Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs F5 Rules for AWS WAF comparison

Barracuda Networks and F5 are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Barracuda Networks is ranked #35, while F5 is ranked #29 with an average rating of 9.0. Additionally, 75% of Barracuda Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of F5 users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service and F5 Rules for AWS WAF based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. F5 Rules for AWS WAF Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. F5 Rules for AWS WAF

December 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

Cloudflare

Featured Reviews

Herb Angle

Owner at Hga consulting

Has helped manage client domains with streamlined access control and threat visibility

I don't know what areas could be improved with Cloudflare WAF; Cloudflare is constantly improving and adding features to their feature set. They're doing a good job, and as far as DNS and support for any domains that I create or my clients create, it's mandatory for me to make sure that they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider. The Cloudflare load balancing capability hasn't really helped in enhancing my website's uptime and resiliency because we don't really get that much traffic; it's mostly remote users, and web hosting is done by a web hosting service. It doesn't pay to try to host your own website.

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Tarandeep Kaur

DevOps Manager at Flash.co

Security management has reduced ransomware risk and now protects cloud workloads efficiently

The best features that Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service offers are an intuitive centralized dashboard, allowing us to manage policies, Internet protocol servers, antiviruses, anti-DDoS attacks, and traffic shaping across multiple sites. This feature enables seamless scaling of our environments, especially as we work within Amazon Web Services. Additionally, real-time threat intelligence helps us to detect threats in real-time. Another major feature I love is application control and VPN support, providing granular visibility and protection without needing separate appliances. The centralized dashboard is helping us streamline visibility across our admin panels and provides site-to-site visibility deployed directly to our AWS environment, securing VPC traffic and ensuring the firewall is in place. The real-time threat intelligence is an advanced feature helping us track real-time attacks, such as anti-DDoS attacks, ransomware, or viruses that can compromise system integrity. Through the intuitive centralized dashboard, we can manage policies and set rules, assisting us effectively.

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reviewer2783919

Associate Vice President at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Managed security rules have protected our public e‑commerce sites and simplified ongoing defense

I advise anyone looking for a great tool to secure their public-facing applications to start using F5 Rules for AWS WAF. These are managed rule sets, so you do not need to worry about continuous improvements or ensuring your application is secure; F5 Rules for AWS WAF will take care of that and is always making the necessary improvements in these rule sets to ensure security. I am very impressed with the rule sets and the continuous engineering from their security team to ensure the required rule set availability. I really appreciate the fantastic job they are doing. F5 Rules for AWS WAF can be integrated with AWS CloudFront, Application Load Balancer, Lambda, and API Gateway. I am satisfied with all these services as they are our intermediary points for services exposed to the public or globally. I gave this product a rating of ten out of ten.

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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

"The technical support is good."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."

"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."

"It's very user-friendly."

"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."

"DDoS attacks target unprotected machines. Cloudflare detects and stops these attacks using internal systems. It identifies incoming DDoS attacks, issuing challenges or blocking them immediately."

"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."

More Cloudflare pros

"I like its ability to identify known attacks, including DDOS attacks. It's valuable because software must be able to stop known attacks. Application attacks are evolving all the time. When it comes to software-as-a-service, we need to have software that knows about all the latest attacks. It should also protect against major unknown attacks."

"Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service has positively impacted our organization by reducing cyber threats like ransomware and phishing by ninety-five percent."

"The product's bot protection feature is valuable for our company."

"It provides an ease of policy management."

"The solution can be used for threat prevention or as a cloud-to-cloud backup system"

"The most valuable features of the solution are it is plug and play, has automated policies, a simple configuration, and is easy to create rules."

"F5 Rules for AWS WAF has positively impacted our organization for security through the implementation of traffic rules in our application."

"I advise anyone looking for a great tool to secure their public-facing applications to start using F5 Rules for AWS WAF."

Cons

"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."

"Technical support is not well developed. While there are good engineers, Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model."

"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."

"If they improve on the placement of their data centers, it would be better. I'm living in a remote area. I would like to connect to them without any kind of lag."

"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."

"Latencies are always a problem."

"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."

"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."

More Cloudflare cons

"One significant area for improvement in Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service lies in its market positioning and pricing strategy."

"The solution can improve by bundling Security Operation Center (SOC) with the WAF-as-a-Service, it would provide a lot more value to customers."

"We found it a bit slow when accessing it through the web browser. The URL also exposed the user name and the hashed password. When I log into my Barracuda WAF user portal, I could see the username and the hashed password on the URL itself. So, it is not very secure, and it is important to take that off."

"The stability of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"It's a very specific solution that is only requested for a customer's web code or their global IT policy."

