Azure Web Application Firewall vs NGINX App Protect comparison

Microsoft and F5 are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Microsoft is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.2, while F5 is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.8. Additionally, 91% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of F5 users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

NGINX App Protect and Azure Web Application Firewall are competitors in the web application security space. Azure appears to have the upper hand due to its ease of integration within its ecosystem and cost-effective pricing options.

Features: NGINX App Protect is known for its flexibility, reverse proxy capabilities, and open-source nature. It is effective in managing HTTP sessions and traffic inspection while offering command-line interface support. Azure Web Application Firewall is highlighted for its easy configuration, seamless Azure ecosystem integration, and effective request filtering with custom rules.

Room for Improvement: NGINX App Protect could improve its flexibility in configuration and face challenges with integration and throughput. It also needs better dashboard views and simpler policy management. Azure Web Application Firewall could enhance its documentation and provide clearer deployment tutorials. It would benefit from more affordable pricing plans for medium to small enterprises.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NGINX App Protect supports both on-premises and cloud environments but has inconsistent technical support. Azure Web Application Firewall is easier to deploy within Azure with generally good support, though improvements are needed for non-Microsoft environments.

Pricing and ROI: NGINX App Protect offers varied pricing based on needs and is considered expensive, though beneficial for network security. Azure Web Application Firewall offers flexible, enterprise-friendly pricing, making it attractive for larger deployments, though attention to cost management is essential.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Web Application Firewall vs. NGINX App Protect Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Web Application Firewall vs. NGINX App Protect

January 2025

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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:

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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Saurav Kumar

Senior security architecture at National Payment Corporation Of India

Offers protection to users from external threats

NGINX App Protect secures our company's application, and it has helped me a lot, considering that we have critical infrastructure in India where we see how lots of attacks come onto our organization's servers. The tool offers protection against multiple threats present in India's IT ecosystem. The tool helps our company to make our payments secure, meaning it has the ability to provide a secure payment environment in India. Speaking about the improvements in our company's application performance since implementing NGINX App Protect, the gRPC support for the solution is very low. My company is not getting any proper documentation on how to deploy gRPC over NGINX App Protect. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. People can use the product as their company's base server, WAF, or for its proxy manager, depending on the business requirements. My company follows PCI DSS compliance because we operate in a payment-related industry. Right now, my company follows all the standards, so we comply with all the requirements and policies. I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

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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

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

"The technical support is good."

"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"

"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."

"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."

"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules."

"The tool is user-friendly."

"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."

More Cloudflare pros

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

"The integration it has with GitHub is great."

"It's a good option if you want a solution that's ready to go and easy for your team to learn. It's cloud-based, so you don't need to buy or maintain any hardware infrastructure."

"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."

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

"Azure WAF is extremely stable."

More Azure Web Application Firewall pros

"It is a very good tool for load balancing."

"It is a stable solution."

"The most valuable feature of NGINX App Protect is the reverse proxy."

"It has the best documentation features."

"NGINX App Protect is stable."

"There's a cache, or it works like a proxy, so it can speed up applications."

"I tested specific features and evaluated the solution against the Web Application Firewall. I conducted research to test different detection percentages. I did not use it directly for protection but for evaluation purposes."

"The tool is not complex and is very user-friendly."

More NGINX App Protect pros

Cons

"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."

"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."

"Cloudflare does not have an on-premise solution. If they had different approaches they could be better suited to accommodate more customers, such as on-premise and hybrid deployments. For example, hybrid deployments would be useful where you could move the traffic from the enterprise to the cloud."

"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."

"The pricing could be improved."

"The product needs to improve its automation."

"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."

"Latencies are always a problem."

More Cloudflare cons

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

"The knowledge base could be improved."

"The documentation needs to be improved."

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

"The support for proxy forwarding could improve."

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

"There is a need to be able to configure the solution more."

"We would like to see additional site services using AI to provide information about blocking requests and offer analytics on the origin of calls."

More Azure Web Application Firewall cons

"The solution needs to be improved in the e-commerce portal."

"The product's price is high, making it an area of concern where improvements are required. The tool's licensing model is also not good."

"NGINX App Protect would be improved with integration with Shape and F5 WAF, which would make it easy for users to manage all their web application security with a single solution."

"Its technical support could be better."

"The setup of NGINX App Protect is complex. The full process took one week to complete. Additionally, we had to change the network infrastructure platform which took one month."

"It's challenging if you need to go for a high throughput."

"Setting policies and parameters through the UI should be more automated because the process is manual, where we can only edit one rule at a time."

"The integration of NGINX App Protect could improve."

More NGINX App Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

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

"The price is reasonable."

"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."

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

"We don't have any issues with the price."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

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

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

"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."

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

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

"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 price of NGINX App Protect is approximately $3,000 annually. All of our licenses are observed by a managed service partner."

"There are no additional fees."

"There is a license needed to use NGINX App Protect."

"The licensing fees for this solution are pretty expensive for what it does, but there is no alternative."

"NGINX is not expensive."

"There is a monthly or annual subscription to use NGINX App Protect. There are not any additional costs to the subscription."

"The product's price is high."

"There are not any additional costs we had to pay to use NGINX App Protect."

More NGINX App Protect pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

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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

19%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Comms Service Provider

Healthcare 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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What do you like most about Azure Web Application Firewall?

The integration it has with GitHub is great.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about NGINX App Protect?

It's very easy to deploy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX App Protect?

The product's price is high.

See all answers

What needs improvement with NGINX App Protect?

The product's price is high, making it an area of concern where improvements are required. The tool's licensing model...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 49% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% 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

Imperva Web Application Firewall vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 3% of the time

More Azure Web Application Firewall Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 22% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 15% of the time

AWS WAF vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 10% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 10% of the time

Haltdos Enterprise WAF vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 3% of the time

More NGINX App Protect Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

January 2025

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

December 2024

Download Azure Web Application Firewall product report

Buyer's Guide

NGINX App Protect

December 2024

Download NGINX App Protect product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

NGINX WAF, NGINX Web Application Firewall

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.

NGINX App Protect application security solution combines the efficacy of advanced F5 web application firewall (WAF) technology with the agility and performance of NGINX Plus. The solution runs natively on NGINX Plus and addresses some of the most difficult challenges facing modern DevOps environments:

Integrating security controls directly into the development automation pipeline
Applying and managing security for modern and distributed application environments such as containers and microservices
Providing the right level of security controls without impacting release and go-to-market velocity
Complying with security and regulatory requirements

NGINX App Protect offers:

Expanded security beyond basic signatures to ensure adequate controls
F5 app‑security technology for efficacy superior to ModSecurity and other WAFs
Confidently run in “blocking” mode in production with proven F5 expertise
High‑confidence signatures for extremely low false positives
Increases visibility, integrating with third‑party analytics solutions
Integrates security and WAF natively into the CI/CD pipeline
Deploys as a lightweight software package that is agnostic of underlying infrastructure
Facilitates declarative policies for “security as code” and integration with DevOps tools
Decreases developer burden and provides feedback loop for quick security remediation
Accelerates time to market and reduces costs with DevSecOps‑automated security

Sample Customers

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

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Buyer's Guide

Azure Web Application Firewall vs. NGINX App Protect

January 2025

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Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Web Application Firewall vs. NGINX App Protect and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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