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F5 Advanced WAF vs NSFOCUS Web Application Firewall 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 ...
Sponsored
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)
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NSFOCUS Web Application Fir...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
45th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 4.0%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Advanced WAF is 4.1%, down from 8.5% 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
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 Advanced WAF4.1%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall4.0%
NSFOCUS Web Application Firewall0.6%
Other91.3%
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.
reviewer2797602 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Security Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Granular security policies have protected critical applications and ensure safe user and admin access
Improvements could be made regarding the log information from the backend CLI. There are enhancements needed; if a request gets blocked on the TCP layer, there should be traces or data to verify which source generated these requests, including the source and port information for initiation. These data are missing from F5 Advanced WAF. Besides that, another improvement could be refining the bot detection to minimize false positives; it should be able to verify more granularly between legitimate and non-legitimate clients. Overall, I find everything else good. A wish list feature I have is for the Technical Assistance Center (TAC) to respond more promptly. Their response time needs improvement; while they do not take excessive time, it can be enhanced, especially given it is a security product.
it_user933945 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudflare has positively impacted my organization by making it easier for me to handle and set up DNS for multiple clients; I can easily go in and access their accounts, make changes they need, and it's a one-stop shop."
"There is a huge signature repository"
"We like that there's load balancing, firewall capabilities, DDoS protection, et cetera, all covered by Cloudflare."
"The Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."
"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."
"The product has improved our security posture by blocking bad actors."
"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."
"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."
"We have an SOC, and for collecting logs we are also using the F5 logs to analyze the securities and events, so having a central log management and F5 really helped us to analyze the security logs."
"It's scalable and very easy to manage."
"We can monitor IP locations, but we have constraints from each country, it has a replication feature, and licenses can be shared, taking turns with each license."
"I like all of the features, but the main one is the attack signatures."
"The valuable features vary from customers to customers. Some customers are okay with the basic features of the WAF, and some customers use advanced WAF with a few other features."
"F5 Advanced WAF has very good stability and scalability, and its initial setup was straightforward."
"The most valuable feature is artificial intelligence and to get extra internal access."
"The whole mechanism of F5 Advanced WAF is effective."
"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

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should include port forwarding features."
"I have experienced some difficulties with Cloudflare's support as a customer based in India."
"They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long."
"The reporting could be improved if it were more granular."
"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."
"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."
"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."
"Cloudflare should update the version of the ModSecurity core rule set that they run on."
"Nevertheless, F5 products are generally considered to be hard to deploy."
"One improvement for AOF could be focusing on enhancing its AI engine to make it more mature."
"I would like to see a better interface and better documentation compatibility with other products. It's more complicated with OWASP."
"I think the contextual-based component needs a lot of help; it is all based on regular expressions, and we are transitioning off to Signal Sciences on some of our WAF components because of the capabilities Signal Sciences has."
"F5 Advanced WAF sells perpetual licenses as perpetual assets during sales without informing me that support ends after a few years."
"It's sometimes difficult to customize APIs with F5 Advanced WAF, which could be made easier."
"Everything is good about the F5 WAF, except the reporting. It's really difficult to set records from that device, the UI is kind of hard to work with, and the reporting must be improved."
"You have to buy another module with an extra license, to have the authentication feature."
"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."
"There is a need for expanded licensing terms and options. There's also a need for improved and more agile customization features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"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."
"I don't have any issue with the pricing of this solution."
"I think the price is very high."
"F5 Advanced WAF pricing structure should be adjusted to meet the need of small to medium-sized companies."
"F5 bundles up services and the bundle is what you pay for rather than individual components."
"There is a perpetual license that comes with your hardware. There is also an additional fee for support."
"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."
"I would rate the pricing as seven out of ten"
"A yearly license for F5 Advanced WAF is expensive."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
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 Business27
Midsize Enterprise16
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced WAF?
F5 Advanced WAF is somewhat costly compared to other vendors, but it is worth the investment due to the stability it ...
What needs improvement with F5 Advanced WAF?
Improvements could be made regarding the log information from the backend CLI. There are enhancements needed; if a re...
What is your primary use case for F5 Advanced WAF?
My main use case for F5 Advanced WAF is to protect external and internal applications from cyber attacks and to preve...
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Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
No data available
NSFOCUS WAF, NSFOCUS Web Application Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
MAXIMUS, Vivo, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office, City Bank
2016 G20 Summit
Find out what your peers are saying about Imperva, Fortinet, F5 and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: June 2026.
907,664 professionals have used our research since 2012.