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Atomic ModSecurity Rules vs F5 Advanced WAF 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)
36th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
F5 Advanced WAF
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 4.5%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Atomic ModSecurity Rules is 0.9%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Advanced WAF is 4.7%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 Advanced WAF4.7%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall4.5%
Atomic ModSecurity Rules0.9%
Other89.9%
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.
reviewer2797602 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Security Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Granular security policies have protected critical applications and ensure safe user and admin access
Improvements could be made regarding the log information from the backend CLI. There are enhancements needed; if a request gets blocked on the TCP layer, there should be traces or data to verify which source generated these requests, including the source and port information for initiation. These data are missing from F5 Advanced WAF. Besides that, another improvement could be refining the bot detection to minimize false positives; it should be able to verify more granularly between legitimate and non-legitimate clients. Overall, I find everything else good. A wish list feature I have is for the Technical Assistance Center (TAC) to respond more promptly. Their response time needs improvement; while they do not take excessive time, it can be enhanced, especially given it is a security product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The impact of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's integration with existing web technologies on our site's performance and security measures is quite great, actually."
"The product has improved our security posture by blocking bad actors."
"The integration of Cloudflare with Cloud Suite is its most valuable feature."
"We extensively use the solution every day. The solution is very stable; we haven’t seen any glitches."
"The initial setup process is simple."
"The security features are valuable. The particular feature we use is called OWASP."
"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."
"It's pretty convenient and pretty easy to set up and run. And then kind of for static content, it also offers caching."
"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."
"F5 Advanced WAF has benefited our company by protecting us against revenue loss, preventing hacks that would have taken us offline or caused us a loss of revenue in different areas."
"I would recommend this solution because it is overall a very good solution."
"The most valuable features of F5 Advanced WAF are the easy identification of events and customization. We can pinpoint our settings."
"I like them because I like the security solution. They get extra marks compared to other solutions or competitors. There are more features than any other product I can think of. They're always monitoring, and the security features offer more than other, lesser products."
"It ensures compliance with security standards by providing features like PCI DSS checks."
"After implementing F5 Advanced WAF, nearly 99.9% of requests are legitimate due to the granularity and response verification by attack patterns and request blocking."
"The bot defense capability, as well as protection from brute force attacks and OWASP Top Ten, are notable features."
"F5 Advanced WAF is a comprehensive community platform with a strong commitment, making it valuable for businesses."
 

Cons

"I have experienced some difficulties with Cloudflare's support as a customer based in India."
"They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long."
"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."
"The user interface is very simple and straightforward, but users need knowledge about DNS to accomplish tasks."
"There could be an option to duplicate the cluster to maintain the consistency of rules."
"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."
"Its stability could be better."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should improve visibility for a customer."
"Additionally, I know that ModSecurity can block only SQL injection and XSS attacks, no more types of attacks."
"They could provide better pricing."
"The DDoS capabilities should be enhanced."
"The pricing could be more flexible."
"F5 Advanced WAF could improve the reporting. It's a bit difficult to populate, them. If you're not so familiar with the functions, such as where to find the logs and other settings."
"What needs to be improved in this solution is the accuracy of its automatic learning feature, because we frequently have to help it manually, particularly to stop blocking things it isn't supposed to block."
"F5 Advanced WAF could improve resource usage, it is CPU intensive. Additionally, adding automated remediation would be a benefit. For example, an easy button alerts us of the events that are occurring, and what we want to do at the time. An automated approach where somebody could be alerted very quickly. Instead of going and reconfiguring everything, an automated approach is what I'm looking at."
"One area for improvement in the product is its SSO integration, which posed challenges and required significant effort to resolve."
"Initially, policy tuning could be simpler, as while the learning engine is powerful, initial tuning still requires experienced engineers, which can be challenging for new teams due to the complexity of options and parameters."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"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."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"The solution is expensive."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
Information not available
"A yearly license for F5 Advanced WAF is expensive."
"Its price is fair. We have done a couple of deals where they were able to give some kind of discount to the customers. The price was initially high for the customers, but after a couple of negotiations, it came within their budget. They were happy with that."
"I don't have any issue with the pricing of this solution."
"The solution is very expensive so should only be used in the right environment."
"There are different licenses available to use F5 Advanced WAF, such as BT, ASM, and LPM."
"It's more expensive than other solutions and depending on the modules, there can be additional fees."
"There is a perpetual license that comes with your hardware. There is also an additional fee for support."
"There are various plans available for Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF as a Service, including a trial version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
28%
Hospitality Company
13%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
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 Business27
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise31
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced WAF?
F5 Advanced WAF is somewhat costly compared to other vendors, but it is worth the investment due to the stability it ...
What needs improvement with F5 Advanced WAF?
Improvements could be made regarding the log information from the backend CLI. There are enhancements needed; if a re...
What is your primary use case for F5 Advanced WAF?
My main use case for F5 Advanced WAF is to protect external and internal applications from cyber attacks and to preve...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Information Not Available
MAXIMUS, Vivo, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office, City Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about Imperva, Fortinet, F5 and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: June 2026.
902,456 professionals have used our research since 2012.