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AWS WAF vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.7
AWS WAF offers cost-effective security by reducing the need for extra staff and effectively blocking threats.
Sentiment score
4.2
F5 Distributed Cloud Services reduces costs by 30%, saves engineering time, lowers support overhead, and enhances security efficiency.
I would estimate the cost was reduced by approximately 30 percent in the first year.
Information Security at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
There is definitely a return on investment in F5 Distributed Cloud Services.
Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
I do find F5 Distributed Cloud Services to be cost-effective, as it brings benefits and a strong return on investment.
Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at BMB
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
AWS WAF support is prompt and knowledgeable, but experiences vary in resolution speed and service costs.
Sentiment score
6.3
F5 support excels in expertise and reliability but needs faster response times for enhanced user satisfaction in call and email services.
Resolving issues can take time because the support personnel may lack product expertise, leading to delays.
Security Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
There is a lot of support from F5 Distributed Cloud Services and the knowledge on the page is very good and reliable.
Engineer Solutions Architect at SCitum
I would provide 9.5 for support.
Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
Email services are good, but they need to have a good human-based interaction with the call centers.
Senior Network Security Consultant at NTT DATA
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
AWS WAF is highly scalable, versatile for various infrastructures, but some users desire expanded features for broader adaptability.
Sentiment score
6.6
F5 Distributed Cloud Services excel in scalable traffic management, with minimal configuration effort and no major limitations encountered.
I need the traffic management environments in distributed management, which have a very good goal to manage very difficult traffic in the world.
Engineer Solutions Architect at SCitum
We have not hit any major scalability limitations so far.
Project Manager at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
AWS WAF is stable, effectively blocking threats, with minor issues in custom rules, and continuous improvements enhance reliability.
Sentiment score
8.3
F5 Distributed Cloud Services offers 99.99% uptime and stable performance, praised for reliability, redundancy, and minimal operational issues.
In terms of reliability, I would rate AWS WAF about six out of ten due to the need for improved signature sets.
Security Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We faced issues with AWS WAF when writing the custom rules.
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
The stability of AWS WAF is generally good;
Security Engineer Dev Sec Ops at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I won't face any issues with stability as a concern because it provides the load balancers and all redundancy, so it's very unlikely that we have any downtime.
Senior Network Security Consultant at NTT DATA
 

Room For Improvement

AWS WAF requires enhanced features, security, user interface, documentation, seamless integrations, and added automation for improved effectiveness.
F5 Distributed Cloud Services should simplify UI/UX, expand regional presence, enhance integration, and address pricing and usability concerns.
Compared to firewalls, WAFs generally provide limited stateful analysis capabilities.
Security Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
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.
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
The level of granularity is not great, and as you cross a certain threshold, the cost goes up by twenty or thirty percent every time.
Security Engineer Dev Sec Ops at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Making it easier to follow the traffic path and quickly see where something is going wrong would be a great enhancement.
Project Manager at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF.
IT Analyst at Atlas.cz, a.s.
For availability, they have added additional clusters across all the regional edges in the Kubernetes clusters to enhance availability.
Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
 

Setup Cost

AWS WAF pricing is seen as affordable but can be costly in high-demand scenarios like DDoS attacks.
Due to our status as an AWS shop, AWS WAF is cost-effective for us, and we benefit from discounts due to our extensive use of AWS services.
Security Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The licensing cost for AWS WAF is just pay-as-you-go; it is a service-based model.
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
F5 Distributed Cloud Services is affordable.
Engineer Solutions Architect at SCitum
I believe the prices are much higher than I expected, but for the time being, the customer is still paying.
Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at BMB
 

Valuable Features

AWS WAF enhances security with configurable rules, seamless AWS integration, scalability, and ease of deployment for threat protection.
F5 Distributed Cloud Services offers user-friendly security, multi-cloud networking, and seamless integration, enhancing reliability and reducing complexity.
The biggest benefit of AWS WAF for us is to filter malicious requests, so we can protect our environment and application from malicious actors.
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
The specific outcomes showing how AWS WAF has helped our organization include improving our security posture by reducing the attack surface and reducing malicious attacks.
Senior Cloud Security at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
The cloud-native nature of AWS is crucial since most of our workload is in AWS, making AWS WAF native to Amazon Web Services.
Security Analyst at M2P Fintech
The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation.
IT Analyst at Atlas.cz, a.s.
F5 Distributed Cloud Services is the market leader in load balancers and manages traffic really well.
Senior Network Security Consultant at NTT DATA
Malicious user mitigation is an AI/ML-based technology that was introduced by the F5 team, and this particular MUG protects rate limiting.
Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
 

Categories and Ranking

AWS WAF
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
F5 Distributed Cloud Services
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
18th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
CDN (7th), API Security (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of AWS WAF is 4.0%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Distributed Cloud Services is 1.8%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AWS WAF4.0%
F5 Distributed Cloud Services1.8%
Other94.2%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2849304 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Cloud Security at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Centralized web firewalling has reduced our attack surface and protects multi‑cloud applications
AWS WAF can be improved by not being too sensitive for some data because with some XML, it is sometimes very sensitive. When we upload videos or photos, it is flagged as a malicious pattern, and sometimes it is not sensitive enough because some query patterns that have the capability to perform malicious actions still result in false positives from AWS. It would be better for AWS WAF if it not only had logs but also specific payloads or something that directly included the specific logs so we can have more detail in our analysis. I think it should be better if they improve their capabilities in reducing the attack surface and also have better visibility for OWASP top 10 web applications and the API. Regarding AWS WAF's AI capabilities, its governance and security are very good because our attack surface is mostly reduced. The new dashboard is a bit complicated; it is easier for non-technical users, but for technical professionals, it is sometimes confusing. While the security itself is good and the governance is good, I think it needs to improve the UI or the flow itself. The accuracy and reliability of AWS WAF's output is better than others. With the free version, it has a good filter with the attack surface and the reliability is good, but sometimes we need to adjust. With the free version, we also have to pay some amount of money if the number exceeds the default provided by AWS.
Mohan Janarthanan - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
Centralized security has protected APIs and optimized multi‑cloud traffic management
F5 Distributed Cloud Services has been used for two years for DDoS protection, and there is a particular feature called API protection. Within API protection, there is malicious user mitigation, which is one particular technology that has been implemented. This is a kind of advanced bot attack prevention. Malicious user mitigation is an AI/ML-based technology that was introduced by the F5 team, and this particular MUG protects rate limiting. If some users are having anomaly detection or someone is trying to do a bot attack, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge for that particular user alone and not for all users. For example, if someone is trying to act as a rogue, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge in the backend system on that particular system, so they cannot try again and again at the same time. It is for a concurrent session, and it will give the CAPTCHA challenge. This MUG, malicious user mitigation, prevents bot attacks. F5 Distributed Cloud Services includes the real-time intelligence feature, which helps with threat response strategies from a threat intelligence perspective. For example, if there are geo-restrictions or geo-based restrictions, sometimes people may come in through proxy-based servers, and it will prevent that. The load balancing feature optimizes application performance. Observability is the basic piece where F5 got introduced. This observability piece provides end-to-end visibility on the application performance. It gives complete end-to-end visibility across network latency and application performance issues. Sometimes when it is getting more than 200 pages, it throws errors such as 300, 400, or whatever has been configured, including 500 errors. F5 Distributed Cloud Services has helped improve traffic management efficiency. Most applications are hosted in the Check Point and F5 firewall, F5 web application firewall, where applications and traffic management can be accessed in a single dashboard. Automated threat detection is a basic feature of F5 Distributed Cloud Services meant for that purpose. There are two scenarios with automated threat detection, which is provided by F5. It is a completely machine learning solution that came from the bot defense, and it automatically protects against sophisticated attacks.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Insurance Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise28
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

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. Imperva WAF 2. F5 WAF 3. Polarisec Cloud WAF Typical limitations on cloud WAF is t...
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 Azure Application Gateway web application firewall software was the better fit ...
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-go; it is a service-based model.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
Regarding pricing, I believe the prices are much higher than I expected, but for the time being, the customer is still paying. It is not really a cheap product. From a pricing perspective, there sh...
What needs improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
An improvement for F5 Distributed Cloud Services could be in usability. It is very powerful, but it can also be quite complex. When you have many applications and routes, the troubleshooting proces...
What is your primary use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
Our main use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services is the application traffic management and security for our web applications. We rely on F5 Distributed Cloud Services primarily for load balancin...
 

Also Known As

AWS Web Application Firewall
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

eVitamins, 9Splay, Senao International
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS WAF vs. F5 Distributed Cloud Services and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.