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AWS Shield vs F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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
Sponsored
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (9th), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
AWS Shield
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall...
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 12.4%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Shield is 2.9%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) is 1.9%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare12.4%
AWS Shield2.9%
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)1.9%
Other82.8%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager at bKash Limited
Advanced protection has secured critical web workloads and provides clear traffic visibility
From a security perspective, there remains a security loophole, as some browsers in the market can bypass the Turnstile solution, which requires approximately 40 seconds to do so. From a performance perspective, this is acceptable. We also tried Google reCAPTCHA, and that can also be bypassed. From a security perspective, I would say neither solution is completely secured. Regarding uptime, we have faced a couple of incidents due to Cloudflare in recent years, so I cannot say we receive 100% uptime for our region. We sometimes face challenges, including downtime and other issues. As a result, we are not receiving 100% uptime from Cloudflare's solution. Since most of our customers are in this region, we need alternatives. We need something more competitive than Cloudflare. Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, Cloudflare has three points of presence already, and we cannot find any other solution provider in Bangladesh as an alternative, which presents another challenge. Competitor solutions have more attack signatures, which ensure better security compared to Cloudflare's predefined configurations. Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements. Cloudflare could improve in this area. Additionally, regarding visibility, Cloudflare has static visibility, but they could adopt dynamic graph features for their customers.
Pranav Telang - PeerSpot reviewer
DGM at Airtel Digital
Has enabled multi-layered threat mitigation but still lacks deeper visibility for advanced application attacks
AWS Shield has limited coverage as it only protects against common and high-volume network and transport layer attacks, such as SYN floods. It does not provide inherent protection against more sophisticated layer 7 attacks such as HTTP floods. In such cases, integration with WAF is necessary, which results in additional costs for customers. To protect layer 7, layer 4, and layer 3, customers must implement both solutions. The service also has difficulties with static detection thresholds, which may not be sensitive enough to detect smaller application-specific attacks. While AWS Shield is a key security service, AWS should enhance their expert support with 24/7 response for complex attacks, which is currently limited.
Nawapol Boonlerd - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Security Engineer at BigFish Enterprise Ltd.
Comprehensive network protection has mitigated DDoS risks and supports secure on-prem operations
Currently, there are no weaknesses or disadvantages in F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) that I have identified. It is a little bit expensive, and I think about additional features they could have in the future to make it even better. For example, I have thoughts about the price. Currently, it does not integrate, and I would assess the importance of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)'s integration with cloud services as significant. Currently, I use only one site, and I cannot tell you about F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) centralized security policies. I have not used F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)'s Threat Intelligence capabilities. I have not used their dynamic traffic shaping feature. So far, the only thing that could be improved is the pricing of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM).

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."
"Cloudflare has made management of my website much easier by combining various functions in one platform without compromising quality."
"DDoS protection is this product’s most valuable feature."
"For businesses that don't have a dedicated security team, I think it's a better product; it's more intuitive for people like us."
"Centralized, full-featured DNS."
"The overall performance of this solution is what makes it one of the best solutions on the market."
"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."
"We're partners with Cloudflare; this solution is the best product and it does not charge you for any kind of attack on your traffic, only for good traffic, and it can mitigate up to 30 TBPS of DDoS attacks."
"The automatic detection and mitigation of DDoS attacks in the product operates in real-time and provides satisfactory results."
"It is quite scalable, and we have not faced any issues with its scalability."
"The product has a good mechanism to analyze trends and trigger events."
"AWS Shield is aligned with the web application firewall (WAF), and they work seamlessly together, primarily working with Elastic Load Balancer, CloudFront, and Route 53 for CDN and DNS services protection."
"I am impressed with the product's multiple features like security."
"The product is easy to use."
"We have integrated the tool with Active Directory. The most important feature is that it's transparent and doesn't degrade the performance of our solution. Additionally, it's easy to configure, which is crucial for us. It's easy to use and set up and stops attacks on our servers. We haven't encountered any attack problems because the solution stops them in real-time. AWS Shield specifically focuses on defending against denial-of-service attacks, making it a great solution for that type of threat."
"I recommend AWS Shield because it has proven helpful in tracking DDoS attacks within both my past and present environments, and without AWS Shield, a business could face potential losses, as this tool helps in identifying and mitigating fake traffic that disrupts applications, ultimately supporting business continuity."
"The product’s most valuable features are LTM and WAF."
"The setup and functionality are fairly straightforward."
"The product helps us provide security validation by protecting various applications from getting hacked."
"F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager's most valuable feature is load balance. It is readily available and uncomplicated."
"It is stable."
"The most valuable feature of F5 BIG-IP AFM is all of my workers enjoy using it."
"The protection is very useful."
"The customer service is excellent, and I rate it ten out of ten."
 

