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F5 Shape Security vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 21, 2025

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

F5 Shape Security
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Fraud Detection and Prevention (7th)
Imperva Application Securit...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
133
Ranking in other categories
CDN (2nd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (3rd), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (4th), Bot Management (1st), API Security (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. F5 Shape Security is designed for Fraud Detection and Prevention and holds a mindshare of 1.4%, down 1.6% compared to last year.
Imperva Application Security Platform, on the other hand, focuses on Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection, holds 8.2% mindshare, up 8.2% since last year.
Fraud Detection and Prevention Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
F5 Shape Security1.4%
ThreatMetrix6.5%
BioCatch4.1%
Other88.0%
Fraud Detection and Prevention
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Imperva Application Security Platform8.2%
Cloudflare16.6%
Arbor DDoS9.3%
Other65.9%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Nikolay Dimitrov - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Engineer at Paysafe / IBM
Easy to configure and blocks bot attacks for web users
The solution is deployed on the F5 cloud. The solution's real-time analytics help you see what has been blocked. It helps to see whether the attack category was an automation attack or a fake browser. F5 Shape Security has a normal dashboard. We are doing F5 Shape Security migrations for 30 customers. F5 Shape Security uses Javascript. For a lot of competitors, the Javascript can be reverse-engineered by attackers to bypass the protection. F5 Shape Security has machine learning authentication of the Java script. If you had hacked it, the encryption would have been changed. It's really hard for attackers to reverse engineer the F5 Shape Security JavaScript. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
reviewer1247523 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Solution ensures website availability and proactive threat mitigation
Over the seven years, the most valuable features of Imperva DDoS that I have found are related to DDoS attacks, which are a group of attacks, and not all of them can be resolved on the endpoint level before the website. Using the web firewall before the website is a common use case to protect against malicious requests to the website. I have utilized Imperva's Intelligent Traffic Filtering feature. This feature helps me understand how the attack is progressing and what is happening inside the requests to our website. It allows me to granularly grant or deny access to certain parts of our website. This helps when we know our customers and the types of requests that can be sent from them, enabling us to block some malicious requests. Imperva DDoS has User Behavior Analytics and Threat Intelligence on its board, and this helps us to be protected proactively. Imperva DDoS connects to its database of threats, storing whole information about attacks all over the world in one simple engine. Everyone can use this feature, which can connect to this engine and get information about what is going on at the world level. That is the way to be protected at the company's level. The integration capabilities of Imperva DDoS are very easy and simple. We can run it in 2 hours.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"F5 Shape Security's most valuable feature is performance."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ease of configuration."
"If you are using the appliance as opposed to the virtual deployment, it can stand as the network layer-two and provide real transparency."
"I am impressed with the product's scalability, availability, easy management, and security. We were able to integrate the product with Azure and Sentinel."
"IncapRules is one of the most valuable features, as you can create your own security and access control rules on top of your security policy. Using IncapRules we were able to easily block Layer 7 DDoS attacks several times."
"It has fewer false positives"
"The most valuable features of the Imperva Web Application Firewall are performance and flexibility. We can extend or customize the box itself."
"It is easy to use and has good security."
"The features I have found most valuable with Imperva Web Application Firewall are account takeover protection, advanced bot protection, and API security."
"Imperva is a Gartner leader, so its scalability, performance, and features are excellent."
 

Cons

"I want the solution's custom exclusion rules to be more granular."
"The tool's price is high."
"It would be useful if the solution used more intelligence in attack protection. For example, firewalls are to be dependent on the configuration, but if they could have some data science around it the solution would be even better. The profiling of the traffic, and making decisions surrounding that should be intelligence-based, instead of being based on the configuration of the firewall itself."
"The process to upgrade from one version to another can be a lot simpler than it is currently."
"Imperva now offers add-ons to add functionality, but I would like to see these included in the product, even if it would cost more."
"They can provide an option to create reports, automatically import the entire report, and create rules again. In a real-life crisis, it would be helpful to be able to import a report and generate security rules from that report. I should be able to create a simple query and import the reports automatically. It can maybe also tell us the format of the report."
"Sometimes, support tickets don't get addressed quickly."
"The signature updates could be faster. Sometimes we have to upload signatures to the Imperva portal for checking and analysis before we can use them."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is very expensive."
"I'd like the option to pick your bot protection."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is moderately priced."
"The tool is expensive."
"We sell three-year licenses for Imperva Web Application Firewall to our customers. The price is a little expensive."
"Varies depending on the needs of the customer."
"For enterprise contracts you will be in touch with a dedicated account manager who will guide you regarding licensing."
"The price of Imperva Web Application Firewalls is expensive compared to others."
"It is very costly, but the return on investment is very high. Its cost was around $70,000, and we got it back in just six months."
"Imperva’s pricing is a bit higher in the market since it offers a full-blown WAF."
"It's an excellent product, but it can be very costly."
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Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Expert with 51-200 employees
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Healthcare Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business83
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise61
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about F5 Shape Security?
The most valuable feature of the solution is the ease of configuration.
What needs improvement with F5 Shape Security?
There could be some improvement in the options to make custom exclusion rules to be more granular. Sometimes, the solution blocks something that you don't want to be blocked. The solution should al...
What advice do you have for others considering F5 Shape Security?
The solution is deployed on the F5 cloud. The solution's real-time analytics help you see what has been blocked. It helps to see whether the attack category was an automation attack or a fake brows...
Which Web Application Firewall (WAF) would you recommend? R&S or Imperva?
Imperva is a strong choice, given their security focus and ongoing R&D into the product in areas such as bot management.
What do you like most about Imperva Incapsula?
We use Imperva DDoS to stop DDoS attacks and reduce the amount of unwanted queries against web services or web scraping.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Imperva DDoS?
The pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Imperva DDoS are reasonable for the amount of technical capabilities provided. I would rate the pricing of Imperva DDoS as five, where one is very cheap a...
 

Also Known As

Shape Security
Imperva Bot Management, Imperva Web Application Firewall, Imperva API Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Wells Fargo, Loblaw, JetBlue, Zoosk
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Shape Security vs. Imperva Application Security Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
882,160 professionals have used our research since 2012.