Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs F5 Advanced WAF comparison

Check Point Software Technologies and F5 are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Check Point Software Technologies is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.8, while F5 is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.5. Additionally, 100% of Check Point Software Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of F5 users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

F5 Advanced WAF and Check Point CloudGuard WAF compete in the web application firewall market. While F5 Advanced WAF offers extensive features, its higher cost may deter smaller enterprises, making Check Point CloudGuard a more cost-effective option with easy integration for cloud environments.

Features: F5 Advanced WAF provides anti-bot protection, DDoS mitigation, and IP intelligence, which contribute to its robust security framework ideal for enterprise-level deployments. Check Point CloudGuard WAF focuses on API security, intrusion prevention, and AI-enhanced threat detection, making it suitable for cloud-native environments and known for its seamless API integration.

Room for Improvement: F5 Advanced WAF could improve in user interface design and report generation for better user experience and integration. The complexity of setup and pricing is also challenging for users. Check Point CloudGuard users have noted lag in administrative interfaces and insufficient documentation, suggesting areas for streamlined support and improved user guidance.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: F5 Advanced WAF is commonly used in on-premises and hybrid environments but can be complex without expertise. While the technical support is sound, some users experience delays. Check Point CloudGuard is preferred for cloud environments, praised for easy deployment and robust API integration, though support times can vary.

Pricing and ROI: The higher pricing of F5 Advanced WAF limits accessibility for smaller companies, though its comprehensive security features deliver a high ROI for those who can afford it. Check Point CloudGuard offers more competitive pricing, appealing to a broader range of budgets, and provides good ROI through integration with existing cloud infrastructure at a fraction of the cost.

To learn more, read our detailed Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs. F5 Advanced WAF Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs. F5 Advanced WAF

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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Ashish Upadhyay

Founder at BlockMosiac

Automation capabilities also help streamline security processes and smooths down API integration processes and detects API availability

There is room for improvement in the pricing strategy. By reducing their cost and extending the trial period, Check Point can attract more partnerships and customers, keeping up with other vendors in the field. It has a trial period, but they can extend it so we can better evaluate how it's working in our environment and how well it is suited. It should be converted to activate some discounts on buying standard versions. This will attract more of us, and we'll get more time to check the application and how it works. Additionally, their effort to involve IT teams would mean continuous adaptation to meet business requirements. This can help with the price picture and increasing the trial period so we can better evaluate the cost-effectiveness. Also, Check Point need to continue developing new features and arrangements in line with changing business requirements. The analysis time while it analyzes itself is very time-consuming. They need to improve the latency and minimize the steps involved. Also, the documentation needs to be updated, more improved, and simplified... so that even a beginner can start with this application. It can make things more beginner-friendly. Also, Check Point can bring some updates to the integration features with other security solutions, making it easier to integrate. For instance, it needs to integrate with solutions someone might have various firewall solutions from IBM and others, depending on which ones the business wants to integrate with.

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Richard Polyak

Sr. Architect at NBC Universal

Easy event identification, highly stable, and customizable

Generally, F5 Advanced WAF initial setup is straightforward. However, our environment was more complex and it took us a little more time to customize the solution to where we needed it to be. Additionally, the customization didn't rectify everything. We had to do customization to a certain event to prevent attacks that it wasn't catching, but that might not necessarily be the solutions' fault. It could be more of our setup than the solution's fault and not being able to run the latest version or the newer version could be more of a limitation on our ability to put it in the right place. The whole implementation to have the solution run at the level we wanted it to take approximately five months. Our company's environment is one that we can't put a canned solution in front of. Our environment, cannot have a canned solution that might fit everybody else because of how customized this environment is. It does need a lot of tuning to meet our environment's requirements. I rate the initial setup of F5 Advanced WAF a three out of five.

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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 automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."

"It's very user-friendly."

"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."

"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."

"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."

"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."

"The UI is good."

"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 we have found in Check Point CloudGuard WAF is its rich logging capabilities."

"After integrating AppSec with other applications, team members can easily work without fear of confidential information exposure."

"It helps us streamline our revenue streams, and we're spending less money on application security."

"User attitude reviews help us keep all online users compliant with company regulations and policies."

"The most effective CloudGuard feature for threat prevention is its web app protection."

"The tool performs device health checkups and updates us. It helps us to be compliant with regulatory policies."

"Machine learning is a valuable tool for this assessment because it allows for a two-phase approach: secure and non-secure."

"The solution's strongest point is that you can connect everything to it, giving you a full view of what's connected."

More Check Point CloudGuard WAF pros

"WAF functionality is valuable for protecting applications from attacks."

"F5's user-friendly interface and seamless integration stand out as the most valuable features for us."

"It is also quite intuitive and user-friendly. They have several webinars that are actually like labs. You can use these webinars to learn about how to use all features of the product."

