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Azure Web Application Firewall vs Symantec Web Application Firewall comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

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 ...
Sponsored
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
Azure Web Application Firewall
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
13th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (19th)
Symantec Web Application Fi...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
31st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 3.8%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Web Application Firewall is 1.8%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Web Application Firewall is 0.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall3.8%
Azure Web Application Firewall1.8%
Symantec Web Application Firewall0.8%
Other93.6%
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.
RJ
Global IT Solutions Specialist at RELIEF INTERNATIONAL INC
Offers robust analytics and seamless cloud integration with minor room for user interface improvement
The Microsoft support and the analytics are what I appreciate about Azure Web Application Firewall. It integrates effectively with things such as Sentinel and Defender for Cloud, so mostly it's the analytics and now the AI capabilities that have been introduced with Co-pilot. It helps when looking for threats. It reduces issues significantly because the filtering capabilities are high. Given that it's a cloud solution, we have very minimal downtime, especially because we have Microsoft support. On a scale of one to 10, I would give it an eight.
Vatsal Mehta - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, Co-Founder & CEO at HEDEHI Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
Boosts Security Measures with Easy Deployment and Implementation
Regarding areas for improvement in Symantec Web Application Firewall, I think they can enhance the features they currently focus on, as there are various types of web applications, and it would be great if they could develop features to cater to all these types. For example, a feature to scan for unauthorized plugins or extensions could let us know if those extensions are authorized, unauthorized, or malicious. There's room for improvement in Symantec Web Application Firewall by introducing AI into their dashboard so that we can query the dashboard and fetch data insights, similar to querying ChatGPT for answers. They currently have this feature but can make improvements for better querying to get insights.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In general, it's a very good product: the solution is very stable, the performance is great, the product offers very good scalability, the pricing is very reasonable, the installation is very straightforward and quite simple, and technical support has a very fast response time and is helpful."
"We extensively use the solution every day. The solution is very stable; we haven’t seen any glitches."
"This is a good product; it's reliable and scales well."
"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."
"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."
"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 Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."
"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."
"The integration it has with GitHub is great."
"The Microsoft support and the analytics are what I appreciate about Azure Web Application Firewall; it integrates effectively with things such as Sentinel and Defender for Cloud, so mostly it's the analytics and now the AI capabilities that have been introduced with Co-pilot."
"It is almost impossible to access these assets from outside, requiring a very skilled attacker to obtain asset tokens of a customer using Azure."
"The solution is scalable, and we have many clients using this solution."
"I can only strongly recommend using the Azure Web Application Firewall."
"It's a good option if you want a solution that's ready to go and easy for your team to learn. It's cloud-based, so you don't need to buy or maintain any hardware infrastructure."
"We're Microsoft partners and I'd recommend the solution as it is easy to understand and easy to integrate, it is very stable and we trust it as a recognized Microsoft product."
"The functions of Azure Web Application Firewall that I found most valuable include its cost-effectiveness, and unlike other WAF products I have worked with such as Barracuda, we have flexibility to create rules."
"The solution has an up-to-date data repository to deal with external threats."
"The setup was straightforward."
"The best feature of Symantec Web Application Firewall is that it is very easy to use, and the deployment and implementation processes are really easy."
"The interface is user-friendly."
"This product is doing what it should and what we are expecting from it."
"It provides us with a sense of security."
 

Cons

"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."
"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."
"We don't even use Cloudflare Bot Management because it's too expensive; you need to pay per request, and it's much cheaper to get one or two additional machines."
"The dashboard could be more user-friendly."
"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."
"WAF doesn't directly affect bandwidth costs. It saves costs on protection. However, with the correct setup, it's difficult to determine if it saves costs overall due to the fixed enterprise plan fee."
"The notification part could be improved. It's very much connected to Web Application Firewall, rate-limiting, and DDoS protection."
"The support for proxy forwarding could improve."
"I think deployment should be simplified so that a non-techie can handle it."
"Upgrading the platform regularly is necessary for security, however, frequent updates every six months or year from Azure can be a maintenance overhead."
"The pricing needs improvement, and I think for beginners it will be a little bit complicated, so the ease of use could be enhanced."
"Some Azure applications, like the web application firewall, require a certain level of SKU for hosting setup. The basic setup does not allow me to use the web application firewall and other additional services."
"Microsoft technical support for Azure Web Application Firewall has presented challenges. When working on Azure Firewall, understanding requirements was difficult because support teams often passed issues from one to another without addressing requirements accurately."
"The management can be improved."
"Azure WAF should not be deployed in the middle of the traffic."
"On a scale from one to 10, I would give it a five. I'm not convinced that it's necessarily the best solution going forward in the future."
"One of our issues is that sometimes scanning slows down the endpoints."
"It would be an improvement if the management dashboards were not reliant upon Java."
"There's room for improvement in Symantec Web Application Firewall by introducing AI into their dashboard so that we can query the dashboard and fetch data insights, similar to querying ChatGPT for answers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 solution is expensive."
"It is not too pricey."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"The price is reasonable. It is approximately $2,000 US per month."
"Azure WAF has price advantages over other WAF solutions. The pricing model is flexible because you pay on a scale based on the level of protection you need."
"The price is for this solution is fair and there is a license needed."
"I give the pricing a nine out of ten."
"We have an enterprise agreement with Microsoft and the pricing is good."
"The price of the solution depends on your architecture and how you manage it. You can control the cost in Azure quite well. The costs do not directly correlate to expenses in the features we are using."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise12
No data available
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Web Application Firewall?
I would place Azure Web Application Firewall at an eight on a scale from one to 10, with one being cheap and 10 being...
What needs improvement with Azure Web Application Firewall?
The pricing needs improvement, and I think for beginners it will be a little bit complicated, so the ease of use coul...
What is your primary use case for Azure Web Application Firewall?
Because we mostly operate in the cloud and because we're a Microsoft environment, it was the best option in the scena...
What needs improvement with Symantec Web Application Firewall?
Regarding areas for improvement in Symantec Web Application Firewall, I think they can enhance the features they curr...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Web Application Firewall?
Our use case for Symantec Web Application Firewall is primarily for security purposes as we develop web application s...
What advice do you have for others considering Symantec Web Application Firewall?
I would recommend Symantec Web Application Firewall to other users due to all the benefits I mentioned earlier, such ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
No data available
Symantec WAF, Blue Coat Protecting Web Applications
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Information Not Available
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Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Web Application Firewall vs. Symantec Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,153 professionals have used our research since 2012.