No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Airlock vs NetScaler comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

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
Airlock
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
40th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
9.2
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetScaler
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
15th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (2nd), Network Management Applications (14th)
 

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 Airlock is 0.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetScaler is 3.5%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall4.7%
NetScaler3.5%
Airlock0.8%
Other91.0%
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.
Tiodor Jovovic - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Business Officer at Sky Express
Provides endless features and can be adapted to every single application that exists in the world
WAF is the most beneficial feature for security posture. Our customers are more than satisfied with the user experience provided by the product. The level of detail of the configuration is the most significant aspect. We can adapt it to every single application that exists in the world. The product helps with the compliance processes.
AR
IT Security Specialist at a educational organization with 201-500 employees
Allows students and lecturers access to necessary software for their courses cost-effectively
I am a consultant and do not recommend specific products. I work with customers, and they decide what they want to buy. I'm a CISO as a service, dealing with security. I'm from an integrator company, and they usually sell a few products. One customer uses NetScaler for a VDI system with Citrix…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"For us, the key feature of Cloudflare is DDoS protection and IP hiding, especially since we are a crypto company."
"Cloudflare WAF provides protection through rules and functionalities like Cloudflare's SDRAP."
"This solution does a good job of preventing web application attacks, SQL injections, and cross-site scripting attacks."
"The rate limiting features and customizations in terms of URL match and applying policies are valuable to me."
"I'm highly satisfied. It's remarkably user-friendly, enabling me to quickly identify issues, and deploy solutions, and it offers the necessary features."
"There is a huge signature repository"
"This is a good product; it's reliable and scales well."
"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."
"Our customers are more than satisfied with the user experience provided by the product."
"It was very easy, the NetScaler community is very big."
"Once you set it up correctly you never have to go back to change anything ever again."
"The most valuable feature, absolutely, is its high-security."
"Content Redirection based on application data is a wonderful feature which works absolutely fine with most of the web application, and it has good logics behind it to configure it, and secondly, Single sign-on with Citrix's own applications, like XenApp and XenDesktop."
"I cannot think of any features that should be added because the product has a lot of useful features already."
"Load Balancing and SSL offloading are key features."
"Load Balancing and SSL offloading are key features."
"Citrix ADC is a product that I can recommend, without any doubt or hesitation."
 

Cons

"If they add logs history within the Cloudflare offering, that would be a great benefit."
"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."
"Support can be challenging at times."
"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."
"The user interface is very simple and straightforward, but users need knowledge about DNS to accomplish tasks."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should include port forwarding features."
"The reporting could be improved if it were more granular."
"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."
"The tool must be simplified."
"There is room for improvement regarding the pricing policy for Citrix offices."
"The user interface could be more friendly."
"It is difficult to customize. It is more difficult to customize than F5, for example."
"I think there is always room for improvement in this type of solutions. For example, I think the GUI should be easy to understand."
"Currently, it is not easy to use the configuration capabilities of the product."
"I will try to migrate all the tools to the cloud because there is more lab and more VPN scalability available in the cloud."
"The product could be improved by making it easier to use and easier to implement."
"We are looking for some in-depth monitoring and analytics and more information that Citrix Director doesn't provide."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"It is not too pricey."
"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."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"The tool is cheap."
"It is true that it is a bit pricey compared to newer technologies coming to the market. For example, A10 is a load balancer that does everything that Citrix can and it does a lot more than what NetScaler does when it comes to the security space, and their prices are so cheap. Every box comes with its own license and support built into it. When you compare that with NetScaler, you have to buy licenses separately, you have to buy a support agreement that is going to be separate. A small NetScaler, even if it is a VPX which is a virtual server, could cost you close to $150,000 to $200,000 dollars. So the pricing is really high."
"We have all the features and functions of Citrix because we have a premium license."
"The solution is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"Our licensing fees including technical support are approximately $3,500 USD."
"The pricing could be lower."
"Citrix Web App and API Protection are in the middle when we talk about pricing and licensing"
"It all depends on the features that will be used and the number of accesses."
"The firewall license is included by default, with no additional costs."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.
893,915 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
11%
Construction Company
9%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise58
 

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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What advice do you have for others considering Citrix NetScaler?
Each product has its advantages, and combining certain features of F5 and NetScaler could be beneficial. I'd rate the...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADM?
Regarding pricing, educational institutes often receive better prices. In the context of virtualization, prices are i...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
Airlock Suite
Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall, NetScaler VPX - Customer Licensed
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Raiffeisen, SGKB, Generali, Visana
ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk
Find out what your peers are saying about Imperva, Fortinet, F5 and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: April 2026.
893,915 professionals have used our research since 2012.