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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 integration of Cloudflare with Cloud Suite is its most valuable feature."
"The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10."
"Cloudflare has positively impacted my organization by making it easier for me to handle and set up DNS for multiple clients; I can easily go in and access their accounts, make changes they need, and it's a one-stop shop."
"The product has improved our security posture by blocking bad actors."
"There is a huge signature repository"
"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."
"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."
"The Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."
"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."
"The web application firewall itself is most valuable. It provides positive security and negative security. In negative security, it blocks a task such as cross-site scripting, code injection, etc. In positive security, it lets you specify and enforce things, such as the parameters allowed in username and password fields and the number of characters allowed in a field."
"F5 technical support is excellent. They are experts who always provide the right solution, and they understand the problem. Their response and resolution times are good."
"After we introduced the web application firewall, it increased our ability to expose more of the services to the public."
"The solution uses AI to protect against botnet attacks."
"Customers find the load balancer feature as the most valuable."
"F5 Advanced WAF offers features not available in other products."
"One of the most valuable features is the Local Traffic Manager."
"The support experience is better than average."
 

Cons

"The user interface is very simple and straightforward, but users need knowledge about DNS to accomplish tasks."
"The dashboard could be more user-friendly."
"The notification part could be improved. It's very much connected to Web Application Firewall, rate-limiting, and DDoS protection."
"We have noticed some latency when the call goes through the firewall. That could be improved."
"The learning curve was steep initially."
"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."
"The rate limiting functionality could be enhanced, as we find it somewhat limited."
"A key challenge arises when dealing with numerous integrations with HVAC systems. Depending on the specifics, there might be some configuration mismatches, which necessitate specific support."
"Additionally, I know that ModSecurity can block only SQL injection and XSS attacks, no more types of attacks."
"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."
"One of our customers is a bit unhappy about the reporting options."
"The reporting portion of F5 Advance WAF is not great. They need to work out something better, as it is very basic. You only see the top IPs, I think there is more they can offer."
"While F5 Advanced WAF does limit the number of partners in certain regions to ensure successful business transactions, they could also benefit from expanding their partnerships and making it easier for more people to learn about and become experts in F5 Advanced WAF. By doing so, they could increase the reach and exposure of their solution, similar to how Cisco has become widely recognized in the security industry."
"Support is a little slow."
"F5 Advanced WAF could improve on its funding for WAF features. There is a need to be more advanced WAF features."
"The Sandbox integration feature could be improved."
"This solution can be made more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not too pricey."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"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."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"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."
Information not available
"After buying the program, you just pay for the support every year."
"It is a little bit costly, but it has all the features that are required."
"The way we deployed it, I would rate it a four out of five in terms of pricing."
"The pricing is too high."
"F5 Advanced WAF technical support comes at a cost, and it's expensive."
"There are various plans available for Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF as a Service, including a trial version."
"There is a perpetual license that comes with your hardware. There is also an additional fee for support."
"The pricing for F5 Advanced WAF is comparable to a Rolls-Royce. Its price is a bit high when you compare it with other vendors. F5 Advanced WAF is a bit expensive. The customer was on a three-year plan and it was around $560,000."
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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.