F5 Advanced WAF vs NSFOCUS Web Application Firewall comparison

F5 and NSFOCUS are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. F5 is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.4, while NSFOCUS is ranked #45. F5 holds a 6.0% mindshare in WAF, compared to NSFOCUS’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of F5 users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NSFOCUS users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between F5 Advanced WAF and NSFOCUS Web Application Firewall based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, F5, Imperva and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF).

To learn more, read our detailed Web Application Firewall (WAF) Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

April 2026

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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 Web Application ...

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 4.7%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Advanced WAF is 6.0%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NSFOCUS Web Application Firewall is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
F5 Advanced WAF	6.0%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall	4.7%
NSFOCUS Web Application Firewall	0.6%
Other	88.7%

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Featured Reviews

Dean Barisic

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.

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Kallamuddin Ansari

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.

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it_user933945

Desktop Engineer at eros international media ltd

Offers Application Protection Against Web Attacks

There is a need for expanded licensing terms and options. There's also a need for improved and more agile customization features. The user needs to be able to manage each policy as required; the functionality needs to empower the user. There should be a complete suite of desktop provider policies available to users. Overall, it needs to be more user-friendly.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The setup process is very simple for me."

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

"Very glad the WAF rulesets works out of box, and requires very little tuning or maintenance."

"In general, it's a very good product: the solution is very stable, the performance is great, the product offers very good scalability, the pricing is very reasonable, the installation is very straightforward and quite simple, and technical support has a very fast response time and is helpful."

"I have not had any issues with this solution, and I would recommend it to others who are interested in using it."

"It protects web applications efficiently."

"For us, the key feature of Cloudflare is DDoS protection and IP hiding, especially since we are a crypto company."

"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

"Overall, F5 Advanced WAF is a strong, dependable enterprise solution that works best when seen as a long-term security platform rather than a quick add-on; once properly designed, sized, and tuned, it runs quietly in the background and effectively does its job without constant attention."

"The product is used to secure web applications and has the ability to use API templates and bot protection features, such as blocking requests or presenting CAPTCHA pages to end users."

"F5 products are highly stable, top-notch solutions, and we have also the expertise to deploy and design the F5 and Palo Alto product lines."

"This solution is an enterprise-class firewall that provides both load-balancing and security."

"I appreciate the way F5 Advanced WAF builds policies by configuring a basic policy and queuing it in learning mode."

"I definitely recommend this solution because of the time you save on analysis."

"The most valuable feature of F5 Advanced WAF is its grand unity of the implementation, where you have the freedom to configure based on how it affects your use case or your organization."

"It is easy to obtain dashboard compliance because security policy views are included."

More F5 Advanced WAF pros

"We really appreciate the hybrid security abilities; we get powerful protection for our application needs."

"Since we are using this tool for protection purposes we really appreciate the hybrid security abilities; the main idea here is that we powerful protection our application needs."

Cons

"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well. They have documentation for everything you're looking for, but they lack a single piece of documentation to tie everything together. As a new user or beginner, it took us a little bit of time to figure out how to put all these things in place."

"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."

"The reporting could be improved if it were more granular."

"The user interface is very simple and straightforward, but users need knowledge about DNS to accomplish tasks."

"The learning curve was steep initially."

"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."

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

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

"The scalability could be improved."

"It's sometimes difficult to customize APIs with F5 Advanced WAF, which could be made easier."

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

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

"The product could be more user-friendly for administrators."

"Nevertheless, F5 products are generally considered to be hard to deploy."

"One area for improvement in the product is its SSO integration, which posed challenges and required significant effort to resolve."

"The BNS module needs improvement."

More F5 Advanced WAF cons

"There is a need for expanded licensing terms and options. There's also a need for improved and more agile customization features."

"There is a need for expanded licensing terms and options. There's also a need for improved and more agile customization features. The user needs to be able to manage each policy as required; the functionality needs to empower the user. There should be a complete suite of desktop provider policies available to users. Overall, it needs to be more user-friendly."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

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

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

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

"The solution is expensive."

"It is not too pricey."

"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"The price of the solution is reasonable when compared with other products, such as FortiWeb. I am very satisfied with the price."

"Pricing for this solution is higher than average."

"F5 Advanced WAF pricing structure should be adjusted to meet the need of small to medium-sized companies."

"There are various plans available for Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF as a Service, including a trial version."

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

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

"The cost is slightly above average."

"The solution is very expensive so should only be used in the right environment."

More F5 Advanced WAF pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Comms Service Provider

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	26
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	31

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

The price of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is reasonable.

See all answers

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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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 ...

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Compared 30% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

April 2026

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Download Cloudflare Web Application Firewall product report

Buyer's Guide

F5 Advanced WAF

April 2026

Download F5 Advanced WAF product report

Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

April 2026

Download NSFOCUS Web Application Firewall product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF

No data available

NSFOCUS WAF, NSFOCUS Web Application Security

Overview

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

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.

NSFOCUS understands how critical your web servers and applications are to your business and we have designed a closed-loop web application security solution to protect you from web attacks, data breaches and downtime. This solution includes website protection through our Web Application Firewall (WAF) and pro-active vulnerability assessment using our Web Vulnerability Scanning System (WVSS).

NSFOCUS

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk

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

2016 G20 Summit

Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

April 2026

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Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, F5, Imperva and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: April 2026.

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