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Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs F5 Advanced WAF comparison

 

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

Barracuda Web Application F...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
17th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
F5 Advanced WAF
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Barracuda Web Application Firewall is 2.0%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Advanced WAF is 11.1%, up from 10.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

Anne-Aimee Wollerich - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing bot traffic effectively enhances usability for non-technical users
Barracuda Web Application Firewall ( /products/barracuda-web-application-firewall-reviews ) lacks some of the more specified and structured features offered by solutions like Tenable. Although Tenable is more expensive and less easily deployable, its features are more deepened and chiseled, particularly for IT personnel. For example, Tenable provides more comprehensive dark web scanning capabilities, which Barracuda could improve upon.
Ahmed Moamen - PeerSpot reviewer
Protects applications with versatile authentication features
F5 offers a versatile solution that can be integrated with APM in cases where integration with an external IDB is needed. It is useful for authentication backup if the on-prem directory service is unavailable. Additionally, its WAF functionality is valuable for protecting applications from attacks. It is a versatile and strong solution that's easy to understand and deploy.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Setup of this solution is straightforward. It's a stable and scalable solution, with good performance and fast technical support."
"The most valuable feature is the automatic content filtering."
"The solution ensures layer seven is secure from attacks."
"Parameter Protection is a valuable feature."
"It's very simple and predictable, because Barracuda provides a vision of the current state of your application. It gives you an understanding of what is happening on your site and any attempts against you at your source. This is the main value that Web Application Firewall provides our company. These aspects are also the main reason for this documentation process."
"The most valuable feature is the rule set."
"The solution is user-friendly and easy to set up."
"We use Barracuda to protect the application. That's the main feature we use it for."
"F5 technical support is excellent. They are experts who always provide the right solution, and they understand the problem. Their response and resolution times are good."
"It's flexible and powerful, and the users can input their own rules to the system."
"iRules are quite appealing when it comes to F5."
"Very easy to implement and works well."
"The solution isn't too expensive. The license allows you to license what you need and leave out what you don't need."
"F5 helped to meet compliance and regulatory requirements."
"The AOF solution provides numerous security features."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the WAF protection, Data Safe, and the seven-layer DDoS."
 

Cons

"The reporting aspect of the solution needs improvement. I don't find that it's very good. They could do some work on it to make it much better. It's not that the reporting isn't secure. It's just that I would prefer to store my reports for an extended period of time. Right now, that's not possible and I'd prefer it if that could change. I also would say that the reports themselves are expensive."
"The GUI needs to be improved because it sometimes hangs and needs to be restarted."
"The incident reporting needs to be improved."
"As a service, Barracuda needs to host in Saudi Arabia, as they currently don't have this functionality."
"There are issues when upgrading firewalls and we experience different issues across customers."
"I would like to see better controlling of the traffic."
"There are false positives that I am receiving when compared to other WAFs. The issues with false positives affect client transactions, leading to complaints about blocked transactions."
"I faced an issue when Barracuda decided not to support Azure Stack Hub anymore, which was a significant issue as we had many customers using it on that platform."
"The solution should include RASP for another level of protection at the code itself."
"The administrator's user interface and some of the settings can sometimes be very complicated to understand."
"They could provide better pricing."
"One area for improvement in the product is its SSO integration, which posed challenges and required significant effort to resolve."
"The BNS module needs improvement."
"The solution is tedious. It takes a lot of discrete settings so one needs to get detailed and granular when they use the solution. It takes you a whole lot of energy and concentration to configure. It needs to be much more straight-forward, like other web solutions."
"The solution could improve by having an independent capture module. It has a built feature that you can deploy the capture on your published website. However, it's not very user-friendly. When you compare this feature to Google Capture or other enterprise captures, they are very simple. It needs a good connection to the F5 Advanced WAF sandbox. When you implement this feature in the data center, you may suffer some complications with connecting to the F5 Advanced WAF sandbox. This should be improved in the future."
"This solution can be made more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product pricing was competitive for the value it offers regarding security features."
"They have competitive pricing."
"The price of the solution is a little expensive. There is a license for this solution and it can be purchased every one, two, or five years."
"They only offer a yearly licensing plan."
"While I would have to check on the price of the solution, I feel it to be okay and it matches the market price."
"In my opinion, the product is fairly priced."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The Barracuda Web Application Firewall is quite expensive."
"It is a little bit costly, but it has all the features that are required."
"I don't have any issue with the pricing of this solution."
"The solution is very expensive so should only be used in the right environment."
"Pricing for this solution is higher than average."
"I rate F5 Advanced WAF's pricing a three out of ten."
"As far as the pricing of F5 Advanced WAF I would rate it a four out of five depending on what features I am looking for. Imperva is more expensive."
"After buying the program, you just pay for the support every year."
"It's more expensive than other solutions and depending on the modules, there can be additional fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
It significantly improved our overall web security posture, addressing intrusions and enhancing control over web URLs in our environment.
What is your primary use case for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
Our primary use case was to track the traffic on websites or webshops to identify potential malicious actors, such as bots. This involved analyzing the type of data being collected through websites...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
The pricing for Barracuda is quite high compared to other OEMs. Each transaction requires my purchase team to negotiate with Barracuda. Software licenses, premium support, and advanced bot protecti...
What do you like most about F5 Advanced WAF?
It's a fairly easy-to-use and user-friendly tool. My administrators and team also like its ability to customize the rules per the requirements.
What needs improvement with F5 Advanced WAF?
I do not have anything in mind right now that needs improvement. Generally, it works well. If we need any specific feature, we approach F5 directly.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Oracle, CBS, Pioneer, Hyundai, Publix, Barnes Noble, Calzedonia, Nordstrom, Samsung, Nascar
MAXIMUS, Vivo, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office, City Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. F5 Advanced WAF and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.