Cons

"I rate technical support quite badly."
"With CDN loads, sometimes we get an error that the host server is unavailable when the connection between CloudFlare and the server timed out."
"Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."
"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."
"For large enterprises, the pricing is okay. However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high. A mid-tier pricing option would be beneficial."
"More insight into analytics and threats would be a good place to start improving Cloudflare."
"However, what I still fail to understand is that why aren't they offering domains themselves."
"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."
"The product is expensive."
"There is an area for improvement regarding health checks. AWS Shield does not come with its own health check functionality."
"We end up having to pay extra for features that AWS adds that we don't need."
"The management of it is a bit hard. If you don't engineer it on the front side, it is hard to go back in and change it. It could be improved in terms of architecture requirements and then ongoing support requirements as a secondary component to it. People tend to set up things like this, and they just expect it to work without the care and feeding that needs to go back into it either from an application team or a network environment team."
"AWS Shield Standard requires improvement, particularly regarding its dashboard since it currently provides limited coverage against comprehensive DDoS attacks."
"The product should give users more flexibility to customize their security policies according to their requirements."
"The product needs to improve its logs and reports to make it read better."
"AWS Shield has limited coverage as it only protects against common and high-volume network and transport layer attacks, such as SYN floods."
"The product is expensive."
"We would have preferred to have support when we first started"
"Firstly, geolocation currently relies on manual updates. It has to move to automatic updates."
"Currently, we have eighty F5s and we need some kind of management software. It would be very helpful."
"Deployment times vary according to the customer. It needs to be heavily configured. You need to look and you need to observe the behavior of the traffic before you can start configuring everything. It can take time."
"F5 should increase its capability to prevent zero-day attacks."
"Firstly, geolocation currently relies on manual updates. It has to move to automatic updates. There are no automatic updates for this feature. If some IPs, countries, or service providers move to another country, now you will be allow IPs that you previously denied. This is because you depend on the database, which doesn't update automatically. This is really a very important area that they need to improve."
"F5 could provide a distributed cloud version."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"We pay $3000 per month for the solution."
"The tool's pricing is good."
"The tool is cheap."
"The cost depends on traffic each month, so on average, it costs us between US$200 and US$300 per month."
"It depends on your subscription level and the volume that you're spending with AWS. So, it is very relative to the consumption alignment in your subscription level. It is a well-constructed, scalable pricing option, but it is relative to how much you're spending on AWS. Because the more you spend, typically, the more you get off on services like this. I find it to be comparable to other solutions."
"We have purchased a five-year licensing package for the product."
"We need to pay a yearly licensing fee for the solution."
"F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager is not an expensive solution."
"It's very expensive, and you pay extra for the models."
"It is somewhat on the expensive side although it is worth the additional cost."
"F5 BIG-IP AFM is an affordable solution. There were not any additional fees other than the standard licensing."
"As per pricing, I would not say cheap, but little higher than cheap, but not very expensive. So you can say kind of value for money solutions."
"The solution is slightly on the higher priced side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
17%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Engineering Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
 

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...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare DNS?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cloudflare are a bit on the higher side overall.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Shield?
The pricing structure for AWS Shield is fair, yet it depends on the specific protections chosen. Enabling Shield Adva...
What needs improvement with AWS Shield?
Services always benefit from improvements, including AWS Shield. With respect to the Web Application Firewall, curren...
What is your primary use case for AWS Shield?
What do you use it for? How do you use it?
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?
The standard license is reasonably priced, but additional features like the WAF can be more expensive. There are plen...
What needs improvement with F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?
Currently, there are no weaknesses or disadvantages in F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) that I have identifi...
What is your primary use case for F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?
I am starting to learn and working with F5 team to conduct a proof of concept, and I do have experience with F5 Rules...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
F5 AFM, F5 Advanced Firewall Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
netflix, dow jones, mapbox, pearson, rovio, youview, moviestar planet, asurion, payplug, hour of code
City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Shield vs. F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,153 professionals have used our research since 2012.