Azure Firewall vs Huawei NGFW comparison

Microsoft and Huawei are both solutions in the Firewalls category. Microsoft is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.1, while Huawei is ranked #31 with an average rating of 7.4. Microsoft holds a 2.1% mindshare in Firewalls, compared to Huawei’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 79% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 66% of Huawei users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Huawei NGFW and Azure Firewall are two leading firewall solutions. Huawei NGFW seems to have the upper hand in pricing and support, while Azure Firewall stands out due to its extensive features that users find justify the cost.

Features: Huawei NGFW is praised for its robust threat detection, network protection versatility, and pricing. Azure Firewall is known for its seamless integration with Azure services, advanced threat intelligence, and analytics.

Room for Improvement: Huawei NGFW users suggest enhancing cloud integration, simplifying configuration, and improving customer service response times. Azure Firewall users desire better pricing models, extended support for non-Azure environments, and improved customer service.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Huawei NGFW users report a straightforward deployment but experience occasional support issues. Azure Firewall users find cloud-based deployment smooth but seek better customer service responsiveness.

Pricing and ROI: Huawei NGFW is favored for its competitive entry price and good ROI. Users find Azure Firewall's higher cost justified by its superior features and integration capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Firewall vs. Huawei NGFW Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Firewall vs. Huawei NGFW

April 2025

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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

Fortinet FortiGate

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 21.4%, up from 17.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Firewall is 2.1%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Huawei NGFW is 1.0%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewalls

Featured Reviews

EhabAli

Sr. Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at BMB

Efficient, user-friendly, and affordable

In the past, NSS Labs was utilized to test files and verify the numbers and datasheets. It would be beneficial to have an organization or testing lab that can verify the numbers in our datasheets since changes are frequently made, which can be inconvenient for review. For instance, when comparing different competitors such as Forcepoint, Palo Alto, and Check Point, the throughput or numbers in the datasheet may be lower than the actual numbers. Conversely, Fortinet typically reports very high numbers, but they cannot be replicated in the real world. Therefore, it would be advantageous for them to partner with a neutral testing organization such as NSS Labs to validate these numbers, thus providing more credibility and comfort to everyone regarding the accuracy of the datasheets. For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial. This tool shows a lot of promise and is very good. Making it free would help many companies deliver their products in a more efficient and integrated way. It would also be more valuable to include the tool with the firewall package or license instead of having to pay extra for it. Paying extra puts more pressure on small companies to deliver the firewall and complete the configuration, especially if they have hundreds or thousands of policies. It's very painful to move through these policies line by line. The stability has room for improvement. When it comes to Secure SD-WAN, everything is fine. They are going the right way. SD-WAN is very promising. They can provide the SD-WAN solution separately, but they will not take this approach because even the smallest firewall can support the features, so there is no need to have a separate service or appliance. They are following the right steps, and there is nothing to be improved. Feature-wise, I'm really satisfied with the new release, and the features they have added. For now, it's fine.

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AnvarSadique

Information Technology Architect at GMS INC

Easy setup and effective traffic routing enhance security

In terms of improvements, I think the price could be a concern as Azure ( /products/microsoft-azure-reviews ) services are often more expensive compared to other firewalls. However, the functional aspects of Azure Firewall met our needs. While I found the interface not particularly user-friendly, this is a common issue across vendors.

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Muhammad-Nadeem

Lead Network Security Engineer at PTA

A scalable and easy-to-setup product that can be used to configure different policies for specific users

In other next-generation firewalls, if you are creating virtual systems, they will create separate hardware resources for different virtual systems. Other products will create a different routing table when we create a routing protocol. In Huawei, the routing table, control plan, and data plan will share the resources. Every virtual system should have separate resources, routing tables, and hardware resources. We have created multiple segments and virtual systems, and we don't want one segment to communicate with another. The product must divide the virtual firewalls with different utilization systems. The hardware, routing switch, and security bundle should be separate and different. The solution does not have sandboxing features. It should provide a sandboxing solution. It should also work on zero-day attacks. The solution should be comparable with the products provided by Palo Alto, Check Point, and Cisco.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Their reliability and their policy of pre-shipping replacements when a unit has failed."

"Fortigate represents a really scalable way of delivering perimeter network security, some level of layer 7 security, WAF, and also a way to create a meshed ADVPN solution."

"I would recommend using Fortinet FortiGate because of its usability."

"Fortinet FortiGate positively provides my clients' organizations with a high return on investment."

"Fortinet FortiGate protects against internet-based threats, both internal and external. It is scalable, stable, easy to use, and easy to install."

"Overall security features and performance routing is good."

"The most important features of Fortinet FortiGate are the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and firewall control applications."

"You can create multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs), which are treated as separate firewall instances."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"The product's value to my company stems from its ability to secure my organization."