"In terms of F5 Advanced WAF's most valuable features, I would definitely say its stability. F5 is one the most stable products. Either as the load balancer or the web application firewall, it is very stable."

"Customers find the load balancer feature as the most valuable."

"F5 Advanced WAF has very good stability and scalability. Its initial setup was straightforward."

"F5 Advanced WAF is a stable solution, we are satisfied. It is more stable than ForiWeb."

"The bot defense capability, as well as protection from brute force attacks and OWASP Top Ten, are notable features."

More F5 Advanced WAF pros

Cons

"Support response time could be improved."

"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."

"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."

"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."

"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."

"It would be beneficial for us if Cloudflare could offer a scrubbing solution. This would involve taking a snapshot of my website and keeping it live during a DDoS attack, ensuring uninterrupted service for our users. DDoS attacks are typically short in duration, and having Cloudflare maintain the site's availability from its secure network would enhance the overall user experience. I would appreciate it if Cloudflare could consider implementing this feature. Many organizations already utilize similar capabilities in their CDN platforms, where a static snapshot of the web page is displayed during DDoS attacks. In terms of features, Cloudflare needs to enhance its resilience and stay more focused on adopting new technologies. For instance, solutions like F5 XC Box, Access Solution, and Distributed Cloud Solution have impressive features, and Cloudflare should strive to match and exceed those capabilities. There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features. Cloudflare should prioritize enhancements in areas such as behavioral DDoS and protection against SQL injection attacks, considering the prevalent trend of public exposure to the internet for business reasons. Overall, Cloudflare needs to invest more in advancing its feature set."

"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."

"Technical support is lacking."

More Cloudflare cons

"Deeper and more transparent integration between Cloud Application Security and analysis monitoring tools could be very valuable - although the solution currently offers integrations with third-party security tools."

"We would like the solution to be more economical since it is not accessible to all clients."

"Support could be improved, particularly in terms of availability."

"They need improved latency in the main window."

"There are occasions when it interfaces with other systems, leading to a loss of visibility."

"I would like to be able to integrate the theme of Artificial Intelligence to help review issues and to monitor and view the security issue while also suggesting and interpreting and additionally configuring solutions - basically, acting as an interpreter."

"While the GUI allows configuration for application-related features, specific definitions cannot be modified through the code."

"One of the big problems we found in Check Point, in general, is the support."

More Check Point CloudGuard WAF cons

"F5 Advanced WAF could improve resource usage, it is CPU intensive. Additionally, adding automated remediation would be a benefit. For example, an easy button alerts us of the events that are occurring, and what we want to do at the time. An automated approach where somebody could be alerted very quickly. Instead of going and reconfiguring everything, an automated approach is what I'm looking at."

"The delay times on firmware patches and software updates could be better and improved."

"I would like to see a better interface and better documentation compatibility with other products. It's more complicated with OWASP."

"Users would like to have an additional IP intelligence license to handle this within WAF itself without needing to engage with the SOC team."

"Scalability could be improved."

"The interface is old-looking, it's not modern, which is why it's not always comfortable to use."

"We usually use a third-party tool for logging and reporting. It would be nice if we could do that right on this solution. They have one, but it's not very stable. Logging and reporting effectively would be a big enhancement."

"F5 needs to improve API protection with a single F5 solution, without requiring additional modules."

More F5 Advanced WAF cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I give the price a five out of ten."

"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."

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

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."

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

"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."

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

"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."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"Check Point CloudGuard WAF is expensive compared to Azure WAF."

"It is not cheap, but it is worth it."

"Check Point CloudGuard Application Security's pricing is not friendly."

"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"

"Considering all the benefits we've observed, we find the price to be satisfactory."

"The pricing is not that expensive considering what it offers."

"The tool's licensing costs are yearly and competitive."

"The pricing is competitive compared to other solutions on the market. So, the licensing cost is average."

More Check Point CloudGuard WAF pricing and cost advice

"The price of F5 Advanced WAF could improve it is expensive."

"It is a little bit costly, but it has all the features that are required."

"I am not sure about pricing but licenses are available on Google."

"A yearly license for F5 Advanced WAF is expensive."

"It's more expensive than other solutions and depending on the modules, there can be additional fees."

"There are different licenses available to use F5 Advanced WAF, such as BT, ASM, and LPM."

"It is expensive. Its price should be better. Its licensing is on a yearly basis. Its licensing is also based on the model. There are no additional costs."

"The way we deployed it, I would rate it a four out of five in terms of pricing."

More F5 Advanced WAF pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

25%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

15%

Security Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

15%

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...

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 CloudGuard for Application Security?

We have not had any incidents. We could realize its benefits immediately. We watched and monitored the traffic, and i...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudGuard for Application Security?