"An area for improvement I see is that while everything is in good shape, I demand continuous improvisation of these rule sets."

"It's too early to talk about a return on investment with F5 Rules for AWS WAF."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."

"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

"We are using the free tier of the solution."

"We don't have any issues with the price."

"A free version of the solution is available."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"It's very difficult for me to give an estimate of the cost. All I know is that we sell the box itself as a service."

"The product is expensive but it offers flexible pricing. It could be affordable."

"I rate the product's price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high. There are no additional costs to be paid apart from the standard licensing fees attached to the solution."

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

15%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Insurance Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	25

No data available

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Cloudflare?

Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.

See all answers

What do you like most about Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?

It provides an ease of policy management.

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What needs improvement with Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?

One significant area for improvement in Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service lies in its market positioning and pricing strateg...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?

We use the product for securing email systems, protecting websites, and safeguarding web-based applications and portals.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Rules for AWS WAF?

From the pricing perspective, I found it to be comparable to other marketplace rules available in AWS Marketplace. It...

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What needs improvement with F5 Rules for AWS WAF?

An area for improvement I see is that while everything is in good shape, I demand continuous improvisation of these r...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for F5 Rules for AWS WAF?

We are providing support to our end customers who have e-commerce websites that need to be exposed to the public, and...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Myra Security DDoS Protection vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Compared 47% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Compared 15% of the time

Azure Web Application Firewall vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Compared 14% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Compared 13% of the time

AWS WAF vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Compared 10% of the time

More Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service Competitors

No data available

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

January 2026

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Web Application Firewall (WAF)

January 2026

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Business Rules Management

December 2025

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Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Barracuda WAF as a Service

No data available

Overview

Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.

Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.

What are Cloudflare's key features?

CDN Caching: Enhances website speed through content delivery network caching.
Web Application Firewall: Protects websites from online threats.
DDoS Mitigation: Shields against distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DNS Management: Offers easy-to-use and flexible domain management.
SSL Certificates: Ensures secure connections between users and servers.
Analytics: Provides insights with robust analytics tools.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Enhanced Security: Strengthening web security with DDoS and firewall protection.
Speed Improvement: Faster content delivery with CDN caching.
Operational Simplicity: Simplifies website optimization through a user-friendly interface.
Scalable Solutions: Scales with global reach, lowering latency for improved performance.
Cost Efficiency: Offers layers of valuable functionality with pricing options.

Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.

Cloudflare

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service is a comprehensive solution designed to provide application security, DDoS protection, SSL authentication, protocol support, and application delivery. It is a plug-and-play solution with automated policies, simple configuration, and easy rule creation.

The solution can be used for threat prevention or as a cloud-to-cloud backup system based on email protection with cloud security. It is also a web application firewall and covers major protection and threat management functions. With Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service, customers can ensure the security of their web code and comply with global IT policies.

Barracuda Networks

F5 Rules for AWS WAF provides advanced security measures for web applications on AWS, ensuring robust protection against dynamic threats while optimizing performance.

F5 Rules for AWS WAF integrates seamlessly into AWS environments, delivering powerful security capabilities. Designed to detect and mitigate a wide range of cyber threats, it enhances cyber defenses efficiently. Its rule sets cover multiple threat landscapes, offering a comprehensive approach that aligns with AWS best practices. This integration can help secure businesses from web-based threats while maintaining application performance.

What are the important features of F5 Rules for AWS WAF?

Comprehensive Threat Coverage: Protects against OWASP Top 10 threats and other common vulnerabilities.
Customizable Rules: Offers flexibility to tailor rules according to specific application needs.
Scalability: Efficiently scales with cloud resources to handle varying levels of traffic without compromising security.
Optimized Performance: Ensures minimal latency by optimizing rules for fast processing.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in reviews?

Enhanced Security: Reduces risk of cyber attacks with proactive threat mitigation.
Cost Efficiency: Lowers security-related expenses by reducing potential breach impacts.
Improved Compliance: Assists in meeting regulatory standards by ensuring application security requirements.
User Trust: Increases consumer confidence by demonstrating a commitment to data protection.

F5 Rules for AWS WAF is widely used across industries such as finance, healthcare, and retail to protect critical web applications. In finance, it safeguards customer data and transactions. Healthcare organizations use it to comply with stringent data protection regulations. Retail businesses rely on its capabilities to secure e-commerce platforms, ensuring a seamless shopping experience without risks.

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

Salvation Army

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Buyer's Guide

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. F5 Rules for AWS WAF

December 2025

Free Report: Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. F5 Rules for AWS WAF

Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. F5 Rules for AWS WAF and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

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