"The solution has many useful features. For example, the solution allows users to create virtual IP addresses."

"Performance and stability are the key features of this product."

"The solution should be capable of self-scaling, which is one of the features we like about it."

"Network filtering is valuable. The scalability capability from the cloud-native service helps us a lot because it simplifies our day-to-day maintenance activity."

"Azure Firewall is integrated well with Microsoft ecosystem."

"I find the solution to be very stable, and would rate it a ten out of ten in terms of stability."

"The firewall policy control, URL content control, and antivirus are all the most valuable aspects. Threat prevention is as well quite good."

More Azure Firewall pros

"The operational management dashboard is easy to use for the customers."

"The most useful feature is the performance of the firewalls and networking operations."

"The support for the solution has been excellent. If we ever had an issue they would send an engineer to help us with our problem."

"The mapping features and traffic logging are good."

"The solution's performance is good with IPSec."

"It enables us to configure different policies and restrictions for specific users within the same subnet."

"The UI is quite good."

"The solution's initial setup process is easy."

More Huawei NGFW pros

Cons

"It would be a benefit if Fortinet would release a one-stop solution that is better integrated with other products and an automated emergency response system."

"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution. However, my issue is the performance only. When I use all the profiles, this affects the performance. From the beginning, I should have had a better sizing of the box."

"FortiGate is really good. We have been using it for quite some time. Initially, when we started off, we had around 70 plus devices of FortiGate, but then Check Point and Palo Alto took over the place. From the product perspective, there are no issues, but from the account perspective, we have had issues. Fortinet's presence in our company is very less. I don't see any Fortinet account managers talking to us, and that presence has diluted in the last two and a half or three years. We have close to 1,500 firewalls. Out of these, 60% of firewalls are from Palo Alto, and a few firewalls are from Check Point. FortiGate firewalls are very less now. It is not because of the product; it is because of the relationship. I don't think they had a good relationship with us, and there was some kind of disconnect for a very long time. The relationship between their accounts team and my leadership team seems to be the reason for phasing out FortiGate."

"It should provide better visibility over the network and more information in the form of reports for the end users. Its installation should also be easier."

"Price, of course, can always be more competitive or better."

"The firmware needs improvement because there are bugs when a new release comes through. Sometimes, the configuration changes, and it's a bit harder to see where the fail is. The first time that you have the firmware, it tends to have some issues, and it's better to wait a bit to update the equipment."

"They are doing good, but they can improve the distributor assignment. The availability of the product and the timeline of delivery are the main things. The distribution should be swift, and the distributor should not reach out to end customers directly. They should work as a distributor. There should also be one more local distributor. Currently, there is only one distributor in Pakistan, and the rest of them are in UAE. It is difficult to work with only one distributor. Sometimes, you don't get along with the same distributor, and that's why they should have one more distributor. Their licensing should also be improved. The activation or renewal of the product should be done from the date of renewal, not from the date on which the license expired."

"Compared to some other products, the DLP is not at par for the moment."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"The threat intelligence aspect of this particular firewall is not at par with other providers."

"Right now, with Azure Firewall, we cannot have a normal inbound traffic flow. For inbound, Microsoft suggests using application gateways, so the options are very limited. I cannot use this firewall as an intermediate firewall because of the limitations, and I cannot point routing to another firewall. So if I want to use back-to-back firewall architecture in my environment, I cannot use Azure Firewall for that type of configuration either."

"One thing that would help engineers adopt it better is the documentation."

"The reporting, logging, and monitoring features, as well as the flexibility of the policies, need to be improved."

"There are a number of things that need to be simplified, but it's mostly costs. It needs to be simplified because it's pretty expensive."

"It has fewer features than you can get from other firewalls, like anti-spam and anti-phishing. Those kinds of things are not included. It only includes IDS and IDB."

"Currently, it only supports IP addresses, so you have to be specific about the IPs that are in your environment."

"This solution is not mature when it comes to handling perimeter traffic like internet browsing."

More Azure Firewall cons

"Huawei NGFW should have better reporting and a dashboard for the visibility of traffic."

"Huawei also need to improve spam techniques and add a web application firewall. Currently, Huawei does not have a built-in web application firewall (WAF) like Fortinet does."

"One issue we've encountered with Huawei NGFW is that after using a firewall for two or three years, we need to replace it. The new firewalls often have more features and better memory or throughput. However, sometimes, they lack some features that the old ones had."

"With the Huawei firewall, none of the features comes at the top. We found out later that customer support is really not good. For this firewall, because of our customers' routine, for example, every six months they'll do a penetration test to find weaknesses. So whenever they came up with VAPT reports, they are looking to Huawei for help. I think that's basically because it's a different culture. Chinese culture and our culture is different. They have always tried to help find some excuses or say some other things that cannot help you solve the problem immediately."

