Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

AWS WAF vs StackPath WAF comparison

Sponsored
 

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
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
AWS WAF
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (1st)
StackPath WAF
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (30th)
 

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.
Kavin Kalaiarasu - PeerSpot reviewer
AWS's cloud-native security simplifies rule enforcement but needs better DDoS integration
The dashboarding could be improved, and the default metrics provided by AWS WAF could be upgraded. The rate at which AWS updates their managed rule sets could be better. Features like bot protection or DDoS mitigation, available with other WAF vendors, do not come natively with AWS WAF. Instead, they are part of AWS Shield. Providing DDoS protection as part of their WAF solution would be beneficial.
FC
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…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations."
"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
"Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website."
"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."
"It's very user-friendly."
"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."
"The most valuable features of AWS WAF are its cloud-native and on-demand."
"The access instruction feature is the most valuable. This is what we use the most."
"AWS WAF has a lot of integrated features and services. For example, there are security services that can be integrated very well for our customers."
"One of the most valuable features of AWS WAF is its ability to filter web app traffic, allowing us to specify conditions such as IP addresses and HTTP headers."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ability to integrate central sets. It protects from intrusion attacks such as scripting and SQL injections."
"The tool’s stability is very good."
"Its best feature is that it is on the cloud and does not require local hardware resources."
"The product’s most valuable is WAF. The authentication feature helps us protect WordPress sites."
 

Cons

"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"For large enterprises, the pricing is okay. However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high. A mid-tier pricing option would be beneficial."
"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."
"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"If they improve on the placement of their data centers, it would be better. I'm living in a remote area. I would like to connect to them without any kind of lag."
"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."
"When users choose the free service, there isn't great support available to them."
"There is a lot of innovation talk, however, implementation might be lacking."
"The product could be improved by expanding the weightage units of rules."
"The solution could be more reliable."
"AWS WAF would be better if it uses AI or machine learning to detect a potential attack or a potential IP that creates an attack even before it happens. I want AWS WAF to capture the IP and automatically write the rule to automate the entire process."
"It would be good if the solution provided managed WAF services."
"One area for improvement in AWS WAF could be the limitation on the number of rules, particularly those from third-party sources, within the free tier."
"Technical support for AWS WAF needs improvement."
"The product’s performance for caching feature needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I give the price a five out of ten."
"The price is reasonable."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
"There are no separate licensing costs we pay for since it is included in the plan we purchase."
"AWS WAF has reasonable pricing."
"The pricing should be more affordable, especially as it pertains to small clients."
"AWS WAF has reasonable pricing."
"The product is moderately priced."
"It's cheap."
"It has a variable pricing scheme."
"For our infrastructure, we probably pay around $16,000 per month for AWS WAF. Because alternative WAF solutions provide even more features, I think the AWS WAF is a bit pricey"
"The product is affordable."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
21%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 are the limitations of AWS WAF vs alternative WAFs?
Hi Varun, I have had experienced with several WAF deployments and deep technical assessments of the following: 1. Im...
How does AWS WAF compare to Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Web Application Firewall or Microsoft...
What do you like most about AWS WAF?
The most valuable feature of AWS WAF is its highly configurable rules system.
What do you like most about StackPath WAF?
The product’s most valuable is WAF. The authentication feature helps us protect WordPress sites.
What needs improvement with StackPath WAF?
The product’s performance for caching feature needs improvement. It could provide high security to handle large traff...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
AWS Web Application Firewall
StackPath Web Application Firewall
 

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.
eVitamins, 9Splay, Senao International
Robotics Cats, Jewlr
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, F5 and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: February 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.