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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)
5th
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)
44th
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 May 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 4.7%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Advanced WAF is 5.3%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NSFOCUS Web Application Firewall is 0.6%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 Advanced WAF5.3%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall4.7%
NSFOCUS Web Application Firewall0.6%
Other89.4%
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

"I have not had any issues with this solution, and I would recommend it to others who are interested in using it."
"It's pretty convenient and pretty easy to set up and run. And then kind of for static content, it also offers caching."
"The initial setup process is simple."
"Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before."
"It protects web applications efficiently."
"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."
"The setup process is very simple for me."
"We like that there's load balancing, firewall capabilities, DDoS protection, et cetera, all covered by Cloudflare."
"The product has valuable features for load balancing, monitoring tools, and HPXpress services."
"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."
"What a WAF is happens to be exactly what we are using F5 WAF for: a firewall for our web applications."
"The initial setup was was easy to install."
"F5 technical support is excellent. They are experts who always provide the right solution, and they understand the problem. Their response and resolution times are good."
"The anti-bot protection is the solution's most valuable feature. Safe-guard or credential staffing are also useful features."
"We chose this product because we believe it is the best product for us."
"It also has antivirus and DDoS mitigation capabilities. We have enabled these features."
"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."
"We really appreciate the hybrid security abilities; we get powerful protection for our application needs."
 

Cons

"The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced"
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well."
"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."
"The platform's control features related to real-time authentication and response time need improvement."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should include port forwarding features."
"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."
"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."
"The reporting could be improved if it were more granular."
"For F5 Advanced WAF, it's only 70% different over time with upgrades. F5 can still build AWS support after many long years of absence."
"On the features I wish existed, Big-IP Advanced WAF is primarily an on-premises solution and in that solution, there are not enough features that need to be there to protect API-based applications."
"The solution could improve by having an independent capture module. It has a built feature that you can deploy the capture on your published website, however, it's not very user-friendly."
"For me, an area for improvement in F5 Advanced WAF is the reporting as it isn't so clear. The vendor needs to work on the reporting capability of the solution. What I'd like to see in the next release of F5 Advanced WAF is threat intelligence to protect your web application, particularly having that capability out-of-the-box, and not needing to pay extra for it, similar to what's offered in FortiWeb, for example, any request that originates from a malicious IP will be blocked automatically by FortiWeb. F5 Advanced WAF should have the intelligence for blocking malicious IPs, or automatically blocking threats included in the license, instead of making it an add-on feature that users have to pay for apart from the standard licensing fees."
"I would not expect traffic details to pass through the web application firewall across the length of the whole application. I think that there is a web application where it can let the application function without traffic going in into the WAF."
"The tool needs to improve its pricing."
"F5 Advanced WAF could improve on its funding for WAF features. There is a need to be more advanced WAF features."
"The Sandbox integration feature could be improved."
"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 solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"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 is expensive."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"It is not too pricey."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"I rate F5 Advanced WAF's pricing a three out of ten."
"As far as the pricing of F5 Advanced WAF I would rate it a four out of five depending on what features I am looking for. Imperva is more expensive."
"There are different licenses available to use F5 Advanced WAF, such as BT, ASM, and LPM."
"The way we deployed it, I would rate it a four out of five in terms of pricing."
"Licensing fees for this solution are paid on a yearly basis."
"Pricing for this solution is higher than average."
"There is an annual subscription for this solution."
"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."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
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?
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 is your primary use case for F5 Advanced WAF?
My main use case for F5 Advanced WAF is providing deployment solutions for financial institutions and onboarding thei...
Ask a question
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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: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.