Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs NGINX App Protect comparison

Barracuda Networks and F5 are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Barracuda Networks is ranked #35, while F5 is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.5. Additionally, 80% of Barracuda Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of F5 users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

NGINX App Protect and Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service are competitors in the web application firewall market. Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service seems to have an edge in terms of feature set, while NGINX App Protect is often preferred for its pricing and customer service.

Features: NGINX App Protect offers seamless integration with NGINX environments, effective DDoS protection, and comprehensive command-line management. Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service provides comprehensive threat intelligence, real-time attack detection, and robust threat prevention capabilities tailored to extensive security needs.

Room for Improvement: NGINX App Protect could enhance deployment simplicity, expand integration beyond NGINX, and include broader threat intelligence features. Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service might improve cost efficiency, offer better customization for smaller infrastructures, and streamline its user interface.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NGINX App Protect may require more technical expertise upfront but offers strong support for NGINX platforms, coupled with responsive customer service. Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service facilitates easier deployment with minimal infrastructure changes and delivers commendable customer service.

Pricing and ROI: NGINX App Protect is noted for competitive pricing and attractive ROI, especially when integrated with existing NGINX setups, offering reduced additional expenditure. Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service, despite being perceived as more expensive, offers significant return on investment through its extensive security features, which can justify the cost for comprehensive security needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. NGINX App Protect Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. NGINX App Protect

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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Jean-Marc Porchet

Project Manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Blocking IPs and detecting bots enhances security for medical websites

I was researching products like NGINX App Protect and F5 Advanced WAF for long-term options. I have some use for such a solution, but probably not before next year Detecting bots and blocking IPs have proven effective for securing applications. We were able to block groups of IP addresses that…

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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 solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."

"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."

"It is a fast and secure DNS."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is that it has a free version. They give us the free version with the anti-DDoS features and also the load balancing solution."

"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"

"The UI is good."

"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."

"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."

More Cloudflare pros

"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."

"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"

"NGINX App Protect's best features are auto-learning, which creates a profile of applications that are deployed, bot protection, and force protection, which lets you configure your brute force policy and alert for and prevent brute force attacks."

"The most valuable feature of NGINX App Protect is the reverse proxy."

"The most valuable feature of NGINX App Protect is its flexibility."

"We were looking for a product that is capable of complete automation and a container based solution. It's working."

"It's very easy to deploy."

"NGINX App Protect is stable."

"The initial setup was simple and took three to four days."

"I tested specific features and evaluated the solution against the Web Application Firewall. I conducted research to test different detection percentages. I did not use it directly for protection but for evaluation purposes."

More NGINX App Protect pros

Cons

"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."

"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."

"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."

"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."

"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."

"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."

"One area of improvement is in the Access Rules. Hypothetically, if we wanted to block or challenge traffic outside of the United States, the only way to currently do that (as far as I know) is to enter every single country outside of the United States. That could be a labor intensive job. A solution could be to enable users to create a rule where traffic is only allowed within a certain country."

"We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."

More Cloudflare cons

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

"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."

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

"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 solution needs to be improved in the e-commerce portal."

"It doesn't have more advanced features like no false-positive security, which you can configure in Advanced WAF."

"Areas for improvement would be if NGINX could scan for vulnerabilities and learn and update the signatures of DoS attacks."

"It's challenging if you need to go for a high throughput."

"The price of NGINX App Protect could improve."

"The product's user interface is an area with shortcomings as it can be quite confusing for users, making it an area where improvements are required."

"I encountered issues with NGINX App Protect while trying to upgrade custom rules."

"Setting policies and parameters through the UI should be more automated because the process is manual, where we can only edit one rule at a time."

More NGINX App Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

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

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

"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."

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

"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."

"A free version of the solution is available."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"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."

"Really understand the licensing model, because we underestimated that."

"There are no additional fees."

"The licensing fees for this solution are pretty expensive for what it does, but there is no alternative."

"The pricing is reasonable because NGINX operates on an instance basis."

"There is a license needed to use NGINX App Protect."

"The price of NGINX App Protect is not much different from the products that fall under the leader category of Gartner Magic Quadrant."

"The product's price is high."

"There is a monthly or annual subscription to use NGINX App Protect. There are not any additional costs to the subscription."

More NGINX App Protect pricing and cost advice

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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

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	11

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.

See all answers

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 do you like most about NGINX App Protect?

It's very easy to deploy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX App Protect?

I don't know the pricing yet because in my other project, I was not part of the buying side and I was just starting t...

See all answers

What needs improvement with NGINX App Protect?

It would be better if it were easier to implement and if there was more information from F5 regarding hardware requir...

See all answers

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Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

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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

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Azure Front Door vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 12% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 9% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 7% of the time

AWS WAF vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 6% of the time

More NGINX App Protect Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

January 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

January 2026

Download Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service product report

Buyer's Guide

NGINX App Protect

December 2025

Download NGINX App Protect product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Barracuda WAF as a Service

NGINX WAF, NGINX Web Application Firewall

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

NGINX App Protect application security solution combines the efficacy of advanced F5 web application firewall (WAF) technology with the agility and performance of NGINX Plus. The solution runs natively on NGINX Plus and addresses some of the most difficult challenges facing modern DevOps environments:

Integrating security controls directly into the development automation pipeline
Applying and managing security for modern and distributed application environments such as containers and microservices
Providing the right level of security controls without impacting release and go-to-market velocity
Complying with security and regulatory requirements

NGINX App Protect offers:

Expanded security beyond basic signatures to ensure adequate controls
F5 app‑security technology for efficacy superior to ModSecurity and other WAFs
Confidently run in “blocking” mode in production with proven F5 expertise
High‑confidence signatures for extremely low false positives
Increases visibility, integrating with third‑party analytics solutions
Integrates security and WAF natively into the CI/CD pipeline
Deploys as a lightweight software package that is agnostic of underlying infrastructure
Facilitates declarative policies for “security as code” and integration with DevOps tools
Decreases developer burden and provides feedback loop for quick security remediation
Accelerates time to market and reduces costs with DevSecOps‑automated security

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. NGINX App Protect

December 2025

Free Report: Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. NGINX App Protect

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