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F5 Advanced WAF vs Huawei Cloud WAF comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 ...
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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
F5 Advanced WAF
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Huawei Cloud WAF
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
33rd
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 5.4%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Advanced WAF is 7.1%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Huawei Cloud WAF is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 Advanced WAF7.1%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall5.4%
Huawei Cloud WAF0.5%
Other87.0%
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.
Kallamuddin Ansari - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Consultant at ProTechmanize
Application security has protected critical banking services while policy learning minimizes false blocks
F5 Advanced WAF performs well overall, but I have noticed some points that could enhance the solution. Initially, policy tuning could be simpler, as while the learning engine is powerful, initial tuning still requires experienced engineers, which can be challenging for new teams due to the complexity of options and parameters. A more guided and simple tuning workflow would help reduce the learning curve. Additionally, tighter native integration with SIEM or SOAR tools would simplify correlation and investigations for security teams, although log exports are available. Overall, these are not blockers, merely enhancement opportunities, and once tuned, F5 Advanced WAF is very stable and reliable; improving usability, reporting, and onboarding would make it even more effective for larger environments.
Chinedu Omenogor - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Operations Engineer at Galaxy Backbone Ltd
Easy to use, but its feature set could be expanded to mirror what currently exists on the public cloud
We have a private cloud leveraging Huawei technology. We use Huawei Cloud WAF to provide cloud services for governments, ministries, departments, and some private sector organizations The most valuable feature of Huawei Cloud WAF is its ease of use. It would be good if the solution's feature set…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We extensively use the solution every day. The solution is very stable; we haven’t seen any glitches."
"The initial setup process is simple."
"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."
"The security features are valuable. The particular feature we use is called OWASP."
"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."
"Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before."
"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."
"There is a huge signature repository"
"Good technology for mitigating different application attacks, e.g. DDoS, DNS, and layer seven attacks."
"The most valuable features of F5 Advanced WAF are the security features and the protection."
"The most valuable feature is artificial intelligence and to get extra internal access."
"It also has antivirus and DDoS mitigation capabilities. We have enabled these features."
"When you choose to go with F5, be sure to size your box properly so that the capacity is taken care of."
"The solution is easily accessible on mobile and laptop devices."
"The most valuable feature of F5 Advanced WAF is its extensive set of capabilities for application protection, including DDoS prevention, and its ability to work with Pentesters and external scanners to observe user activity and eliminate false positives."
"It ensures compliance with security standards by providing features like PCI DSS checks."
"The most valuable feature of Huawei Cloud WAF is its ease of use."
 

Cons

"The learning curve was steep initially."
"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."
"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."
"I have experienced some difficulties with Cloudflare's support as a customer based in India."
"The rate limiting functionality could be enhanced, as we find it somewhat limited."
"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."
"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."
"The Sandbox integration feature could be improved."
"F5 Advanced WAF could improve the precision of the scanning. There are many false positives."
"The BIG-IQ is supposed to centralize the management for all of the boxes but it's not very effective."
"The BIG-IQ is supposed to centralize the management for all of the boxes but it's not very effective."
"My advice to future customers of F5 Advanced WAF or to people thinking of using it is that there is a much better product in the market."
"One of our customers is a bit unhappy about the reporting options."
"Nevertheless, F5 products are generally considered to be hard to deploy."
"F5 Advanced needs to improve its bot protection. The solution needs to have machine learning to learn the behavior of the customer to recognize the human versus the bot. This is a difficult feature to explain to our customers. I would like documentation about the bot feature to make it easier for the customer to understand."
"It would be good if the solution's feature set could be expanded to mirror what currently exists on the public cloud."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"The solution is expensive."
"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 annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"The price of F5 Advanced WAF could improve it is expensive."
"Pricing for this solution is higher than average."
"There are various plans available for Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF as a Service, including a trial version."
"The solution is very expensive so should only be used in the right environment."
"I rate F5 Advanced WAF's pricing a three out of ten."
"I think the price is very high."
"It's more expensive than other solutions and depending on the modules, there can be additional fees."
"I am not sure about pricing but licenses are available on Google."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
No data available
 

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 Business26
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise31
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
We are using Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools with their Zero Trust, so e...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced WAF?
The pricing for F5 Advanced WAF is a bit higher, but not that high. I would say for a good amount of revenue-generati...
What needs improvement with F5 Advanced WAF?
On the features I wish existed, Big-IP Advanced WAF is primarily an on-premises solution and in that solution, there ...
What do you like most about Huawei Cloud WAF?
The most valuable feature of Huawei Cloud WAF is its ease of use.
What needs improvement with Huawei Cloud WAF?
It would be good if the solution's feature set could be expanded to mirror what currently exists on the public cloud.
What is your primary use case for Huawei Cloud WAF?
We have a private cloud leveraging Huawei technology. We use Huawei Cloud WAF to provide cloud services for governmen...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
MAXIMUS, Vivo, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office, City Bank
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, F5, Imperva and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: March 2026.
885,264 professionals have used our research since 2012.