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AWS WAF vs Atomic ModSecurity Rules 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 ...
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Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Atomic ModSecurity Rules
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
29th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
AWS WAF
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 Atomic ModSecurity Rules is 0.8%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS WAF is 4.2%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall3.8%
AWS WAF4.2%
Atomic ModSecurity Rules0.8%
Other91.2%
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.
Vahid Babaey - PeerSpot reviewer
PhD Student at University of North Carolina at Charlott
Open rules have enabled me to secure web apps against obfuscated SQL injection and XSS attacks
The best feature Atomic ModSecurity Rules offers is the open source aspect. I believe that because it's open source, all of the developers, programmers, and security experts are able to update this WAF and provide more rules, creating a more secure WAF for all of the clients and customers around the world. By accessing Atomic ModSecurity Rules, it has helped me significantly. Because of this open source feature, I am able to generate new rules and update the WAF and use this WAF in my research and also give it to other clients and customers to use the updated WAF. All of this is done just because of the open-source feature, because it can be updated.
Azam S M - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
Has successfully filtered malicious traffic and allowed country-specific access controls
For improvement in AWS WAF, we can have better monitoring. One of the things that should be improved in AWS WAF is the monitoring; we need to identify the requests and where they are coming from. If it's a bot, we should differentiate the requests, whether they are automated or not. The way we see it now is just mentioned as a percentage from bots and actual users, which should include proper graphs and detailed information. We also need a feature where we can filter specific requests. If there are scripts in the requests, we should be able to filter those requests to see if there are any scripts running from them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10."
"Very glad the WAF rulesets works out of box, and requires very little tuning or maintenance."
"For us, the key feature of Cloudflare is DDoS protection and IP hiding, especially since we are a crypto company."
"The most valuable part of the solution for us overall is exactly that it is a Software-as-a-Service product."
"We extensively use the solution every day. The solution is very stable; we haven’t seen any glitches."
"It's pretty convenient and pretty easy to set up and run. And then kind of for static content, it also offers caching."
"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."
"Cloudflare WAF provides protection through rules and functionalities like Cloudflare's SDRAP."
"The best feature Atomic ModSecurity Rules offers is the open source aspect, because all of the developers, programmers, and security experts are able to update this WAF and provide more rules, creating a more secure WAF for all of the clients and customers around the world."
"AWS WAF is very easy to use and configure on AWS."
"The most valuable feature is the capability to limit access based on geographical location by restricting specific IP addresses."
"We have received good support from the customer service and support team."
"The solution is stable."
"I hope that the solution continues to improve, but for me, it's perfect right now."
"This is not a product that you need to install. You just use it."
"AWS WAF helps mitigate different kinds of bot attacks and SQL injection that happen within the retail industry."
"AWS WAF is something that someone from a cloud background or cloud security background leverages. If they want to natively use a solution in the cloud, AWS WAF comes in handy. It's very useful for that, and the way we can fine-tune the WAF rules is also nice."
 

Cons

"The platform's control features related to real-time authentication and response time need improvement."
"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."
"The rate limiting functionality could be enhanced, as we find it somewhat limited."
"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."
"The ModSecurity core rules need to be updated."
"The reporting could be improved if it were more granular."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well."
"There could be an option to duplicate the cluster to maintain the consistency of rules."
"Additionally, I know that ModSecurity can block only SQL injection and XSS attacks, no more types of attacks."
"It would be good if the solution provided managed WAF services."
"The solution could be more reliable."
"The user experience, the interface, is lacking. Sometimes it's hard to find certain areas that it has alerted on."
"We should be able to do proper whitelisting."
"Alternative WAFs have something like bot mitigation or bot control within the WAF, but you don't have such things in AWS WAF."
"Technical support for AWS WAF needs improvement."
"The product could be improved by expanding the weightage units of rules we have when writing policy."
"The dashboarding could be improved, and the default metrics provided by AWS WAF could be upgraded."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"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."
"It is not too pricey."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
Information not available
"There are different scale options available for WAF."
"I rate the product price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is high price, and ten is low price"
"It's quite affordable. It's in the middle."
"I would rate AWS WAF's pricing a seven out of ten."
"For Kubernetes microservices, AWS is more expensive compared to OCI. AWS costs approximately 70 cents per hour, while OCI is 50% cheaper."
"For our infrastructure, we probably pay around $16,000 per month for AWS WAF. Because alternative WAF solutions provide even more features, I think the AWS WAF is a bit pricey"
"The solution is affordable."
"The pricing should be more affordable, especially as it pertains to small clients."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
29%
Hospitality Company
12%
Construction Company
9%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

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 Business22
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise28
 

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 needs improvement with Atomic ModSecurity Rules?
Atomic ModSecurity Rules can be improved by first studying and reading the structure of new obfuscated attacks, then ...
What is your primary use case for Atomic ModSecurity Rules?
My main use case for Atomic ModSecurity Rules is in my research, which tries to make websites secure against web atta...
What advice do you have for others considering Atomic ModSecurity Rules?
I would rate Atomic ModSecurity Rules nine out of ten. I chose nine out of ten because I have not studied other WAFs....
What are the limitations of AWS WAF vs alternative WAFs?
Hi Varun, I have had experienced with several WAF deployments and deep technical assessments of the following: 1. Im...
How does AWS WAF compare to Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Web Application Firewall or Microsoft...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS WAF?
AWS WAF is affordable; it depends on the number of rules you apply. The licensing cost for AWS WAF is just pay-as-you...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
No data available
AWS Web Application Firewall
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Information Not Available
eVitamins, 9Splay, Senao International
Find out what your peers are saying about Imperva, Fortinet, F5 and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: August 2026.
908,877 professionals have used our research since 2012.