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Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs NetScaler comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 30, 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

Cloudflare Web Application ...
Sponsored
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Barracuda Web Application F...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
17th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetScaler
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (1st), Network Management Applications (4th)
 

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 Barracuda Web Application Firewall is 2.0%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetScaler is 4.1%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall5.6%
NetScaler4.1%
Barracuda Web Application Firewall2.0%
Other88.3%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

DB
CTO at PlayNirvana
Advanced security reporting has protected high-traffic betting platforms from constant attacks
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.
Shahzad Abid - PeerSpot reviewer
Director Information Technology at College of Physicians & Surgeons Pakistan
Has protected our legacy applications effectively but has required constant manual filtering due to false positives
I assess the effectiveness of the machine learning-driven threat detection in Barracuda Web Application Firewall as sometimes behaving abnormally, often showing me false positive attacks, so I have to fix these attacks from time to time. From a stability point of view, I would definitely rate Barracuda Web Application Firewall a seven out of ten. There is definitely some room for improvement; nothing is perfect in the world. I am not satisfied with the technical support from Barracuda. I am somewhat disappointed with the technical support that I have received so far. Whenever I generate a ticket for my problem, it goes to the Indian support team, and they all the time start with the most junior team member, consuming all my precious time. At the end, I have to close that ticket without any satisfactory solution. I have complained that they should shift my support to any other region because I don't need Indian support; they are simply pathetic and not up to mark. To improve Barracuda Web Application Firewall, customers should be given ongoing training opportunities regarding the product and its features. I am not familiar with many features that are available, only using those which are necessary for my applications. I believe Barracuda must provide clearer product information or training sessions to make it more user-friendly, as sometimes its interface can be rigid and lacking in helpful resources or user tutorials about its features. For it to get closer to a ten, I think advanced reporting is missing because, as I mentioned earlier, there are many false positive events being recorded. Often, when I analyze these attacks, they turn out to be genuine customers or users interacting with my product, but Barracuda tags them as attackers. Reducing false positives must be a priority.
LD
Information Technology Division Director at Ethiopian Roads Administration
Offers better visibility into user sessions compared to other solutions
Improvements are needed to address the issue of machines becoming unregistered, ensuring stability for end users. Troubleshooting with Citrix support can be challenging, so clearer diagnostics would be beneficial. As for global server load balancing, it works well on-premises, depending on user volume and service stability. Overall, it's satisfactory for us.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The setup process is very simple for me."
"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."
"Cloudflare has positively impacted my organization by making it easier for me to handle and set up DNS for multiple clients; I can easily go in and access their accounts, make changes they need, and it's a one-stop shop."
"The product has a valuable security control functionality."
"The security features are valuable. The particular feature we use is called OWASP."
"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."
"I'm highly satisfied. It's remarkably user-friendly, enabling me to quickly identify issues, and deploy solutions, and it offers the necessary features."
"It protects web applications efficiently."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The installation is straightforward."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the simplicity of configuration."
"The product's advanced bot and threat protection capabilities are valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use and the signature base."
"The product has fantastic support services."
"The most valuable feature is the automatic content filtering."
"If an attack is coming continuously, you can ask the device to block it temporarily for two to three minutes. F5 has not provided us with an option to block certain IPs for some time. Barracuda can help you block someone if the source is from a different IP. You can apply the rule to the device and block it for whatsoever time you want. The solution will unblock the IP after the prescribed time as well."
"Citrix NetScaler offers robust security features, including SmartAccess and customizable policies, making it a reliable choice for safeguarding user data."
"I like app flows and custom flows. They integrate with multiple flows."
"The analytics are a great feature."
"The most valuable feature is the content switching."
"Its flexibility, agility, and robustness are the most valuable. Its management and implementation are also quite easy."
"The most valuable features are for the ADMs and the overall monitoring environment."
"We have good customer support."
"The advantage of Citrix Web App and API Protection is just its graphic user interface for beginners. The solution is nothing special, but we have to use it for the corporation. Another advantage of Citrix Web App and API Protection is that we have our copy to test things and get the know-how of it."
 

Cons

"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should include port forwarding features."
"They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long."
"We don't even use Cloudflare Bot Management because it's too expensive; you need to pay per request, and it's much cheaper to get one or two additional machines."
"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well. They have documentation for everything you're looking for, but they lack a single piece of documentation to tie everything together. As a new user or beginner, it took us a little bit of time to figure out how to put all these things in place."
"A key challenge arises when dealing with numerous integrations with HVAC systems. Depending on the specifics, there might be some configuration mismatches, which necessitate specific support."
"The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced"
"The incident reporting needs to be improved."
"There are false positives that I am receiving when compared to other WAFs."
"I have to go to an individual obligation, make changes, and come out, and go to the next obligation and make the same changes. There is no grouping option."
"There are issues when upgrading firewalls and we experience different issues across customers."
"This product could easily progress to be among the industry leaders. I think they need to improve enterprise level automation. It integrates with a small number of vulnerability scanners, so report results should be imported manually; same for SIEM integration."
"The usability of the interface could be improved."
"Barracuda Web Application Firewall's load balancing feature could be improved."
"Sometimes when we put it in action, we have some blogs that appear as false positives. I think that it's improving. Barracuda should minimize false positives."
"The product could be improved by making it easier to use and easier to implement."
"We had some bugs in the previous firmware. These were not big issues, but more testing on the firmware would be key to happier customers."
"The interface could be improved, some customers struggle with that."
"The interface needs to be improved because the competition is coming up with ones that are more eye-catching, straightforward, and sophisticated."
"Their upgrades are not very backward compatible, and sometimes they mess up."
"The main areas for improvement would be around documentation and support. If a feature can be used in two or three ways, show that feature being used in all of those ways. Documentation seems to only cover the primary use case and leaves you to either run through trial and error or consult the user community. In terms of support, I have never actually had them solve any of my issues. I have always solved them myself and then provided the resolution to support."
"We would like the licensing model for this product to be improved, as it isn't currently very transparent. There isn't a standard package available, and each extra feature creates an additional cost."
"Mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexity."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"The solution is expensive."
"What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I believe the pricing is not the best, but it's reasonable and acceptable. We also use the McAfee system in parallel. In terms of pricing, its okay - not great, but not bad either. It falls in the middle, which is acceptable. In terms of support licensing, last time, we were searching for a solution, and we considered products from resellers rather than directly from the cloud provider. However, the pricing we encountered was exceptionally high. As a result, we are inclined to select support from the reseller."
"It is not too pricey."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"The solution is based on a licensing model and might be $360 for the hybrid version."
"They have competitive pricing."
"For small companies, the price is very expensive because the WAF is an enterprise-level application, not intended for smaller businesses. In my opinion, the price is right for enterprise-level use."
"The pricing is less compared to other web applications."
"The product is expensive."
"Barracuda costs us $8,000 per year. Barracuda costs $20,000 for a full subscription, when you try to protect multi-site infrastructure, in different geographical zones and for different data centers. If you have only one site, Barracuda will be cheaper."
"Cost is a bit on the higher side. Big companies can afford it."
"The product is inexpensive."
"For the specific use case that my customers primarily engage with, I would give the pricing a rating of seven out of ten."
"Citrix NetScaler VPX is not the cheapest solution out there, but you get what you pay for."
"There isn't much of a difference between the cost of Citrix and that of other similar solutions."
"I rate the pricing an eight out of ten since it is expensive."
"I give the price of the solution a seven out of ten."
"We have all the features and functions of Citrix because we have a premium license."
"The licensing costs for this solution vary depending on which model is being used."
"Regarding pricing, while it's expensive, I can't comment on the exact ROI without a budget analysis. However, in terms of service quality, it's worth the price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise57
 

Questions from the Community

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 do you like most about Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
It significantly improved our overall web security posture, addressing intrusions and enhancing control over web URLs...
What is your primary use case for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
I am not using the API protection feature right now because I don't host any APIs through Barracuda Web Application F...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
At the time I was acquiring Barracuda Web Application Firewall, I found it costly compared to other products. To over...
What do you like most about Citrix ADC?
The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic ente...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADC?
After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more...
What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?
Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexi...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
No data available
Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall, NetScaler VPX - Customer Licensed
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Oracle, CBS, Pioneer, Hyundai, Publix, Barnes Noble, Calzedonia, Nordstrom, Samsung, Nascar
ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
882,813 professionals have used our research since 2012.