"One issue is integration. Huawei can't detect Indicators of Compromise (IoC). I can get a lot of information about security, but can't automatically input the EP, domain URL, and file hashes I get from Hackersworld into my blocklist."

"The documentation needs to be improved. When they retire old models, they also retire the documentation. However, if you are still using an older model, you still need access to that documentation. And yet, they go ahead and removed it. It's gone. You are therefore stuck with a device with no documentation and technical support that isn't very helpful as they also remove support assistance as well."

"The solution requires a more interactive dashboard. That would make it easier than playing with configurations the way we have to now."

"The user interface could be more user-friendly."

More Huawei NGFW cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have the full version of Fortinet FortiGate and we are on a three-year contract with a commitment of five years."

"We just pay a flat monthly fee to the vendor for the support."

"Fortinet FortiGate is reasonably priced."

"The pricing or licensing of Fortinet FortiGate is quite effective as it offers different bundles that aggregate most required features, while also allowing clients the option to select specific components alone."

"The support subscription for the solution is annual. You are paying for support and there are two levels of support, professional and advanced."

"As far as I'm aware, in our case, it's just a yearly pricing arrangement with no additional licensing costs."

"The cost is too high... They have to focus on more features with less cost for the customer. If you see the market, where it's going, there are a lot of players offering more features for less cost."

"The licensing scheme of Fortinet is better than Cisco. It is more logical."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"I rate the product pricing a five out of ten."

"It is expensive, especially with the premium functions. For one of the clients, it was very expensive. You have to use it more at an enterprise level, and there, it was not at an enterprise level. So, it was very costly, but security-wise, it was a very wise decision to use it that way."

"Azure Firewalls operate on a pay-as-you-go model, similar to cloud services."

"Azure Firewall is expensive."

"Azure Firewall comes with Azure native services. We did not buy any kind of license for it. Whether you have a free subscription or a pay-as-you-go model, you can deploy the Azure Firewall service... The amount that you use will determine how much you pay."

"The pricing of Azure Firewall is pay-as-you-go. Fortinet also has a pay-as-you-go model, but Azure's pricing is higher and, with FortiGate, you also have the license."

"The licensing module is good."

"Azure Firewall is quite an expensive product."

More Azure Firewall pricing and cost advice

"I believe that we are entitled to a one-year extension on our licensing."

"Huawei is priced lower than most competitors."

"Huawei is 30% cheaper than Arista."

"The pricing is cheap."

"The solution isn't cheap. It's market price."

"The price of the license of this solution is high."

"The solution is inexpensive."

"When you compare the price with other products, it's quite cost-effective. But the problem is always after, let's say, two years or three years later because they are not able to provide updates or patches very quickly."

More Huawei NGFW pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

20%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Government

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?

When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...

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What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?

From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...

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What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?

As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...

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What is a better choice, Azure Firewall or Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls?

Azure Firewall Vs. Palo Alto Network NG Firewalls Both solutions provide stellar stability and security. Azure Firew...

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How does Azure Firewall compare with Palo Alto Networks VM Series?

Both products are very stable and easily scalable. The setup of Azure Firewall is easy and very user-friendly and the...

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Which would you recommend - FortiGate VM or Azure Firewall?

Both of these solutions are excellent options that provide flexible scalability and solid security. Fortinet Fortigat...

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What do you like most about Huawei NGFW?

The solution's implementation is pretty easy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Huawei NGFW?

The pricing is quite cheap compared to other NGFWs like Palo Alto or Cisco.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Huawei NGFW?

Huawei should improve their threat intelligence. They need to have a more diversified platform and continuously updat...

See all answers

Comparisons

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 22% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 13% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 11% of the time

WatchGuard Firebox vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

SonicWall TZ vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs Azure Firewall

Compared 19% of the time

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Azure Firewall

Compared 16% of the time

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs Azure Firewall

Compared 6% of the time

Check Point NGFW vs Azure Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Azure Firewall

Compared 3% of the time

More Azure Firewall Competitors

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Huawei NGFW

Compared 14% of the time

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Huawei NGFW

Compared 6% of the time

Fortinet FortiOS vs Huawei NGFW

Compared 5% of the time

Check Point NGFW vs Huawei NGFW

Compared 5% of the time

Sophos XGS vs Huawei NGFW

Compared 4% of the time

More Huawei NGFW Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

May 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Azure Firewall

May 2025

Download Azure Firewall product report

Buyer's Guide

Huawei NGFW

April 2025

Download Huawei NGFW product report

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall

No data available

Huawei USG Firewalls, USG9500 Series, USG6600 Series, USG6300 Series

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate offers comprehensive network security and firewall protection across multiple locations. It effectively manages data traffic and secures environments with features like VPN, intrusion prevention, and UTM controls.

