Azure Front Door vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway comparison

Azure Front Door vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

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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:

ROI

Sentiment score

7.6

Cloudflare WAF offers quick ROI, crucial protection for e-commerce, saves bandwidth, and balances cost with valuable free features.

Sentiment score

6.9

Azure Front Door offers ROI through cost reduction, quick setup, and simplified management, prompting proactive adoption amid system phase-out.

Sentiment score

6.1

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway enhances ROI by reducing infrastructure costs, simplifying setup, and using cost management tools for accurate assessments.

My experience with the pricing or licensing of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is that many features can be accessed for free, so the pricing is definitely reasonable.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Owner at Hga consulting

Azure Front Door offers a quick return on investment once it is set up.

For more quotes and insights, download the Azure Front Door report

Co-Founder at arpa

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway significantly impacts our cost savings while maintaining higher performance.

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

If we can use a shared resource, then the return on investment is really nice.

Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

We have seen a return on investment in terms of time-saving and cost-saving by not creating our own infrastructure.

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

Information Security and Compliance Officer at Carnation

Customer Service

Sentiment score

6.3

Cloudflare WAF support is mixed; responsive for some, but Indian customers face call availability and administrative issues.

Sentiment score

7.1

Azure Front Door's customer service is mixed; some praise responsiveness and documentation, others find problem-solving quality inconsistent.

Sentiment score

6.4

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway support experiences vary; some praise expertise, while others criticize delays and inconsistent quality.

I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to contact them.

Owner at Hga consulting

The technical support of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall rates between five and seven at maximum.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

IT Manager at Amla Commerce

I am able to set up a critical call with Microsoft, and they respond quickly to tickets with the highest severity.

For more quotes and insights, download the Azure Front Door report

Co-Founder at arpa

I would say they provide the best support for Application Gateway because they own the product, so their support is top-notch.

Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

There is room for improvement, specifically in paid support, by providing more direct contact.

Information Security and Compliance Officer at Carnation

I would rate Microsoft support as good because they have a very skilled technical support team in the background

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

Cloud Head at White-Spunner & Associates

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

7.7

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall offers impressive scalability and automated management, but additional features may incur costs for smaller organizations.

Sentiment score

7.1

Azure Front Door offers scalable, reliable global capabilities, highly rated by users, though it may become costly with extensive use.

Sentiment score

7.4

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway provides scalable solutions but has mixed reviews regarding cost and ease of scaling and upgrades.

The scalability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall rates between 8 to 9, as it depends upon the use cases and what exactly the client needs.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

IT Manager at Amla Commerce

I find that Front Door can become expensive for large-scale projects with more transactions and users.

Azure Consultant at cloudshift

I consider the scalability of Azure Front Door to be strong.

For more quotes and insights, download the Azure Front Door report

Co-Founder at arpa

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is a very scalable product.

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

It has the autoscaling feature, so there is not much concern around performance; it can scale significantly.

Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is a scalable solution.

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

Cloud Head at White-Spunner & Associates

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

8.2

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is praised for stability, high performance, effective protection, daily use, and minimal downtime.

Sentiment score

8.4

Azure Front Door is praised for stability and performance, with minor DNS issues and advantages in updates via Azure Portal.

Sentiment score

7.6

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is stable and reliable, with high ratings, despite occasional issues due to misconfiguration.

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

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

IT Manager at Amla Commerce

I rate Azure Front Door's stability a nine because it is easy to make updates through Azure Portal.

For more quotes and insights, download the Azure Front Door report

Co-Founder at arpa

We have been using it for the past two to three years, and there have been good results with no problems so far.

Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

The stability is good, and except for a few instances, I don't see the non-availability of Azure Cloud services.

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

Cloud Head at White-Spunner & Associates

Room For Improvement

Cloudflare WAF needs feature enhancements, better usability, improved support, advanced DDoS protection, and solutions for latency and alerts.

Azure Front Door needs improvements in multi-cloud support, pricing, user interface, DDoS protection, and enhanced functionalities as per feedback.

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is criticized for high costs, complexity, lacking documentation, and needing improvements in security, scalability, and support.

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

reviewer2012637

Network Architect at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

I think they're doing a good job with DNS and as support for any domains that I create or that my clients create, it's mandatory for me to ensure they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Owner at Hga consulting

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.

Dean Barisic

CTO at PlayNirvana

If I could use Azure Front Door with private IP addresses, it would be more beneficial.

Azure Consultant at cloudshift

It relies on the WAF module where users must configure rate-limiting rules, as it does not automatically sense malicious spikes in traffic.

reviewer2226693

Architect at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees

The only significant adjustment required is with URL set parameters that need to be passed for an existing domain.

