Azure Web Application Firewall vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway comparison

Azure Web Application Firewall vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

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Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

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.

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Thomas Zebar

Azure Principal Architect at Cloud Computech Consultancy

Is priced well, is stable, and the initial setup is straightforward

I previously used Barracuda Web Application Firewall. I hope that Azure Web Application Firewall will look at other products and replicate some of their functionality. Azure WAF is doing great because it is designed to host web applications in Azure. However, it can be improved with other services. Barracuda is the most advanced firewall in the industry, so Azure WAF could pick some of its features and replicate them into its own application firewall. Barracuda WAF was deployed in parallel to the traffic. Azure WAF should not be deployed in the middle of the traffic. It should support both public and private points of presence. Additionally, like Barracuda, Azure WAF should have an inspection engine that covers not just Microsoft products, but also products from other manufacturers. This would be a great addition to the product and would increase its security functionality.

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Sami

Cyber Security Consultant at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

High stability with built-in rules that reduce alerts and are easy to configure

The graphical interface needs improvement because it is not user friendly. There isn't a standardized process for blocking IPs. IPs need to be blocked individually, whether one or one hundred. A normal scenario would be to copy and paste multiple IPs at the same time but the solution does not offer this option. Updating takes a long time and is up to the WAF. In most cases, we prepare scripts to handle these updates.

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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

"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."

"The UI is good."

"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."

"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."

"Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. You don't necessarily need a certificate if you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host."

"The tool is user-friendly."

"Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick."

"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."

More Cloudflare pros

"It's great for protecting against DDoS attacks."

"The most valuable feature is that it allows us to publish our applications behind the firewall."

"Azure WAF is extremely stable."

"It's quite a stable product and works well with Microsoft products."

"The most valuable feature of Azure Web Application Firewall is its ability to filter requests and block false positives by using custom rules and the OWASP rule set."

"The initial setup is easy and straightforward...Azure Web Application Firewall is a scalable product."

"We have found the most valuable features to be the web application, minimal skills required for management, control through policies, and automation."

"The solution has good dashboards."

More Azure Web Application Firewall pros

"The most valuable feature is WAF."

"I like the tool's stability and performance."

"The solution provides great automation and it is easy to upgrade service."

"The product's initial setup phase was easy."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the web application firewall (WAF)."

"The tool is easy to use and quite flexible. It has policy management features as well. The solution screens all traffic to our web applications before passing it to the application. We recently tested it on one of our poorly developed applications, and the upgrade gave us a 100% result based on our tests. It's very effective as a security measure, and people can detect threats even through the web application."

"We chose this solution in the first place because it has access to Layer 7. I can control the requests and the content, which I can access on my network if I want to even if it's forbidden access to other external resources. If I want to monitor, for example, traffic, and apply this rule on Layer 7, I can do so. This was our main goal when implementing this application. We wanted to take advantage of the Gateway capabilities."

"I find Application Gateway’s WAF module valuable because it helps prevent layer 7 attacks."

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway pros

Cons

"There are some issues with the CDN services."

"One area of improvement is in the Access Rules. Hypothetically, if we wanted to block or challenge traffic outside of the United States, the only way to currently do that (as far as I know) is to enter every single country outside of the United States. That could be a labor intensive job. A solution could be to enable users to create a rule where traffic is only allowed within a certain country."

"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."

"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."

"Latencies are always a problem."

"The tool needs to improve caching of servers. The product needs to include PFX certificate as well."

"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."

"It should have easier documentation for the configuration. It's very technical and people who aren't technical should also be able to do the configuration."

More Cloudflare cons

"Azure WAF should not be deployed in the middle of the traffic."

"Deployment should be simplified so that a non-techie can handle it."

"The documentation needs to be improved."

"I would say that Azure's customer service is not that good...I am not very happy with the support offered."

"The management can be improved."

"In Brazil, we have some problems with the phone service that affect our connection with the cloud. However, it isn't common."

"From a reporting perspective, they could do more there."

"The knowledge base could be improved."

More Azure Web Application Firewall cons

"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is harder to manage than Imperva. It is not intuitive and stable compared to other products."

"The monitoring on the solution could be better."

"The support provided for the solution has certain shortcomings that need improvement, especially when it comes to the response time from the support team."

"I believe that there is room for improvement in terms of additional functionality. It is an advantage to have features readily available for configuration without needing customer-defined rules."

"The solution is easy to use overall, but the dashboard could be updated with a better layout and graphical design so that we can see the data a bit easier. Microsoft could also add more documentation. The documentation Microsoft provides doesn't tell us about resource requirements. We found that the instances we had weren't sufficient to support the firewall, so we had to increase them."

"The product's performance should be better."

"Needs easier integration with the existing SIAM."

"The increased security that we are considering is because of some of the things that the security team has brought to our attention. They have pointed out that we would most likely require a better web application firewall than Azure Application Gateway."

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"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."

"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The price is reasonable. It is approximately $2,000 US per month."

"The price of the solution depends on your architecture and how you manage it. You can control the cost in Azure quite well. The costs do not directly correlate to expenses in the features we are using."

"I give the pricing a nine out of ten."

"The price is for this solution is fair and there is a license needed."

"We have an enterprise agreement with Microsoft and the pricing is good."

"Azure WAF has price advantages over other WAF solutions. The pricing model is flexible because you pay on a scale based on the level of protection you need."

"The solution is fairly priced."

"The product is not expensive."

"The pricing is based on how much you use the solution."

"I rate the price of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway an eight out of ten."

"I would rate the pricing a three out of ten, with ten being cheap and one being expensive."

"The solution is cheaper than Imperva. I rate it four to five out of ten."

"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has less price than other application gateway solutions."

"The solution is reasonably priced compared to other solutions."

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.

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824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

25%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 do you like most about Azure Web Application Firewall?

The integration it has with GitHub is great.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Web Application Firewall?

The price is reasonable. It is approximately $2,000 US per month. This cost is one of the main reasons why we selecte...

What needs improvement with Azure Web Application Firewall?

Microsoft is constantly working on improvements. We would like to see additional site services using AI to provide in...

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...

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...

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 48% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Compared 4% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

AWS Shield vs Cloudflare

Compared 1% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

AWS WAF vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 43% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 12% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 4% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 4% of the time

More Azure Web Application Firewall Competitors

F5 Advanced WAF vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 14% of the time

AWS WAF vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 10% of the time

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 10% of the time

NetScaler vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 10% of the time

Imperva Web Application Firewall vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 7% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway Competitors

Product Reports

Cloudflare

Download Cloudflare product report

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Download Azure Web Application Firewall product report

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Download Microsoft Azure Application Gateway product report

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

Azure Application Gateway, MS Azure Application Gateway

Learn More

Cloudflare

Microsoft

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) provides centralized protection of your web applications from common exploits and vulnerabilities. Web applications are increasingly targeted by malicious attacks that exploit commonly known vulnerabilities. SQL injection and cross-site scripting are among the most common attacks.

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

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.

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

Information Not Available

Lilly, AccuWeather, AIRFRANCE, Honeywell

Azure Web Application Firewall vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway