NGINX App Protect vs NetScaler comparison

NetScaler and F5 are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. NetScaler is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.3, while F5 is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.7. Additionally, 91% of NetScaler users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of F5 users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

NetScaler and NGINX App Protect compete in application security and performance delivery. NetScaler seems to have the upper hand due to its wide array of features serving large, diverse environments.

Features: NetScaler offers flexible deployment models with features like SSL offload, multitenancy, and strong integration with Citrix applications. Its configuration allows efficient traffic management crucial for large enterprises. NGINX App Protect shines in traffic management and security with its command-line interface and ease of integration, although it may lack advanced features for user guidance.

Room for Improvement: NetScaler needs to enhance ADC functionalities such as asymmetric content optimization and simplify its setup process. Its advanced feature configurations require streamlining. NGINX App Protect should address configuration complexity and improve its user interface, providing better bot protection and pricing adjustments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetScaler supports both on-prem and hybrid cloud environments with versatile deployment options. However, its technical support has mixed reviews. NGINX App Protect supports diverse configurations but experiences gaps in customer service responsiveness and expertise.

Pricing and ROI: NetScaler is often critiqued for high costs and complex licensing, although users report significant ROI from its feature set. NGINX App Protect, with potentially lower costs, is considered flexible due to instance-based pricing, yet there's a call for better alignment with enterprise budgets.

To learn more, read our detailed NGINX App Protect vs. NetScaler Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

NGINX App Protect vs. NetScaler

April 2025

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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

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes

Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

Read full review

DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU

Cloud Consultant at Migros Ticaret A.Ş.

A tool for centralized management including inventory and sales tracking

Citrix ADM has the ability to implement policies to tighten security. For instance, you can restrict access to your network from outsiders or lack necessary security measures such as antivirus programs. Additionally, there's the Delivery Controller, which allows for comprehensive monitoring and management tasks such as remote restarts, maintenance, and registration. Another essential component is the Director, which provides detailed insights into sessions, including identifying session failures, connection issues, user lockouts, etc. It presents a list of problems to address, enabling you to click on them and resolve them efficiently.

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Saurav Kumar

Senior security architecture at National Payment Corporation Of India

Offers protection to users from external threats

NGINX App Protect secures our company's application, and it has helped me a lot, considering that we have critical infrastructure in India where we see how lots of attacks come onto our organization's servers. The tool offers protection against multiple threats present in India's IT ecosystem. The tool helps our company to make our payments secure, meaning it has the ability to provide a secure payment environment in India. Speaking about the improvements in our company's application performance since implementing NGINX App Protect, the gRPC support for the solution is very low. My company is not getting any proper documentation on how to deploy gRPC over NGINX App Protect. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. People can use the product as their company's base server, WAF, or for its proxy manager, depending on the business requirements. My company follows PCI DSS compliance because we operate in a payment-related industry. Right now, my company follows all the standards, so we comply with all the requirements and policies. I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."

"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."

"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."

"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."

"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."

"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."

"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."

More Cloudflare pros

"The solution improves security performance."

"The web application firewalling component is a powerful feature."

"The maintenance of the solution is not complex."

"I find all of it to be valuable, because of the flexibility that is built into this product."

"Enables a Web service that offers persistent client-server connections, IP restriction, URL rewrite (such as remove "/assets/" path from client-side URL path), and cache for CSS or JS files... You can easily use the GUI to set up all these requirements on the same network device within 20-30 minutes. (If you do the same steps on CLI, it might take less time.)"

"The solution is easy to work with and manage."

"Helped us a lot with load balancing."

"The load balancing and VPN features are most valuable. AAA authentication is also valuable."

More NetScaler pros

"NGINX App Protect is stable."

"It's very easy to deploy."

"Overall, I rate NGINX App Protect between eight and nine."

"The most valuable feature of NGINX App Protect is its open source."

"The most valuable feature is that I can establish different services from the firewall."

"It has the best documentation features."

"The initial setup was simple and took three to four days."

"The policies are flexible based on the technologies you use."

More NGINX App Protect pros

Cons

"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."

"It should have easier documentation for the configuration. It's very technical and people who aren't technical should also be able to do the configuration."

"Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements."

"Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."

"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."

"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."

"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."

"It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal."

More Cloudflare cons

"The reporting is not so good. They don't have an application to connect the logs."

"The technical support could be improved. They do not respond or assist customers in a timely manner."

"We would like to see some fairly large scale improvement in the configuration process for this solution."

"The setup was not simple."

"The licensing model and technical support of the solution could be improved."

"Its GUI should be improved. Its CLI is powerful, but GUI needs more features."

"There is room for improvement regarding the pricing policy for Citrix offices."

"We are looking for some in-depth monitoring and analytics and more information that Citrix Director doesn't provide. ControlUp has insights that not only give you an overview but also allow you to do some drill-down troubleshooting for what's going on in your environment. We are looking for some more analytical and monitoring data to be able to monitor the environment better, not only from an application standpoint but also from the standpoint of the infrastructure to everything it sits on. They can provide more data to the administrators about what's going on within the application. They can provide data not only on the application side but also about what the application sits on. They're making strides with Citrix Analytics in regards to that."

More NetScaler cons

"Its technical support could be better."

"The solution needs to be improved in the e-commerce portal."

"The product's price is high, making it an area of concern where improvements are required. The tool's licensing model is also not good."

"It doesn't have more advanced features like no false-positive security, which you can configure in Advanced WAF."

"It would be better if it were easier to implement and if there was more information from F5 regarding hardware requirements and specifications to deploy the service, to avoid disruptions after implementation."

"The setup of NGINX App Protect is complex. The full process took one week to complete. Additionally, we had to change the network infrastructure platform which took one month."

"The integration of NGINX App Protect could improve."

"Right now, the tool doesn't provide an option revolving around update feeds, specifically the signature update option in the UI."

More NGINX App Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."

"We are using the free version."

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"I give the price a five out of ten."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"For partners, NetScaler is not as expensive price-wise versus F5."

"This product is more expensive than some of the competitors."

"After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more expensive."

"Citrix ADM costs us approximately $5000 per month."

"In Turkey, everything is good, but it seems expensive for us due to the currency exchange. I don't have a specific rating scale, but if I had to rate the price, I would say it's around a six out of ten."

"Citrix Web App and API Protection are in the middle when we talk about pricing and licensing"

"The pricing could be lower."

"It is an enterprise solution. Thus, its costs are reasonable."

More NetScaler pricing and cost advice

"The product's price is high."

"The solution's price is reasonable."

"The pricing is reasonable because NGINX operates on an instance basis."

"The licensing fees for this solution are pretty expensive for what it does, but there is no alternative."

"The price of NGINX App Protect is approximately $3,000 annually. All of our licenses are observed by a managed service partner."

"There are not any additional costs we had to pay to use NGINX App Protect."

"The price of NGINX App Protect is not much different from the products that fall under the leader category of Gartner Magic Quadrant."

"There are no additional fees."

More NGINX App Protect pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

18%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

15%

Educational Organization

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Comms Service Provider

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?

Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...

See all answers

What do you like most about Cloudflare?

Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.

See all answers

What do you like most about Citrix ADC?

The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic ente...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADC?

After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?

Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexi...

See all answers

What do you like most about NGINX App Protect?

It's very easy to deploy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX App Protect?

I don't know the pricing yet because in my other project, I was not part of the buying side and I was just starting t...

See all answers

What needs improvement with NGINX App Protect?

It would be better if it were easier to implement and if there was more information from F5 regarding hardware requir...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

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Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

HAProxy vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs NetScaler

Compared 9% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NetScaler

Compared 8% of the time

VMWare Avi Load Balancer vs NetScaler

Compared 8% of the time

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Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 20% of the time

Azure Front Door vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 16% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 14% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 10% of the time

AWS WAF vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 8% of the time

More NGINX App Protect Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

NetScaler

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

NGINX App Protect

April 2025

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Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall

NGINX WAF, NGINX Web Application Firewall

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

One platform for a consistent application delivery and security experience because nobody has time to learn multiple systems to manage ADC deployments. NetScaler is built with a single code base using a software-based architecture, so no matter which ADC form factor you choose — hardware, virtual machine, bare metal, or container — the behavior will be the same.

NetScaler

NGINX App Protect application security solution combines the efficacy of advanced F5 web application firewall (WAF) technology with the agility and performance of NGINX Plus. The solution runs natively on NGINX Plus and addresses some of the most difficult challenges facing modern DevOps environments:

Integrating security controls directly into the development automation pipeline
Applying and managing security for modern and distributed application environments such as containers and microservices
Providing the right level of security controls without impacting release and go-to-market velocity
Complying with security and regulatory requirements

NGINX App Protect offers:

Expanded security beyond basic signatures to ensure adequate controls
F5 app‑security technology for efficacy superior to ModSecurity and other WAFs
Confidently run in “blocking” mode in production with proven F5 expertise
High‑confidence signatures for extremely low false positives
Increases visibility, integrating with third‑party analytics solutions
Integrates security and WAF natively into the CI/CD pipeline
Deploys as a lightweight software package that is agnostic of underlying infrastructure
Facilitates declarative policies for “security as code” and integration with DevOps tools
Decreases developer burden and provides feedback loop for quick security remediation
Accelerates time to market and reduces costs with DevSecOps‑automated security

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

NGINX App Protect vs. NetScaler

April 2025

Free Report: NGINX App Protect vs. NetScaler

Find out what your peers are saying about NGINX App Protect vs. NetScaler and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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