Organizations rely on Fortinet FortiGate for its robust integration with advanced security policies, ensuring significant protection for enterprises, cloud environments, and educational sectors. It facilitates network segmentation, application-level security, and authentication management, securing communication within and between locations such as branches and data centers. Its efficient SD-WAN and UTM features enable streamlined data management and enhanced threat protection capabilities. Users appreciate its centralized management, facilitating seamless operations across diverse environments.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate?

VPN Capabilities: Ensure secure remote access for users and seamless site-to-site connections.
Intrusion Prevention System (IPS): Detect and prevent security threats and vulnerabilities.
Advanced Firewall: Offers robust firewalling with application control and web filtering.
SD-WAN: Optimizes application performance and enhances bandwidth management.
SSL VPN: Provides reliable and secure access for remote workers.

What benefits should users expect from Fortinet FortiGate?

High-performance Security: Delivers effective threat mitigation with high availability.
Centralized Management: Simplifies network operations with cloud-based management tools.
Detailed Analytics: Provides comprehensive insights into network activity and security threats.
Load Balancing: Ensures optimal resource distribution and traffic management.

Fortinet FortiGate is crucial in sectors like education, offering robust networks for secure data flow between campuses and facilitating remote learning. In enterprise environments, it allows efficient management of application traffic and security across multiple branches, while in the cloud, it seamlessly integrates with diverse platforms to enhance security infrastructure.

Fortinet

Azure Firewall is a user-friendly, intuitive, cloud-native firewall security solution that provides top-of-the-industry threat protection for all your Azure Virtual Network resources. Azure Firewall is constantly and thoroughly analyzing all traffic and data packets, making it a very valuable and secure fully stateful firewall as a service with built-in high availability and unrestricted cloud scalability. Azure Firewall allows users to create virtual IP addresses and provides for secure DDoS protection for the virtual machines on your network. It also provides fast and efficient east-west and north-south traffic security.

Azure Firewall is a managed, cloud-based network security service built to protect your Azure Virtual Network resources. It is a fully stateful firewall as a service with built-in high availability and unrestricted cloud scalability.

Azure Firewall has two significant offerings, Standard and Premium.

Azure Firewall Standard works directly with Microsoft Cyber Security and supplies excellent L3-L7 filtering and threat awareness. The proactive real-time threat awareness will quickly alert you and immediately deny all traffic to and from any known problematic or suspicious domains or IP addresses. Microsoft Cyber Security is updated continually to protect against all new and known potential threats at all times. To learn more about Azure Firewall Standard, click here.

Azure Firewall Premium provides everything the standard version does, and additionally adds extra levels of data encryption, network intrusion detection, extended URL filtering, and Web category filters. To learn more about the added features of Azure Firewall Premium, click here.

Key Benefits and Features of Azure Firewall:

High availability - You do not need load balancers with Azure Firewall; it's already built in and ready to go.
Self-scalability - Azure Firewall is intuitive and will auto-scale as needed based on traffic flow to be ready for peak traffic times.
Threat awareness - Using Microsoft Cyber Security to filter traffic, Azure Firewall will deny any known problematic threats to keep your network safe.
Additional IP addresses - You can securely add up to 250 public IP addresses with Azure Firewall
Improved web category filtering - You can set up specific protocols to allow or deny categories within websites that are deemed inappropriate for use within your network. You have the ability to organize categories based on a defined set of descriptions.

What our real users have to say:

Many PeerSpot users found Azure Firewall to be very user-friendly and easy to use. They liked that it offers seamless integration to the cloud and were especially pleased with the threat filtering options.

Regarding integration and threat intelligence, our users wrote:

“The most valuable feature is the integration into the overall cloud platform.”

“The most valuable feature is threat intelligence. It is based on filtering and can identify multiple threats.”

“I think that one of the best features is definitely the premium version, along with the IDPs in terms of the intrusion detection and prevention system.”

Microsoft

Huawei's Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) is a cutting-edge security solution designed to protect networks from advanced threats. With its advanced threat detection and prevention capabilities, the Huawei NGFW ensures the highest level of network security.

The product offers comprehensive security features, including intrusion prevention, application control, and URL filtering, to safeguard against a wide range of cyber threats. The NGFW also provides deep packet inspection and advanced threat intelligence, enabling real-time threat detection and response.

With its high-performance architecture, the Huawei NGFW delivers fast and efficient security without compromising network performance. It is easy to deploy and manage, thanks to its intuitive user interface and centralized management platform.

The NGFW also supports flexible deployment options, including virtualization and cloud integration, making it suitable for various network environments.

Huawei

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya

Information Not Available

KMITL, Peking University

Buyer's Guide

Azure Firewall vs. Huawei NGFW

April 2025

Free Report: Azure Firewall vs. Huawei NGFW

Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Firewall vs. Huawei NGFW and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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