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Airlock vs NGINX App Protect comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 ...
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Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Airlock
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
40th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
9.2
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NGINX App Protect
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
15th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (28th), API Security (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 4.5%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Airlock is 0.8%, up from 0.4% 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
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall4.5%
NGINX App Protect2.2%
Airlock0.8%
Other92.5%
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.
Tiodor Jovovic - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Valerio Guaglianone - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

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."
"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."
"The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10."
"I have not had any issues with this solution, and I would recommend it to others who are interested in using it."
"The Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."
"It protects web applications efficiently."
"This solution does a good job of preventing web application attacks, SQL injections, and cross-site scripting attacks."
"The integration of Cloudflare with Cloud Suite is its most valuable feature."
"Our customers are more than satisfied with the user experience provided by the product."
"NGINX is very scalable, which is a great advantage of this product."
"WAF is useful to track mitigation, inclusion, prevention, and the parametric firewall."
"It has the best documentation features."
"We use NGINX for security headers, and as a proxy; it is also a very good tool for load balancing."
"NGINX App Protect has complete control over the HTTP session."
"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."
"There's a cache, or it works like a proxy, so it can speed up applications."
"I would recommend this solution to others because it performs well."
 

Cons

"Its stability could be better."
"The reporting could be improved if it were more granular."
"The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced"
"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."
"The user interface is very simple and straightforward, but users need knowledge about DNS to accomplish tasks."
"I have experienced some difficulties with Cloudflare's support as a customer based in India."
"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."
"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."
"The tool must be simplified."
"It would be better if it were easier to implement and if there was more information from F5 regarding hardware requirements and specifications to deploy the service, to avoid disruptions after implementation."
"As far as scalability, it takes a long time for deployment."
"The GUI and web GUI configuration could be improved to be easier to manage and use."
"The integration of NGINX App Protect could improve."
"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 dashboard could provide a more comprehensive view of the status of the connections."
"Areas for improvement would be if NGINX could scan for vulnerabilities and learn and update the signatures of DoS attacks."
"I think NGINX App Protect could be improved by having it come out of the box with NGINX."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"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 solution is expensive."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"It is not too pricey."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"The tool is cheap."
"Really understand the licensing model, because we underestimated that."
"The licensing fees for this solution are pretty expensive for what it does, but there is no alternative."
"NGINX is not expensive."
"The solution's price is reasonable."
"NGINX App Protect is expensive."
"There is a monthly or annual subscription to use NGINX App Protect. There are not any additional costs to the subscription."
"There are not any additional costs we had to pay to use NGINX App Protect."
"There is a license needed to use NGINX App Protect."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
10%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise13
 

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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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...
What needs improvement with NGINX App Protect?
I did not face any issues with NGINX App Protect. The only issue that we had is that someone was trying to install th...
What is your primary use case for NGINX App Protect?
I have been dealing with NGINX App Protect and the WAF policy. I usually recommend NGINX App Protect for banking and ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
Airlock Suite
NGINX WAF, NGINX Web Application Firewall
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Raiffeisen, SGKB, Generali, Visana
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Find out what your peers are saying about Imperva, Fortinet, F5 and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: May 2026.
899,258 professionals have used our research since 2012.