Pricing is average—not too expensive, yet not cheap either. CloudGuard offers bundled packages, which may reduce cost...

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What needs improvement with CloudGuard for Application Security?

Support could be improved, particularly in terms of availability. Although they provide 24/7 support, there are somet...

See all answers

What do you like most about F5 Advanced WAF?

It's a fairly easy-to-use and user-friendly tool. My administrators and team also like its ability to customize the r...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced WAF?

The setup cost is normal, yet not the best in terms of the commercial aspect. Other competitors like Fortinet are che...

See all answers

What needs improvement with F5 Advanced WAF?

One improvement for AOF could be focusing on enhancing its AI engine to make it more mature.

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

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Imperva Web Application Firewall vs Check Point CloudGuard WAF

Compared 23% of the time

AWS WAF vs Check Point CloudGuard WAF

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Check Point CloudGuard WAF

Compared 10% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Check Point CloudGuard WAF

Compared 9% of the time

open-appsec vs Check Point CloudGuard WAF

Compared 9% of the time

More Check Point CloudGuard WAF Competitors

Fortinet FortiWeb vs F5 Advanced WAF

Compared 22% of the time

AWS WAF vs F5 Advanced WAF

Compared 16% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs F5 Advanced WAF

Compared 16% of the time

Imperva Web Application Firewall vs F5 Advanced WAF

Compared 7% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs F5 Advanced WAF

Compared 4% of the time

More F5 Advanced WAF Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

January 2025

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

Check Point CloudGuard WAF

January 2025

Download Check Point CloudGuard WAF product report

Buyer's Guide

F5 Advanced WAF

January 2025

Download F5 Advanced WAF product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Check Point CloudGuard Application Security, CloudGuard Application Security, CloudGuard AppSec

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Cloudflare

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Check Point Software Technologies

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

Check Point CloudGuard WAF (Web Application Firewall) is a cloud-native security solution designed to protect web applications and APIs from known and unknown threats. It employs contextual AI and machine learning to prevent zero-day attacks without relying on traditional signature-based detection methods, ensuring that applications remain secure even as new threats emerge.

CloudGuard WAF offers preemptive protection against vulnerabilities by using machine learning to identify and block zero-day threats like Log4Shell and Spring4Shell. It provides precise detection capabilities, minimizing the need for constant fine-tuning and reducing false positives. Designed for cloud-native environments, CloudGuard WAF integrates seamlessly with CI/CD pipelines, supporting automated deployment and configuration through infrastructure as code (IaC) or APIs.

Key Features of CloudGuard WAF:

ML-Based Threat Prevention: Stops application-layer attacks, including those listed in the OWASP Top 10, with minimal tuning and no reliance on signature updates.
API Discovery and Security: Identifies and secures APIs, preventing misuse and enforcing API schemas to protect against unauthorized access.
Bot and DDoS Prevention: Detects and mitigates automated attacks that can disrupt services or degrade customer experiences.
Intrusion Prevention (IPS): Provides protection against over 2,800 web-related CVEs using Check Point’s award-winning IPS technology.

Benefits of CloudGuard WAF:

Zero-Day Protection: Mitigates risks from newly discovered vulnerabilities without waiting for signature updates.
Reduced Operational Overhead: Eliminates the need for constant manual tuning and exception handling, simplifying security management.
Comprehensive API Security: Enhances control over your attack surface by discovering and securing all APIs, including shadow, rogue, and deprecated endpoints.
Fast and Easy Deployment: Deployable within minutes via WAF as a Service (WAFaaS), requiring only a one-time DNS configuration for immediate protection.

CloudGuard WAF is particularly suitable for organizations using modern, cloud-based architectures that require robust, automated security measures for both applications and APIs. Its capabilities are valuable for industries that handle sensitive data, such as finance or healthcare, where compliance and data protection are critical. Pricing and support are typically customized to the specific needs and scale of the deployment, with options for continuous updates and maintenance through Check Point's managed services.

CloudGuard WAF by Check Point provides advanced, AI-driven protection for web applications and APIs, offering automated, precise threat prevention and easy integration with cloud-native environments, ensuring robust security without the need for extensive manual configuration.

F5 Advanced WAF is a web application security solution for financial and government sectors, e-commerce, and public-facing websites. It offers protection against various attacks, including botnets, web scraping, and foreign entities. The solution can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud and is often used with other security tools. Its most valuable features include DDoS and DNS attack protection, SSL uploading, anomaly detection, and the ability to input custom rules.

F5 Advanced WAF has helped organizations to expose more services to the public while providing an extra layer of protection, preventing revenue loss, and securing connectivity.

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

MAXIMUS, Vivo, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office, City Bank

Buyer's Guide

Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs. F5 Advanced WAF

January 2025

Free Report: Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs. F5 Advanced WAF

Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs. F5 Advanced WAF and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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