Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Imperva Web Application Firewall comparison

Cloudflare and Imperva are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Cloudflare is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.4, while Imperva is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.9. Additionally, 95% of Cloudflare users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Imperva users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Imperva and Cloudflare compete in the web application firewall category. While Imperva impresses with robust security features, Cloudflare stands out due to ease of use and comprehensive service integration.

Features: Imperva offers features like correlated attack validation, threat radar, and virtual patching, with the profiling feature enabling customization of security policies for specific applications. Cloudflare is known for its easy configuration and bundled services, including DDoS protection, load balancing, and caching, providing comprehensive utility to users.

Room for Improvement: Imperva users face challenges with complex policy management, limited security insights, and high costs. Cloudflare users seek updates to its ModSecurity core rule set, better log integration, and improved documentation, especially for beginners.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Imperva offers flexibility with on-premises, hybrid, and cloud options, though on-premises can be complex. Cloud deployment is straightforward. Cloudflare, being cloud-based, is easy to deploy and manage. Imperva has responsive support with variable experiences, while Cloudflare's support is effective but can improve on response times.

Pricing and ROI: Imperva's costs are high but promise significant ROI for enterprises, especially those in critical sectors. Cloudflare's subscription model is more affordable, appealing to businesses for its cost efficiency, scalability, and feature-rich SaaS model, offering a good ROI for budget-conscious enterprises.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall

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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SachidDoshi

Senior Enterprise Security Architect at HGS - Hinduja Global Solutions

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.

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Abdullah Jin

Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Offers bot protection and DDoS Protection and protects public-facing portals

Support is one thing I wish Imperva could improve. They follow the phone model and keep rotating you from one customer service person to another. The layer one support isn't very clear about the workings of the product. My feedback is primarily about Imperva Cloud, not on-premise. On-premise is a whole new story. Support is the issue for Imperva Cloud. It's also a bit pricey. It's a premium service and very expensive. The licensing model is not very straightforward. Every feature is priced separately, and to enjoy maximum protection, you'll have to spend a lot of money. The licensing model is a bit complex, and each feature is very pricey. For example, API security and web application protection are two separate license packages.

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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 attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."

"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."

"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."

"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight 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."

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

"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."

"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."

More Cloudflare pros

"It's pretty convenient and pretty easy to set up and run. And then kind of for static content, it also offers caching."

"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."

"The rate limiting features and customizations in terms of URL match and applying policies are valuable to me."

"It is configurable via API."

"Does a good job preventing web application attacks."

"The integration of Cloudflare with Cloud Suite is its most valuable feature."

"Technical support has a very fast response time and they are helpful."

"The setup process is very simple for me."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

"There are many features. There is ease of deployment. You can deploy the Imperva Web Application Firewall in two to three minutes. After that, you have to set the policies. For setting policies, you have toggle buttons. You can turn something on or off."

"It is easy to use and has good security."

"I am impressed with the product's scalability, availability, easy management, and security. We were able to integrate the product with Azure and Sentinel."

"The compliance is the most valuable aspect."

"The solution is stable."

"Data masking is the most valuable feature of this solution."

"The solution is scalable."

"If you are using the appliance as opposed to the virtual deployment, it can stand as the network layer-two and provide real transparency."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pros

Cons

"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."

"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."

"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."

"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."

"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."

"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."

"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."

"It would be good if Cloudflare could have more servers for better traffic routing or an increase in the traffic routed. This is what I'd like to improve in Cloudflare."

More Cloudflare cons

"We have noticed some latency when the call goes through the firewall. That could be improved."

"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 blocked logs are difficult to read at times."

"The reporting could be more granular."

"The notification part could be improved. It's very much connected to Web Application Firewall, rate-limiting, and DDoS protection."

"I have experienced some difficulties with Cloudflare's support as a customer based in India."

"The dashboard could be more user-friendly."

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should include port forwarding features."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

"They recently separated the WAF and the DAM management gateways in order for each of these to be managed from different areas, so I believe it now requires additional investments for what was previously a single complete solution."

"An improvement for Imperva WAF would be to reduce the number of false positives and create more strong use cases based on AI/ML or behavioral analytics."

"There is nothing specific where the application firewall is falling short."

"The signature updates could be faster. Sometimes we have to upload signatures to the Imperva portal for checking and analysis before we can use them."

"There's always room for improvement. Occasionally, there might be false-positive alerts."

"Sometimes, support tickets don't get addressed quickly."

"I don't really use it and therefore can't speak to areas of improvement."

"It should be more user-friendly. Like other web solutions, it would be helpful to be able to easily do policy configuration and identification inside the application. Understanding the in-depth configuration of a policy is somewhat difficult for an engineer, and they can improve that."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."

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

"We are using the free tier of the solution."

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

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

"The price of the solution is expensive."

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

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."

"The solution is expensive."

"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."

"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's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."

"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"

"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is somewhat expensive. It is actually a huge investment when compared to other countries."

"The tool is expensive."

"There are a couple of different licensing models."

"Make sure you understand the way that Imperva charges. It's very affordable. However, I would like to see a package with the Virtual Patching included. You get to do patching separately."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall is expensive."

"There is a license for this solution and we purchase the license annually with no additional fees."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall's pricing is expensive."

"The solution's pricing is an issue."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

24%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

28%

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance 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...

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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...

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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.

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What do you like most about Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

The product has a valuable security control functionality.

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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.

See all answers

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...

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Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

My recommendation is Imperva.

See all answers

Is Citrix ADC (formerly Netscaler) the best ADC to use and if not why?

For ADC, any ADC can do a good job. But in case if you want to add WAF functionality to the same ADC hardware you hav...

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DDoS solutions: Any other solutions to consider aside from Radware DefensePro and F5 Silverline DDoS Protection?

You can have a look to Imperva Cloud WAF, the anti-DDoS mitigation is under 1s and works very well. I observed a lot ...

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 2% of the time

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Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 21% of the time

AWS WAF vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 14% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 14% of the time

Akamai App and API Protector vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 11% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 3% of the time

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 17% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 13% of the time

AWS WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 11% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 11% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 2% of the time

More Imperva Web Application Firewall Competitors

Product Reports

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Cloudflare

February 2025

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Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

February 2025

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Imperva Web Application Firewall

February 2025

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Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Cloudflare WAF

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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

Cloudflare

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's intuitive dashboard enables users to build powerful rules through easy clicks and also provides Terraform integration. Every request to the WAF is inspected against the rule engine and the threat intelligence curated from protecting over 27 Million websites. Suspicious requests can be blocked, challenged or logged as per the needs of the user while legitimate requests are routed to the destination, agnostic of whether it lives on-premise or in the cloud. Analytics and Cloudflare Logs enable visibility into actionable metrics for the user.

Cloudflare

Imperva Web Application Firewall is a versatile solution that protects web applications and databases from various attacks, including DDoS, cross-site scripting, and SQL injection attacks. It offers data security, availability, and access control and can be deployed on-premises or on the cloud.

The solution has good security against web attacks and offers advanced bot protection, API security, and mitigation features. Imperva WAF is easy to configure and deploy; it has good customer service and an excellent user interface.

Imperva

Sample Customers

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

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk

BlueCross BlueShield, eHarmony, EMF Broadcasting, GE Healthcare, Metro Bank, The Motley Fool, Siemens

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall

January 2025

Free Report: Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall

Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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We monitor all Web Application Firewall (WAF) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.