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Azure Firewall vs Check Point NGFW comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

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

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Ranking in Firewalls
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
318
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
Azure Firewall
Ranking in Firewalls
16th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (10th)
Check Point NGFW
Ranking in Firewalls
6th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
307
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 20.8%, up from 17.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Firewall is 2.2%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Check Point NGFW is 3.0%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls
 

Q&A Highlights

NC
Feb 03, 2022
 

Featured Reviews

EhabAli - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient, user-friendly, and affordable
In the past, NSS Labs was utilized to test files and verify the numbers and datasheets. It would be beneficial to have an organization or testing lab that can verify the numbers in our datasheets since changes are frequently made, which can be inconvenient for review. For instance, when comparing different competitors such as Forcepoint, Palo Alto, and Check Point, the throughput or numbers in the datasheet may be lower than the actual numbers. Conversely, Fortinet typically reports very high numbers, but they cannot be replicated in the real world. Therefore, it would be advantageous for them to partner with a neutral testing organization such as NSS Labs to validate these numbers, thus providing more credibility and comfort to everyone regarding the accuracy of the datasheets. For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial. This tool shows a lot of promise and is very good. Making it free would help many companies deliver their products in a more efficient and integrated way. It would also be more valuable to include the tool with the firewall package or license instead of having to pay extra for it. Paying extra puts more pressure on small companies to deliver the firewall and complete the configuration, especially if they have hundreds or thousands of policies. It's very painful to move through these policies line by line. The stability has room for improvement. When it comes to Secure SD-WAN, everything is fine. They are going the right way. SD-WAN is very promising. They can provide the SD-WAN solution separately, but they will not take this approach because even the smallest firewall can support the features, so there is no need to have a separate service or appliance. They are following the right steps, and there is nothing to be improved. Feature-wise, I'm really satisfied with the new release, and the features they have added. For now, it's fine.
Charan Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use and configure but could be more robust
The cost of the solution has increased. The robustness of the software could be better. It should be able to cover host-to-host traffic or HTTP traffic. Configurations can be better. The workloads need to still have free access. The encryption and decryption process is not that seamless. It's a little heavy compared to a FortiGate or other firewalls.
Manikandan Kannan - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlined management through dual-interface configuration capabilities with excellent support
We use Check Point NGFW for security purposes. Our clients use it for security reasons, as mentioned during the call The most valuable feature is the availability of two consoles. In the normal GA login, I can create interfaces and configure interface IPs, while in the SmartConsole, I manage the…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like that they have given me a solution at a fair price."
"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is good to use, and most importantly, the pricing. The customer especially likes the discount when they trade up or something like that."
"It is quite easy to handle."
"Using this product makes the VPN seamless and almost invisible to me in the sense that I don't have to think about it."
"UTM/NGFW features and FortiCloud for logs and backups are awesome."
"The IPsec tunnels are very easily created, and quite interoperable with devices from other vendors."
"The wireless control is helpful."
"We have found it to be very reliable and that's why our teams and various users in our company use it as our main firewall every day."
"It's helped us improve our security posture."
"Among the most valuable features are the DDoS protection that protects your virtual machines, the threat intelligence, and traffic filtering."
"I think that one of the best features is definitely the premium version, along with the IDPs in terms of the intrusion detection and prevention system."
"All its features are good. That's why we recommend it."
"The solution is very stable. When comparing it to other environments, it's actually quite impressive."
"The product's value to my company stems from its ability to secure my organization."
"I like that you can deploy the policies separately from the firewall."
"We use the solution for application and server deployment."
"Policy configuration has been consistent over the years, so there is not much of a learning curve as upgrades are released."
"Check Point is very administrator-friendly and the SmartDashboard is easy to use."
"There are also additional features, compared to a Layer 4 or Layer 3 firewall, such as AV signatures and devices, which are very helpful for securing the company's network."
"It secures my organization. With the application blade, I can make security as application based and the custom application is also very useful. With identity awareness blades we get insights on our local users who are accessing/passing through the respective rule as users. We also use the DLP, IPS, and VPN features."
"It is easy to control from the central management system. For example, if we have 10 firewalls, and we want to push that same configuration among them, we can use this solution's central management system to do that simultaneously. So, there is time saving in that way. The time savings does depend on the situation. For example, if I am running half an hour of work on each firewall, that will take around 300 minutes. However, if I do this work from the central management system, then it will only take 30 minutes to push the same configuration to those same 10 devices."
"It is giving us a greater reach for greater prevention and is proactively protecting our employees."
"In a single bundle we have the all solutions we need - like application/URL filtering, and threat emulation/extraction."
"The central management and logging are frankly one of the top selling points."
 