For more quotes and insights, download the Azure Front Door report

Co-Founder at arpa

One feature I mentioned is the support for non-HTTPS protocols such as TCP, which could allow one endpoint for all kinds of protocols.

Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

There is room for improvement in terms of support, such as assigning agents directly for more straightforward engagement.

Information Security and Compliance Officer at Carnation

In future releases of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, I would like to see more AI functionalities and a better dashboard as well as some customizations.

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

Setup Cost

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall offers affordable, flexible pricing with no upfront costs, noted for competitiveness and included support services.

Azure Front Door offers flexible, tiered pricing praised for balancing cost and features, though premium levels may seem expensive.

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway's cost is debated; appreciated for scalability but potentially expensive with additional fees compared to AWS.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Azure Front Door is cheaper for small projects, companies, or applications compared to using separate tools.

For more quotes and insights, download the Azure Front Door report

Azure Consultant at cloudshift

We would prefer to have it cheaper, but it is still expensive.

Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Azure solutions are quite expensive.

Information Security and Compliance Officer at Carnation

When it comes to pricing for Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, I would rate it a seven out of ten.

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

Valuable Features

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall provides comprehensive security features, easy setup, scalability, and competitive pricing with praised performance and stability.

Azure Front Door enhances security, performance, and global reach with features like SSL offloading, load-balancing, and traffic analytics.

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway provides secure, efficient traffic management with integration, automation, and scalability benefits for straightforward application deployment.

The custom rules and the geo-redundant geographical rule feature, which allows me to implement geographical rules for customers, add significant value.

reviewer2012637

Network Architect at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

The best features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall are multiple, including the WAF, rate limiter, and bot attack protection.

IT Manager at Amla Commerce

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools add a layer that we're able to visualize and see before it actually hits the local firewall.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Owner at Hga consulting

Azure Front Door provides DDoS protection and features related to WAF.

Azure Consultant at cloudshift

Azure Front Door includes a built-in web application firewall, which performs signature-based checks of the request payload, offering protection against common attacks or malicious requests.

For more quotes and insights, download the Azure Front Door report

Co-Founder at arpa

We are using it for some of the security features for our applications, particularly for securing traffic in transit with SSL.

Information Security and Compliance Officer at Carnation

The Web Application Firewall (WAF) in Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has been very effective in protecting applications from security threats.

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

The gateway's Web Application Firewall feature enhances security as it is the first entry point to your network from the outside world.

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

Cloud Head at White-Spunner & Associates

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare Web Application ...

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 5.6%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Front Door is 3.5%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is 5.4%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway	5.4%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall	5.6%
Azure Front Door	3.5%
Other	85.5%

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Q&A Highlights

Netanya Carmi

Content Manager at PeerSpot

Nov 07, 2021

What's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?

We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides excellent support. Azure Front Door can quickly detect abnormalities before the traffic comes into the application. Azure Front Door is a very affordable global solution. It would be better, though, if the solution worked with multiple cloud defenders. Currently, it can only be used with the Azure cloud. The WAF feature with Azure Application Gateway is extremely valuable to us. It is a key feature we were looking for in a traffic load balancer. Azure Application Gateway integrates well with other solutions and we have found it to be excellent at catching attacks and stopping suspicious content. It is a regional solution that has no limitations in terms of scalability. We would like to see the monitoring improved, with better reporting capabilities. We would also like to see Azure Application Gateway allow for better filtering on traffic protocols; sometimes traffic that should have been allowed access has been cut off due to strict security presets. If we could see everything that was going on in the system, it would make the security center in Azure Application Gateway much better. Conclusion: These two solutions are similarly effective in the services and features they provide. They both offer great pricing and outstanding support. There are even some scenarios where Azure Application Gateway should be deployed behind Azure Front Door. The major difference is that Azure Front Door is a global service and Azure Application Gateway is a regional service, so they have very different capabilities. We were looking for a regional solution to satisfy our client and we found the added WAF feature of the Azure Application Gateway a much-desired feature for our team and our clients with specific regional needs. We also found that Azure Application Gateway integrated better with more solutions and met our client's needs more effectively.

Advanced security reporting has protected high-traffic betting platforms from constant attacks

Featured Reviews

Dean Barisic

CTO at PlayNirvana

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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reviewer2226693

Architect at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees

Optimizing global application performance with robust security measures and advanced traffic management

DDoS capabilities in Azure Front Door could certainly be improved. Although Microsoft states it comes with basic DDoS protections out of the box, I find it often ineffectual in mitigating thousands of requests from a single source in a short span of time. User then have to rely on the WAF module where users must configure rate-limiting rules, as it does not automatically sense malicious spikes in traffic. I believe Front Door should have an out-of-the-box premium DDoS protection that can automatically detect and block malicious traffic. I would appreciate improvements in the turnaround time for support, especially since issues with Azure Front Door are usually critical for businesses. If there is an issue, it often results in downtime for line of business applications. I have faced this situation multiple times as one of the largest financial institutions in India is hosted there, adhering to strict SLAs that require prompt responses.

