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Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway 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)
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
19th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure Application...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
6th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 5.4%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service is 0.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is 4.9%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway4.9%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall5.4%
Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service0.9%
Other88.8%
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.
Tarandeep Kaur - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
SS
Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Mutual TLS has secured our web services and now needs broader protocol support
The most valuable feature we have found in Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is mutual TLS. We find mutual TLS valuable because we can verify the client securely by setting up the trust certificate of the client, and also if we do it at the client side as well. This successfully develops mutual trust, ensuring that we know the client who is calling our service is a legitimate client. That is a very nice feature.Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has helped manage our traffic efficiently because we have many web services that we can put behind the same URL, and we can have different URLs with the same Application Gateway with a limited number of listeners. We can do host-based routing as well as URL-based routing or path-based routing. It supports both, so we can have even a single URL supporting many applications, or we can have different URLs for different applications respectively. We have both use cases.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The security features are valuable. The particular feature we use is called OWASP."
"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."
"Does a good job preventing web application attacks."
"Technical support has a very fast response time and they are helpful."
"There is a huge signature repository"
"Cloudflare WAF provides protection through rules and functionalities like Cloudflare's SDRAP."
"The Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."
"This solution does a good job of preventing web application attacks, SQL injections, and cross-site scripting attacks."
"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."
"The product's bot protection feature is valuable for our company."
"The solution can be used for threat prevention or as a cloud-to-cloud backup system"
"Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service has positively impacted our organization by reducing cyber threats like ransomware and phishing by ninety-five percent."
"I like its ability to identify known attacks, including DDOS attacks, because application attacks are evolving all the time and, when it comes to software-as-a-service, we need to have software that knows about all the latest attacks and also protects against major unknown attacks."
"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."
"The solution covers a lot of major protection or threat management functions in the feature itself."
"Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service's real-time attack detection feature has improved our customers' threat response strategies significantly."
"The solution integrates different applications and APIs securely, enhancing overall security and network optimization."
"The pricing is quite good."
"The solution has built-in rules that reduce alerts and are easy to configure."
"This product works well to secure my public facing websites from things like sql injections"
"Good customization; able to report and take action on alerts."
"The solution provides great automation and it is easy to upgrade service."
"It does an excellent job of load balancing."
"The solution's most valuable feature is an HTTP solution and SSL certificate. It is also easy to use."
 

Cons

"The reporting could be more granular."
"The reporting could be improved if it were more granular."
"The dashboard could be more user-friendly."
"There could be an option to duplicate the cluster to maintain the consistency of rules."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well. They have documentation for everything you're looking for, but they lack a single piece of documentation to tie everything together. As a new user or beginner, it took us a little bit of time to figure out how to put all these things in place."
"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."
"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."
"The rate limiting functionality could be enhanced, as we find it somewhat limited."
"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."
"One significant area for improvement in Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service lies in its market positioning and pricing strategy."
"We found it a bit slow when accessing it through the web browser."
"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."
"It's a very specific solution that is only requested for a customer's web code or their global IT policy."
"The stability of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The price of their licensing model is a bit steep, and the pricing and SIEM integration sometimes create challenges, and we need to get professional help with those areas."
"It's a very specific solution that is only requested for a customer's web code or their global IT policy."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is not scalable."
"The solution needs improvements in integrating different services and creating a better application balance."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has room for improvement because it offers many features, but its configuration is a bit difficult, at least from the developer point of view."
"Microsoft needs to work on their documentation."
"Application Gateway’s limitation is that the private and the public endpoint cannot use the same port."
"The monitoring on the solution could be better."
"Scalability can be an issue."
"The solution could improve by increasing the performance when doing updates. For example, if I change the certificate it can take 30 minutes. Other vendors do not have this type of problem."
 

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."
"It is not too pricey."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"The solution is expensive."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"The product is expensive but it offers flexible pricing. It could be affordable."
"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."
"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."
"There is a need to pay a fixed price per month to use the product. There are no additional payments to be made to Microsoft apart from the charges paid towards the monthly licensing costs attached to the solution."
"Every solution comes with a license and cost. Microsoft provides the license and the total cost is for the maintenance every year."
"I rate the price of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway an eight out of ten."
"The pricing is based on how much you use the solution."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has less price than other application gateway solutions."
"The cost is not an issue."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is a pretty affordable product. My company needs to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs of the solution. The additional costs apart from the licensing costs of the solution vary."
"The tool's pricing model is pay-as-you-go."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Government
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

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 Business5
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise24
 

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 needs improvement with Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?
I see that cost can be a limitation for small businesses. Additionally, if they can provide more advanced features an...
What is your primary use case for Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?
We primarily use Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service for raising security incidents by proactively blocking malware, ransomwar...
What advice do you have for others considering Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?
I rate Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service a five out of five overall. The reason I choose five out of five is that all the th...
What's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?
We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides...
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...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Application Gateway automatically redirects unwanted users and takes care of the security aspect. It also handles the...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
Barracuda WAF as a Service
Azure Application Gateway, MS Azure Application Gateway
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Salvation Army
Lilly, AccuWeather, AIRFRANCE, Honeywell
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,286 professionals have used our research since 2012.