Cons

"The price of FortiGate should be reduced because there are some other leading products that are cheaper."
"The user interface could be improved to make it less confusing and easier to set up."
"The feature which gives us a lot of pain is ASIC architecture."
"It should be more stable. There should be full integration within Fortinet products themselves as well as with other third-party products. Especially when you're not dealing with SIEM and the correlation of the security box, we want Fortinet to be able to share that information with as many other products as it can."
"Its price could be better."
"It is stable, but its stability can be improved."
"Fortinet FortiGate can be integrated with different platforms. They have integrations in place, but I can't say they're 100%."
"Fortinet FortiGate should improve the VPN tokens."
"The development area and QA area could be improved. With those improvements, we can improve projects and take even less time to implement them."
"The tool needs to improve the onboarding and transition process for on-prem users."
"You have to have a defined IP range within your network to associate it with your network. The problem is you have to plan ahead of time if you expect to use the firewall in the future so that you don't have to reconfigure your subnets or that specific IP range. Other than that, I don't any issues. I use it for basic configuration for a single application, so I really don't try to leverage it for multiple applications where I might find some complexity or challenges."
"It has fewer features than you can get from other firewalls, like anti-spam and anti-phishing. Those kinds of things are not included. It only includes IDS and IDB."
"Azure Firewall is an expensive solution. On a scale from one to ten, where one is not affordable, I would rate the price as a three."
"This solution is not mature when it comes to handling perimeter traffic like internet browsing."
"The solution lacks artificial intelligence and machine learning. It might be in the roadmap. However, currently, it's not available."
"Azure Firewall definitely needs a broader feature base. It should be able to go all the way up to layer 7 when looking at applications and things like that."
"It should be user-friendly from an implementation point of view. Its setup is a little bit difficult."
"Check Point could do better to include acceleration technologies like SD-WAN in an integrated or embedded way to provide these new features that Check Point never had and is of great importance in the market."
"No product is perfect and there is always room for improvement."
"The virtual infrastructure of the central management requires a huge amount of resources to work properly and manage all the logs without problems."
"Check Point's support, at all levels, needs a complete overhaul."
"The command line is very difficult to use, which is one of the biggest drawbacks of this solution."
"This solution requires management software that is sold separately; it's actually a different appliance altogether."
"Check Point would benefit from having a single console for both basic and policy configurations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is fair for what we get with FortiGate."
"It's expensive, but compared to the competition it's okay."
"It was worth the money overall. It's good value."
"You need to pay a license for this solution. Our licensing is now done in our subsidiary."
"The pricing of the solution is very competitive."
"Go for long term pricing negotiated at the time of purchase."
"Fortinet FortiGate is expensive."
"As far as I'm aware, in our case, it's just a yearly pricing arrangement with no additional licensing costs."
"The licensing module is good."
"The solution is cheaper than other brands. My company has an enterprise contract and we finally got a good price with Azure."
"Azure Firewalls operate on a pay-as-you-go model, similar to cloud services."
"Before choosing this solution, we evaluated others, and we found this to be the most cost-effective."
"The total cost of ownership is much less than Palo Alto, Cisco, or any other brand."
"Azure Firewall comes with Azure native services. We did not buy any kind of license for it. Whether you have a free subscription or a pay-as-you-go model, you can deploy the Azure Firewall service... The amount that you use will determine how much you pay."
"It is pay-as-you-go. So, you pay based on the usage. If I remember it well, there is a basic fee, and there is a traffic fee. It is not per month. It is per hour or something like that. It is not so expensive."
"It is expensive, especially with the premium functions. For one of the clients, it was very expensive. You have to use it more at an enterprise level, and there, it was not at an enterprise level. So, it was very costly, but security-wise, it was a very wise decision to use it that way."
"One of the main reasons that we went with Check Point is that they provide a good solution for a firewall but at an affordable price. As a state agency, we can't afford Cisco Firepower. It's just out of our budget to be able to pay for something where licensing and hardware are so expensive. Check Point has really met our needs for a budget-friendly solution."
"Comparatively, Check Point pricing is a little high. However, if you have that budget, I would recommend anybody to go with Check Point."
"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten. It costs around 100,000-200,000 dollars per month. Besides standard licensing fees, we paid extra for enterprise-level premium support. There were also onboarding costs factored in. These additional costs made it more expensive overall. The total cost was around 100,000 dollars, which was challenging for our budget. Check Point was also pricey, not much different from Palo Alto Networks. However, we decided switching to Check Point was better because it offered more capabilities for a similar price."
"The price is too high."
"It's expensive."
"The pricing and licensing are pretty steep. They know that they are good, so they are pricey."
"Pricing is a little high compared to competitive firewalls, but it is easy to go through the licensing steps."
"The price could be better. I think Palo Alto pricing is high, and Check Point isn't much better. FortiGate is cheaper. I think when I implemented this solution, I recommended buying a yearly subscription."
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Answers from the Community

NC
Feb 3, 2022
Feb 3, 2022
Azure Firewall is easy to use and provides excellent support. Valuable features include integration into the overall cloud platform, autoscaling, and the ability for users to create virtual IP addresses. The cost of the solution is also competitive. Check Point NGFW solution offers zero-day protection and provides absolute in-depth visibility with a multi-layer, multi-blade approach. This solut...
See 2 answers
Oct 24, 2021
Azure Firewall is easy to use and provides excellent support. Valuable features include integration into the overall cloud platform, autoscaling, and the ability for users to create virtual IP addresses. The cost of the solution is also competitive. Check Point NGFW solution offers zero-day protection and provides absolute in-depth visibility with a multi-layer, multi-blade approach. This solution has a Smart Controller that allows you to manage all firewalls from one single location. It also has good antivirus protection and knowledgeable, responsive support. Check Point NGFW is cost-effective and provides valuable support to get through required compliance audits. For Azure Firewall you have to specify each IP address used. We also found Azure to be challenging to implement from region to region, as it does not currently offer a universal approach across regions. Support can be very slow to respond and has caused us some downtime, affecting productivity and overall satisfaction. Check Point NGFW VPN can be very complex to set up. The deployment can be more challenging than many other solutions on the market. Although once fully deployed, things do get easier. Debugging can also be very difficult and makes it seem less stable than other solutions out there. Training and support could be better overall. Conclusion Azure is great, especially since almost everyone is part of the Azure ecosystem. However, it may not be the best solution for larger enterprises, as stability is limited, and the scale-up scale-out approach needs improvement. Check Point can be very challenging to set up and deploy, but the unique multi-layer, multi-blade approach gives greater flexibility and transparency, which makes it a great option for larger enterprises with more complex, intricate needs.
Anil Redekar - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 3, 2022
Check Point firewall does a deep inspection of packets till Layer 7 and is more compatible with the organizational environment.  The Azure firewall is also a cloud-based security solution that also provides Advance Threat Protection. 
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
59%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Government
3%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?
When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...
What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?
From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...
What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?
As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...
What is a better choice, Azure Firewall or Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls?
Azure Firewall Vs. Palo Alto Network NG Firewalls Both solutions provide stellar stability and security. Azure Firew...
How does Azure Firewall compare with Palo Alto Networks VM Series?
Both products are very stable and easily scalable. The setup of Azure Firewall is easy and very user-friendly and the...
Which would you recommend - FortiGate VM or Azure Firewall?
Both of these solutions are excellent options that provide flexible scalability and solid security. Fortinet Fortigat...
How does Check Point NGFW compare with Fortinet Fortigate?
I have experience on both from Disti and channel experience. Please find below my comments (nothing new as such). -Ch...
Which would you recommend - Azure Firewall or Check Point NGFW?
Azure Firewall is easy to use and provides excellent support. Valuable features include integration into the overall ...
What do you like most about Check Point NGFW?
Check Point NGFW provides essential security, featuring no-obligation access for secure connections, strong intrusion...
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
No data available
Check Point NG Firewall, Check Point Next Generation Firewall
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya
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Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Firewall vs. Check Point NGFW and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.