F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks comparison

F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Download the complete report

Helped 909,679 peers since 2012

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 August 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 3.8%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Distributed Cloud Services is 2.0%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is 1.8%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall	3.8%
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks	1.8%
F5 Distributed Cloud Services	2.0%
Other	92.4%

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.

Read full review

Mohan Janarthanan

Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions

Centralized security has protected APIs and optimized multi‑cloud traffic management

F5 Distributed Cloud Services has been used for two years for DDoS protection, and there is a particular feature called API protection. Within API protection, there is malicious user mitigation, which is one particular technology that has been implemented. This is a kind of advanced bot attack prevention. Malicious user mitigation is an AI/ML-based technology that was introduced by the F5 team, and this particular MUG protects rate limiting. If some users are having anomaly detection or someone is trying to do a bot attack, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge for that particular user alone and not for all users. For example, if someone is trying to act as a rogue, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge in the backend system on that particular system, so they cannot try again and again at the same time. It is for a concurrent session, and it will give the CAPTCHA challenge. This MUG, malicious user mitigation, prevents bot attacks. F5 Distributed Cloud Services includes the real-time intelligence feature, which helps with threat response strategies from a threat intelligence perspective. For example, if there are geo-restrictions or geo-based restrictions, sometimes people may come in through proxy-based servers, and it will prevent that. The load balancing feature optimizes application performance. Observability is the basic piece where F5 got introduced. This observability piece provides end-to-end visibility on the application performance. It gives complete end-to-end visibility across network latency and application performance issues. Sometimes when it is getting more than 200 pages, it throws errors such as 300, 400, or whatever has been configured, including 500 errors. F5 Distributed Cloud Services has helped improve traffic management efficiency. Most applications are hosted in the Check Point and F5 firewall, F5 web application firewall, where applications and traffic management can be accessed in a single dashboard. Automated threat detection is a basic feature of F5 Distributed Cloud Services meant for that purpose. There are two scenarios with automated threat detection, which is provided by F5. It is a completely machine learning solution that came from the bot defense, and it automatically protects against sophisticated attacks.

Read full review

reviewer2776578

Cyber Security Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Image scanning has supported consistent security practices during cloud deployment

On a scale of ten, we would say people are happy with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks for the part we use. People are okay with it. We probably would give an eight. We don't give ten because if we don't use the other parts of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, it's because it was difficult to implement from an operational point of view. We could have deployed the runtime monitoring with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, but within our organization at our company, it was very difficult to find who would be the owner for the alerts. People have other tools and in the end, we don't use the full capabilities of a product that we pay for. It's partially related to the difficulty to integrate Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks runtime in our company's support process. We don't use the real-time monitoring part of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks. We don't know about the automated remediation feature of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks.

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 solution protects our application, which runs on the HTTP protocol, from DDoS attacks."

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

"Technical support has a very fast response time and they are helpful."

"Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before."

"It is configurable via API."

"We extensively use the solution every day. The solution is very stable; we haven’t seen any glitches."

"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."

"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

"Technical support from F5 is good compared to Cisco and HP."

"F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides a single unified console for security operations, network operations, and DevOps across all environments."

"In a multi-cloud or distributed cloud, there are many protection possibilities from data to web application or API protection, including bot mitigation."

"I appreciate the UI of F5 Distributed Cloud Services and the backend cost, alongside the actual value proposition that they provide with the load balancer, which is excellent."

"F5 Distributed Cloud Services is the market leader in load balancers and manages traffic really well."

"The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation."

"Elastic environments are the most valuable features because I can pull these apps and migrate the on-premises environment to the Distributed Cloud environment, and this capability is very strong and the security regarding the apps is really very powerful."

"F5 is known for being the best load balancer in the market. Customers with an existing module can easily adopt additional modules without investing in new hardware."

"Prisma Cloud stands out as a user-friendly and powerful CSPM solution thanks to its comprehensive capabilities, built-in features, and flexible tagging system."

"Prisma's identity-based micro-segmentation is better than all its competitors."

"The most valuable feature is the closed VPN connection, which provides better performance than traditional VPN boxes. For example, let's say a user in New York State normally connects in the East, but if they travel to the UK, they can connect to the same portal, which automatically redirects to any VPN gateway. We can control traffic based on Active Directory groups instead of the user's IP. That means a user in New York can access his application based on his user ID and AD group access when he travels to the UK or anywhere else."

"In the GlobalProtect module, we can easily guide users experiencing connection issues through the notification column."

