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Cloudflare vs F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.0
Cloudflare enhances performance, reduces operational costs, and boosts revenue, with reported benefits of $903,000 over three years.
Sentiment score
7.2
F5 BIG-IP AFM offers ROI and cost efficiency when integrated, but standalone ROI is below average, despite perceived value.
WordPress security can be tricky, and that's where Cloudflare can be absolutely helpful for small businesses.
We have had ROI with the tool's use since it never gave us downtime and made us lose millions.
For the small project I was working on, using the basic tier provided a huge improvement at zero cost.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Cloudflare's service is praised for responsiveness, but some users face delays, often relying on extensive documentation for solutions.
Sentiment score
6.5
F5 BIG-IP AFM support is praised for professionalism but needs faster ticket resolution and improved recommendation accuracy.
This would help us address issues promptly, especially during unforeseen events like DDoS attacks.
Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model.
We'd like a dedicated account manager.
The responses are generally fast and effective.
The customer service is excellent, and I rate it ten out of ten.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Cloudflare's scalable architecture is praised for efficient traffic handling, seamless expansion, and meeting diverse enterprise needs globally.
Sentiment score
7.3
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager offers scalable, efficient management for hybrid setups, supporting organizational growth and cloud migration.
I would rate the solution's scalability a ten out of ten since I didn't encounter any issues with it.
I rate its scalability a ten out of ten because I had no issues with it.
I rate the scalability a ten out of ten.
The solution is highly scalable, allowing me to add or remove nodes and manage traffic without interruption, which is essential for meeting application demands.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Users praise Cloudflare for improved reliability, effective DDoS protection, and excellent DNS services despite initial configuration needs.
Sentiment score
8.4
F5 BIG-IP AFM is lauded for its stability and reliability, with high user ratings and minimal operational issues.
For DDoS protection, I would not recommend Cloudflare.
I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.
The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.
 

Room For Improvement

Cloudflare users seek better analytics, integration, support, pricing clarity, and enhanced features like caching and multi-user access.
F5 BIG-IP AFM is costly, complex, needs dashboard improvements, enhanced features, better integration, and concerns over CPU and support.
There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features.
Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.
the ability to integrate with the on-site active directory instead of just AD through Azure AD
Having advanced technology similar to other vendors like Palo Alto for zero-day attack prevention would be valuable.
The appliance and features could be enhanced further, especially in terms of security.
 

Setup Cost

Cloudflare offers flexible pricing plans from free to $1,500 monthly, ideal for businesses of different sizes and traffic needs.
F5 BIG-IP AFM is costly but justified by its features, with pricing for licenses and potential extra feature fees.
That's where Cloudflare shines for smaller businesses – it's ten times cheaper than Akamai.
I find it to be cheap.
It's cost-effective, but I think they should have a custom pricing model for enterprise customers based on the features you use.
The standard license is reasonably priced, but additional features like the WAF can be more expensive.
If considering a one-stop solution that provides load balancing, DNS security, AAA authentication, and firewalling on the same hardware, the cost is reasonable.
 

Valuable Features

Cloudflare enhances performance and security with CDN, caching, DDoS protection, easy DNS management, analytics, and intuitive interface.
F5 BIG-IP AFM offers robust network security, ease of use, and supports cloud migration with AI-driven features.
Our scenario consisted of two web servers in different allocations to control access demands, and the load balancer did the job as expected, bringing security and stability to access points.
For me, the valuable feature is DDoS protection.
The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security.
The solution provides behavioral analysis via AI to detect malicious traffic.
The most valuable features for me are stability, availability, and security, along with the ability to manage multiple features to secure my applications.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall...
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 19.4%, up from 19.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) is 1.4%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

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.
Richard Polyak - PeerSpot reviewer
Straightforward setup with very good granularity and performance
Our company uses the solution as a data center firewall.  It is hard to determine all users within our infrastructure. It depends on systems we put behind the solution. Its internal but also a data center firewall. Sometimes, there are hooks from the solution to our external infrastructure or…
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Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
18%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
19%
Government
9%
Insurance Company
8%
 

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 GRE tunnels. We have decreased site load times on Mobile 3G from 8 to 1,6 seconds ...
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 that offers great redundancy and advanced security with built-in unmetered and ...
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?
If considering a one-stop solution that provides load balancing, DNS security, AAA authentication, and firewalling on the same hardware, the cost is reasonable.
What needs improvement with F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?
F5 should increase its capability to prevent zero-day attacks. Having advanced technology similar to other vendors like Palo Alto for zero-day attack prevention would be valuable.
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
F5 AFM, F5 Advanced Firewall Manager
 

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.
City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare vs. F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,210 professionals have used our research since 2012.