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Mutual TLS has secured our web services and now needs broader protocol support

Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

The most valuable feature we have found in Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is mutual TLS. We find mutual TLS valuable because we can verify the client securely by setting up the trust certificate of the client, and also if we do it at the client side as well. This successfully develops mutual trust, ensuring that we know the client who is calling our service is a legitimate client. That is a very nice feature.Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has helped manage our traffic efficiently because we have many web services that we can put behind the same URL, and we can have different URLs with the same Application Gateway with a limited number of listeners. We can do host-based routing as well as URL-based routing or path-based routing. It supports both, so we can have even a single URL supporting many applications, or we can have different URLs for different applications respectively. We have both use cases.

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882,637 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	9

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	22
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	24

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.

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

I don't really use the rule-based logic feature or utilize the WAF's ability to scale as a cloud-based service. I don...

What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

I'm using Cloudflare Web Application Firewall on all my domains and any client domains I have; I set them up with a C...

What's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?

We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Front Door?

I am not sure about the pricing but believe Azure Front Door might require a higher cost due to its entry point nature.

What needs improvement with Azure Front Door?

DDoS capabilities in Azure Front Door could certainly be improved. Although Microsoft states it comes with basic DDoS...

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 Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?

Application Gateway automatically redirects unwanted users and takes care of the security aspect. It also handles the...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?

Regarding the pricing and licensing of Application Gateway, it is not cheap because the version we are using is WAF V...

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Comparisons

Compared 9% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 6% 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

Huawei Cloud WAF vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 4% of the time

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall Competitors

Amazon CloudFront vs Azure Front Door

Compared 14% of the time

Cloudflare vs Azure Front Door

Compared 14% of the time

Akamai vs Azure Front Door

Compared 9% of the time

AWS Global Accelerator vs Azure Front Door

Compared 9% of the time

NGINX App Protect vs Azure Front Door

Compared 2% of the time

More Azure Front Door Competitors

F5 Advanced WAF vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 8% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 8% of the time

HAProxy vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 7% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 7% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway Competitors

Product Reports

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Download Cloudflare Web Application Firewall product report

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Azure Front Door

Download Azure Front Door product report

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Download Microsoft Azure Application Gateway product report

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF

Azure Front-Door

Azure Application Gateway, MS Azure Application Gateway

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

Azure Front Door enhances web application performance and security by leveraging traffic inspection, SSL offloading, and a web application firewall. It enables intelligent routing, load balancing, and global resource deployment while providing essential features for online application security.

Azure Front Door integrates GitOps for seamless deployment, offering significant capabilities in giant networks like CDN functionalities and DDoS protection. Its advanced configurations include traffic analytics and transit layer security. Despite its affordability and scalability, users see room for improvement in global load balancing and private IP address support, citing integration challenges with other cloud vendors. The interface may appear complex, and some users desire more transparent pricing, better DDoS defenses, and enhanced monitoring. This platform is especially beneficial for securing external traffic and optimizing content delivery, providing DNS integration and disaster recovery mechanisms.

What are the key features of Azure Front Door?

Traffic Inspection: Enhances security with comprehensive traffic analysis at the network level.
SSL Offloading: Streamlines SSL certificate management and encryption processes.
Web Application Firewall: Offers protection against web vulnerabilities and threats.
Global Resource Implementation: Facilitates deployment across multiple regions.
Intelligent Routing and Load Balancing: Optimizes traffic distribution for efficient performance.
Bot and DDoS Protection: Shields applications from malicious traffic and attacks.
CDN Capabilities: Accelerates content delivery with local caching and optimized routing.

What benefits and ROI should users expect?

Affordability: Provides robust features at competitive pricing.
Scalability: Adapts easily to growing traffic demands and business needs.
Security: Delivers comprehensive defenses against cyber threats.
Performance Optimization: Enhances application responsiveness and delivery speed.
Global Reach: Supports globally distributed applications with ease.

In industries focusing on online presence and global user engagement, Azure Front Door is invaluable for optimizing web application performance. E-commerce platforms deploy it to secure transactions and enhance load times. Media companies leverage its CDN and security features to ensure seamless content delivery. Enterprises with international operations find it crucial for reliable and secure data access across regions.

Microsoft

Azure Application Gateway is a web traffic load balancer that enables you to manage traffic to your web applications. Traditional load balancers operate at the transport layer (OSI layer 4 - TCP and UDP) and route traffic based on source IP address and port, to a destination IP address and port.

To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk

Information Not Available

Lilly, AccuWeather, AIRFRANCE, Honeywell

Azure Front Door vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway