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Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 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
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
Check Point CloudGuard WAF
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (10th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (12th)
Cloudflare Web Application ...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (6th)
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Dialungana Malungo - PeerSpot reviewer
Protects our web applications and APIs and has a very low false positive rate
CloudGuard WAF is a very straightforward solution. I do not have to worry about signatures. Most of the solutions that are out there are mainly based on signatures, and I have to do a lot of maintenance to get the signature updates, and sometimes, due to a lack of resources, I am not able to do so. With CloudGuard WAF, I have peace of mind, because most of the features are AI-based, and there is not much configuration that needs to be done on my side. Once set, I only go to CloudGuard WAF to check. I do not have to worry about signatures or updates. Everything is done perfectly, and I have a sense of peace because I know our applications are safe. It is very important for us that CloudGuard WAF protects our applications against threats without relying on signatures. That is definitely one of the key features I need.
SachidDoshi - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers a huge signature repository and is superiorly effective in mitigating DDoS attacks
The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced, which presently stands at two or three months. The product has a custom rule set that users can modify and manifest as needed. The vendor can probably shorten the learning curve using cutting-edge technologies like AI. The solution provider can also work around the web applications and identify the toolset that needs to be implemented to deploy the solution in less time. The vendor has launched a SASE product that can function with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall, but many improvements are needed in terms of features, such as the web filtering feature, and CASB has not yet been added.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The UI is good."
"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"
"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."
"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is that it has a free version. They give us the free version with the anti-DDoS features and also the load balancing solution."
"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
"The solution preemptively blocks zero-day attacks and detects hidden anomalies effectively."
"It provides advanced analytics that gives each team time to prepare for any threat that might occur in the future."
"Overall, the product is excellent."
"It offers good functionality of the application that is currently running."
"User attitude reviews help us keep all online users compliant with company regulations and policies."
"It helps us streamline our revenue streams, and we're spending less money on application security."
"It offers high performance and improved productivity for users."
"We have not had any incidents. We could realize its benefits immediately. We watched and monitored the traffic, and it was amazing to see the results."
"The product has improved our security posture by blocking bad actors."
"Technical support has a very fast response time and they are helpful."
"There is a huge signature repository"
"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."
"Does a good job preventing web application attacks."
"It protects web applications efficiently."
"Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before."
"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."
 

Cons

"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."
"We are a product integrator and reseller, and we would like to have a better partner relationship, similar to a channel sales relationship. Sometimes we are on our own or get diverted by Cloudflare because they have direct sales, which competes with us and makes it difficult to build a relationship with this company since we want to be an MSP or a managed service provider for the solution."
"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."
"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."
"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."
"Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements."
"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."
"The product needs to improve its automation."
"For now, the product is doing all that I need, however, I need the support of IPv6."
"The coding configurations can be simplified to save time for IT teams and developers."
"In terms of features, I do not have any negatives. Their integration is extremely quick. It is better than others I have been involved with in the past. Their pricing model, however, can be better."
"When I migrate the traffic from our mobile application to CloudGuard, we are not getting what we expected."
"The user interface, SmartConsole, sometimes malfunctions and requires a restart."
"They should improve in the delivery of more detailed reports with more information."
"The web user interface needs some improvement, even though the functionality is good."
"I would like it to be able to analyze more complex functions, although I did not examine the case study of more complex implementations. Things like forum fields, etc seem to need a little more focused protection of the fields scheme validation."
"If they add logs history within the Cloudflare offering, that would be a great benefit."
"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 ModSecurity core rules need to be updated."
"The learning curve was steep initially."
"The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced"
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should include port forwarding features."
"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."
"Its stability could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"If the pricing for the Infinity platform covers everything, it would be more straightforward. I had a hard time selling it to our CEO as a former CFO because of the differentials. There are different deltas year to year over a five-year period. It is very difficult to explain. It would be easier to digest for our executives if there was a flatter scale"
"Check Point CloudGuard WAF is expensive compared to Azure WAF."
"I find the pricing to be reasonable."
"Check Point CloudGuard Application Security's pricing is not friendly."
"The pricing is competitive compared to other solutions on the market. So, the licensing cost is average."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly and competitive."
"The sales team or account managers from Check Point are top-notch. As I am using other products as well, my pricing was competitive compared to others."
"It is not cheap, but it is worth it."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"It is not too pricey."
"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
21%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

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 CloudGuard for Application Security?
We have not had any incidents. We could realize its benefits immediately. We watched and monitored the traffic, and i...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudGuard for Application Security?
As Infiniti customers, the pricing is manageable, as we have allowances dedicated to each Check Point product. The pr...
What needs improvement with CloudGuard for Application Security?
We are satisfied with the product because it does what we need it to do, but one thing that I would like to see impro...
What do you like most about Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
The product has a valuable security control functionality.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before.
What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available. This improvement wo...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Check Point CloudGuard Application Security, CloudGuard Application Security, CloudGuard AppSec
Cloudflare WAF
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Orange España, Paschoalotto
crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs. Cloudflare Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,672 professionals have used our research since 2012.