Airlock vs NGINX App Protect comparison

Ergon Informatik and F5 are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Ergon Informatik is ranked #24 with an average rating of 10.0, while F5 is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.1. Ergon Informatik holds a 0.8% mindshare in WAF, compared to F5’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Ergon Informatik users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of F5 users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Airlock and NGINX App Protect 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: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

February 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 Airlock is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX App Protect is 2.2%, up from 1.7% 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%
Airlock	0.8%
Other	91.6%

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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Tiodor Jovovic

Chief Business Officer at Sky Express

Provides endless features and can be adapted to every single application that exists in the world

WAF is the most beneficial feature for security posture. Our customers are more than satisfied with the user experience provided by the product. The level of detail of the configuration is the most significant aspect. We can adapt it to every single application that exists in the world. The product helps with the compliance processes.

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Jean-Marc Porchet

Project Manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Blocking IPs and detecting bots enhances security for medical websites

I was researching products like NGINX App Protect and F5 Advanced WAF for long-term options. I have some use for such a solution, but probably not before next year Detecting bots and blocking IPs have proven effective for securing applications. We were able to block groups of IP addresses that…

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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

"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."

"The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10."

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

"It is configurable via API."

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

"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."

"The product has a valuable security control functionality."

"It protects web applications efficiently."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

"Our customers are more than satisfied with the user experience provided by the product."

"There's a cache, or it works like a proxy, so it can speed up applications."

"The most valuable feature of NGINX App Protect is the reverse proxy."

"NGINX App Protect has positively impacted my organization by adding an additional layer of security on top of my infrastructure layer, which I consider quite helpful."

"Overall, I rate NGINX App Protect between eight and nine."

"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."

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

"The policies are flexible based on the technologies you use."

"NGINX App Protect is a good product and performs very well even when it is under stress."

More NGINX App Protect pros

Cons

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

"If they add logs history within the Cloudflare offering, that would be a great benefit."

"The ModSecurity core rules need to be updated."

"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."

"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."

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

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

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

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

"The tool must be simplified."

"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."

"The price of NGINX App Protect could improve."

"It doesn't have more advanced features like no false-positive security, which you can configure in Advanced WAF."

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

"Areas for improvement would be if NGINX could scan for vulnerabilities and learn and update the signatures of DoS attacks."

"They could provide a better user interface."

"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."

"The integration of NGINX App Protect could improve."

More NGINX App Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

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

"The solution is expensive."

"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."

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

"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."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"The tool is cheap."

"The price of NGINX App Protect is not much different from the products that fall under the leader category of Gartner Magic Quadrant."

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

"The solution's price is reasonable."

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

"Our licensing costs are about $40,000 a year."

"The product's price is high."

"There are not any additional costs we had to pay to use NGINX App Protect."

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

More NGINX App Protect pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Government

12%

University

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

No data available

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

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...

See all answers

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 Airlock?

Our customers are more than satisfied with the user experience provided by the product.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Airlock?

The tool is cheap. We are protecting very sensitive portals. We didn't have a single incident for the last 15 years.

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What needs improvement with Airlock?

The tool must be simplified. However, if it is simplified, it will lose its competitive edge. The solution requires a...

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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

Comparisons

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 8% of the time

Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 6% 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

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall Competitors

AWS WAF vs Airlock

Compared 20% of the time

Akamai App and API Protector vs Airlock

Compared 17% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Airlock

Compared 10% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Airlock

Compared 9% of the time

More Airlock Competitors

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

Sqreen vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 4% of the time

More NGINX App Protect 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

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

February 2026

Download Airlock product report

Buyer's Guide

NGINX App Protect

February 2026

Download NGINX App Protect product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF

Airlock Suite

NGINX WAF, NGINX 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

The problem of internet security is almost as old as the internet itself. But there is a reliable solution: Airlock Suite from Ergon. Airlock Suite is underpinned by superb Swiss engineering expertise, many years of experience and well thought-out concepts that master the most complex challenges. Airlock Suite deals with the issues of filtering and authentication in one complete and coordinated solution - setting new standards for usability and services.

Ergon Informatik

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

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk

Raiffeisen, SGKB, Generali, Visana

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

February 2026

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Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, F5, Imperva and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: February 2026.

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