"The solution's dashboard looks very user-friendly."

"Prisma Cloud has good integrations, provides the visibility and control we need, is far more reasonable for the customers cost-wise, and is a very good preventative tool for helping us identify misconfigurations, reduce false positives, and focus on the real risks in our cloud environment."

"Prisma Cloud has enabled us to take a very strong preventive approach to cloud security."

"I like Palo Alto's threat protection and Wi-Fi coverage. It has advanced features like DNS security and sandboxing. The automation capabilities are excellent."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pros

Cons

"The learning curve was steep initially."

"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should improve visibility for a customer."

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

"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well."

"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."

"Its stability could be better."

"The ModSecurity core rules need to be updated."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

"For small players, it is completely not worth it."

"Last year there was a downtime of 30 minutes across the cloud distributed console, and that was the only impact observed."

"The worst experience is that with so many solutions available, it is very complicated to know all of the solution modules, and the offers from F5 Distributed Cloud Services are vast."

"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF. There are some problems, mainly from the perspective of implementation and customer expectations, which sometimes differ from reality."

"One area where F5 Distributed Cloud Services can be improved is in API security, which can be enhanced."

"The pricing could be adjusted to better meet the needs of typical customers in regions like Poland, where the product is considered too expensive."

"Palo Alto needs to add more support staff to improve their response time."

"We face some GUI issues related to new permissions for AWS. So far, we don't have any automation to complete them through the GUI. We have to manually update the permissions. Our customers have faced some issues with that."

"The IM security has room for improvement."

"Prisma Cloud lags behind in terms of security automation capabilities."

"One major observation is that it is not possible to implement Prisma Cloud on-premises. This is the limitation. Prisma Cloud itself is on a cloud. It is sitting on AWS and Google Cloud. It is a SaaS solution, but some of my clients have a local regulatory requirement, and they want to install it locally on their premises. That capability is not there, but government entities and ministries want to have Prisma Cloud installed locally."

"Prisma Cloud's dashboards should be customizable. That's very important. Other similar solutions are more elastic so you have the power to create customized dashboards. In Prisma Cloud, you cannot do that."

"They can improve the integrations into the SDLC lifecycle."

"The access controls for our bank roles were not granular enough. We needed specific people to do particular actions, and we often had to give some people way too much access for them to be able to do what they needed in Prisma. They couldn't do their jobs if they didn't have that level of access, so other people had to do that part for them. It would help to have more granular role-based access controls."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."

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

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

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

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

"It is not too pricey."

"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."

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

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

Information not available

"Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is a highly expensive solution."

"You can expect a premium price because it is a premium quality product by a leading supplier."

"The cost was not on the higher side. Overall, the cost gets recovered with its implementation."

"The pricing is good. They gave us some good discounts right at the end of the year based on the value that it brings, visibility, and the ability to build in cloud, compliance, and security within one dashboard."

"Its price is reasonable as compared to other products. The main challenge is explaining the licensing model to customers. It isn't a problem related to Palo Alto. Commonly, people don't understand cloud licensing or security licensing. When they have fixed virtual machines, they know what they are going to be charged, but when it comes to cloud automation, it is hard for them to get clarity in case of high workloads or when they have enabled auto-scaling, etc. It would be helpful if Palo Alto can educate people on their licensing programs."

"Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks has helped the company save some money. Cost-wise, it's okay."

"Prisma Cloud's licensing system functions as expected with a solid licensing infrastructure."

"Prisma Cloud is more expensive than some other solutions, but when we consider all of its use cases, the cost averages out."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

909,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Outsourcing Company

Construction Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Outsourcing Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

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	5
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	37
Midsize Enterprise	21
Large Enterprise	58

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.

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 Distributed Cloud Services?

F5 Distributed Cloud Services is affordable. I think it is very affordable. I do not think it is expensive.

What needs improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services?

One area where F5 Distributed Cloud Services can be improved is in API security, which can be enhanced.Specifically, ...

What is your primary use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?

My main use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services is WAF protection.I am using F5 Distributed Cloud Services primari...

What is your primary use case for Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?

Prisma Cloud helps support DevSecOps methodologies, making those responsibilities easier to manage.

What Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform do you recommend?

We like Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, since it offers us incredible visibility into our entire cloud system. We...

What do you think of Aqua Security vs Prisma Cloud?

Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valu...

Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Comparisons

Compared 6% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 6% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 6% of the time

Radware Cloud WAF Service vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall Competitors

Azure Front Door vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Compared 12% of the time

Akamai vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Compared 9% of the time

Cloudflare vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Compared 7% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Compared 7% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Compared 2% of the time

More F5 Distributed Cloud Services Competitors

Wiz vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 11% of the time

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 8% of the time

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 4% of the time

Cyera vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 4% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 3% of the time

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Competitors

Product Reports

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Download Cloudflare Web Application Firewall product report

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Download F5 Distributed Cloud Services product report

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

July 2026

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report

Download Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF

No data available

Prisma Public Cloud, RedLock Cloud 360, RedLock, Twistlock, Aporeto

Overview

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall integrates DDoS protection, load balancing, and firewall capabilities. Its ease of use, configurability, and robust security measures make it a versatile choice for protecting web applications.

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall provides a comprehensive defense against threats with advanced reporting and robust security measures. It includes DNS integration, rate limiting, and extensive rule sets, all within a SaaS model that allows API configurability. Users value its caching, scalability, and pricing, although enhancements are needed in rate-limiting and third-party integration. Improvements in customer support, especially in India, real-time controls, and user documentation are also desired. Users seek a more intuitive dashboard, better log management, and improved alert systems, along with multitenancy capabilities and enhanced reporting.

What are the key features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

DDoS Protection: Shields applications from denial-of-service attacks
Load Balancing: Ensures efficient traffic distribution
DNS Integration: Enhances domain name system security
Rate Limiting: Controls traffic flow and reduces abuse
Extensive Rule Sets: Offers customizable security rules

What benefits and ROI can users find in reviews?

Scalability: Easily adapts to growing business needs
Pricing: Offers reasonable pricing structure
Caching: Improves application performance and speed
Configurable Security: Provides customizable defense settings
Efficient Management: Simplifies security and application control

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall finds application in industries like banking and retail by acting as a comprehensive security gateway, managing authentication and authorization while protecting web applications from malicious Layer 7 traffic. It also implements load balancing, CDN, and zero-trust policies, supported by advanced reporting, analytics tools, and threat scoring to meet specific industry needs.

Cloudflare

F5 Distributed Cloud Services excel in enhancing security, optimizing web application delivery, and ensuring robust network performance. Users value its integrated Web Application Firewall, DDoS protection, global server load balancing, and intuitive management interface. It boosts organizational efficiency, reduces operational costs, and scales seamlessly, making it essential for businesses operating in distributed environments.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks provides comprehensive cloud-native security solutions. It covers dynamic workload identity, automated forensics, and multi-cloud protection, ensuring robust security across diverse cloud platforms.

Prisma Cloud delivers advanced capabilities for managing cloud security across AWS, Azure, and GCP platforms. It offers dynamic workload identity creation, real-time monitoring, and seamless integration into CI/CD pipelines. With automation, centralized dashboards, and enhanced visibility, users effectively manage security misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. While optimizing cloud environments through runtime protection and compliance, Prisma Cloud faces challenges with its navigation, pricing, and limited automation capabilities. Users seek improvements in API security, role-based access controls, and documentation quality, emphasizing the need for enhanced customization and reporting features.

What are the important features of Prisma Cloud?

Dynamic Workload Identity: Enables unique workload identities for security purposes.
Automated Forensics: Offers detailed insights into threats and incidents automatically.
Runtime Protection: Provides ongoing detection and blocking of suspicious activities.
Multi-Cloud Security: Protects environments on AWS, Azure, and GCP simultaneously.
Compliance Management: Assists in meeting regulatory standards across cloud platforms.

What benefits or ROI should users consider in reviews?

Enhanced Security Posture: Strengthens cloud defense lines with proactive monitoring.
Centralized Dashboard: Offers unified oversight of multiple cloud environments.
Efficient Misconfiguration Handling: Quickly identifies and addresses security lapses.
Seamless CI/CD Integration: Integrates security within development workflows.
Improved Visibility: Provides transparent insights into security operations and alerts.

Industries like finance and telecom rely on Prisma Cloud for managing cloud security posture and container security. Teams utilize its capabilities across hybrid and multi-cloud settings to ensure compliance and robust threat protection. Features like misconfiguration detection and runtime monitoring are critical in promoting security objectives in these sectors.

Palo Alto Networks

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk

Information Not Available

Amgen, Genpact, Western Asset, Zipongo, Proofpoint, NerdWallet, Axfood, 21st Century Fox, Veeva Systems, Reinsurance Group of America

F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks