite eventual cost increases.
WordPress security can be tricky, and that's where Cloudflare can be absolutely helpful for small businesses.
We have had ROI with the tool's use since it never gave us downtime and made us lose millions.
For the small project I was working on, using the basic tier provided a huge improvement at zero cost.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Cloudflare's service is praised for responsiveness, but some users face delays, often relying on extensive documentation for solutions.
Sentiment score
7.0
A10 Thunder TPS support is praised for timely responses, effective resolutions, proactive fixes, and handling complex issues efficiently.
Sentiment score
6.5
F5 BIG-IP AFM support is responsive yet inconsistent, praised for professionalism but needing improvement in communication accuracy and knowledge levels.
This would help us address issues promptly, especially during unforeseen events like DDoS attacks.
We'd like a dedicated account manager.
You can get a support engineer with the best qualifications.
The technical support was quick and accepted my requests.
The customer service is excellent, and I rate it ten out of ten.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Cloudflare's scalable architecture is praised for efficient traffic handling, seamless expansion, and meeting diverse enterprise needs globally.
Sentiment score
6.9
A10 Thunder TPS provides scalable, flexible defenses for global data centers, supporting large traffic volumes for medium-sized enterprises.
Sentiment score
7.2
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager is praised for its scalability, adaptability, and efficient performance across physical and virtual environments.
I would rate the solution's scalability a ten out of ten since I didn't encounter any issues with it.
I rate its scalability a ten out of ten because I had no issues with it.
I rate the scalability a ten out of ten.
Without accessible documentation, setting up can be time-consuming.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Users praise Cloudflare for improved reliability, effective DDoS protection, and excellent DNS services despite initial configuration needs.
Sentiment score
8.2
The A10 Thunder TPS offers consistent stability, high availability, and positive user feedback, with reliability enhancements and successful maintenance.
Sentiment score
8.4
F5 BIG-IP AFM is highly stable, reliable, well-supported, and offers clear logging with strong performance, rated 8-9/10.
For DDoS protection, I would not recommend Cloudflare.
I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.
The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.
 

Room For Improvement

Cloudflare users seek better analytics, integration, support, pricing clarity, and enhanced features like caching and multi-user access.
A10 Thunder TPS needs better training, smoother upgrades, improved documentation, and enhanced synchronization, with concerns over UI and virtual training.
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager requires enhancements in interface, features, automation, support, pricing, setup, and zero-day attack prevention.
There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features.
Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.
the ability to integrate with the on-site active directory instead of just AD through Azure AD
We had to find workarounds for issues like A10 blocking necessary traffic, sometimes leading to decreased security.
Having advanced technology similar to other vendors like Palo Alto for zero-day attack prevention would be valuable.
 

Setup Cost

Cloudflare offers flexible pricing plans from free to $1,500 monthly, ideal for businesses of different sizes and traffic needs.
Enterprise buyers find A10 Thunder TPS pricing mixed, highlighting both value and expense, with multiyear deals as beneficial.
F5 BIG-IP AFM is valuable for its features and unified platform, despite being pricier than some competitors.
That's where Cloudflare shines for smaller businesses – it's ten times cheaper than Akamai.
I find it to be cheap.
It's cost-effective, but I think they should have a custom pricing model for enterprise customers based on the features you use.
The global price list is not accessible, making it difficult to work.
If considering a one-stop solution that provides load balancing, DNS security, AAA authentication, and firewalling on the same hardware, the cost is reasonable.
 

Valuable Features

Cloudflare enhances performance and security with CDN, caching, DDoS protection, easy DNS management, analytics, and intuitive interface.
A10 Thunder TPS excels in traffic filtering, DDoS mitigation, load balancing, and offers programmable automated defense with RESTful API.
F5 BIG-IP AFM effectively offers advanced traffic analysis, DDoS protection, easy deployment, and integrates seamlessly with other security tools.
Our scenario consisted of two web servers in different allocations to control access demands, and the load balancer did the job as expected, bringing security and stability to access points.
For me, the valuable feature is DDoS protection.
The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security.
The vendor indicated that Thunder would not be supported, but I was able to add Thunder to the central console management.
The solution provides behavioral analysis via AI to detect malicious traffic.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
A10 Thunder TPS
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall...
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 18.9%, down from 19.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of A10 Thunder TPS is 1.8%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) is 1.4%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes
Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.
David Mello - PeerSpot reviewer
A highly stable solution that can be used for load balancing
We contacted the solution's technical support to maintain and exchange the power supply. A few versions ago, we had some CPU and memory problems. We just started the appliance, and it was already on 70% of CPU usage. We first contacted our reseller in Brazil and then escalated the issue to A10 Thunder TPS support. The reseller in Brazil was a little slow, but the A10 Thunder TPS support was fast.
Richard Polyak - PeerSpot reviewer
Straightforward setup with very good granularity and performance
Our company uses the solution as a data center firewall.  It is hard to determine all users within our infrastructure. It depends on systems we put behind the solution. Its internal but also a data center firewall. Sometimes, there are hooks from the solution to our external infrastructure or…
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
21%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
34%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
20%
Insurance Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
What do you like most about A10 Thunder TPS?
The most valuable feature of A10 Thunder TPS is load balancing.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for A10 Thunder TPS?
The tool is expensive. If one is low price and ten is expensive, I rate the tool's price as a ten.
What needs improvement with A10 Thunder TPS?
The solution needs improvement in terms of fail-open. We need separate fail-open kits connected to A10 Thunder TPS an...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?
If considering a one-stop solution that provides load balancing, DNS security, AAA authentication, and firewalling on...
What needs improvement with F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?
F5 should increase its capability to prevent zero-day attacks. Having advanced technology similar to other vendors li...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
F5 AFM, F5 Advanced Firewall Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
DDoS defense solution trusted for more than 200 service providers, online gaming, and enterprises including; Bungie, Comcast, KDDI Corporation, Leaseweb, Microsoft Azure, NTT Docomo, Softbank, Turkcell Superonline, Verizon and more.
City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
Find out what your peers are saying about A10 Thunder TPS vs. F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.