Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall comparison

Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs. Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

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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

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes

Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

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Dialungana Malungo

Principal Cybersecurity Specialist at Unitel S.A.

Protects our web applications and APIs and has a very low false positive rate

CloudGuard WAF is a very straightforward solution. I do not have to worry about signatures. Most of the solutions that are out there are mainly based on signatures, and I have to do a lot of maintenance to get the signature updates, and sometimes, due to a lack of resources, I am not able to do so. With CloudGuard WAF, I have peace of mind, because most of the features are AI-based, and there is not much configuration that needs to be done on my side. Once set, I only go to CloudGuard WAF to check. I do not have to worry about signatures or updates. Everything is done perfectly, and I have a sense of peace because I know our applications are safe. It is very important for us that CloudGuard WAF protects our applications against threats without relying on signatures. That is definitely one of the key features I need.

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SachidDoshi

Senior Enterprise Security Architect at HGS - Hinduja Global Solutions

Offers a huge signature repository and is superiorly effective in mitigating DDoS attacks

The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced, which presently stands at two or three months. The product has a custom rule set that users can modify and manifest as needed. The vendor can probably shorten the learning curve using cutting-edge technologies like AI. The solution provider can also work around the web applications and identify the toolset that needs to be implemented to deploy the solution in less time. The vendor has launched a SASE product that can function with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall, but many improvements are needed in terms of features, such as the web filtering feature, and CASB has not yet been added.

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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

"Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations."

"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."

"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"

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

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

"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."

"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules."

"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."

More Cloudflare pros

"With CloudGuard WAF, I have peace of mind, because most of the features are AI-based, and there is not much configuration that needs to be done on my side."

"The DirectStorage gives me a vision that I did not have of the check that occurs on the web servers."

"It helps me sleep at night, providing peace of mind."

"I have thousands of exposed websites and APIs. Being able to control what is happening and try to prevent any attack is the best feature."

"The portal is quite intuitive."

"The solution offers sophisticated security techniques with unique characteristics that can be particularly valuable for the financial sector, which is where we develop apps."

"From a security perspective, it is quite good."

"The solution's ability to handle multiple websites and applications without needing more expensive hardware is a key advantage."

More Check Point CloudGuard WAF pros

"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."

"The rate limiting features and customizations in terms of URL match and applying policies are valuable to me."

"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."

"It's pretty convenient and pretty easy to set up and run. And then kind of for static content, it also offers caching."

"The product has improved our security posture by blocking bad actors."

"The solution protects our application, which runs on the HTTP protocol, from DDoS attacks."

"Technical support has a very fast response time and they are helpful."

"The initial setup process is simple."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

Cons

"It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal."

"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."

"It should have easier documentation for the configuration. It's very technical and people who aren't technical should also be able to do the configuration."

"It would be beneficial for us if Cloudflare could offer a scrubbing solution. This would involve taking a snapshot of my website and keeping it live during a DDoS attack, ensuring uninterrupted service for our users. DDoS attacks are typically short in duration, and having Cloudflare maintain the site's availability from its secure network would enhance the overall user experience. I would appreciate it if Cloudflare could consider implementing this feature. Many organizations already utilize similar capabilities in their CDN platforms, where a static snapshot of the web page is displayed during DDoS attacks. In terms of features, Cloudflare needs to enhance its resilience and stay more focused on adopting new technologies. For instance, solutions like F5 XC Box, Access Solution, and Distributed Cloud Solution have impressive features, and Cloudflare should strive to match and exceed those capabilities. There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features. Cloudflare should prioritize enhancements in areas such as behavioral DDoS and protection against SQL injection attacks, considering the prevalent trend of public exposure to the internet for business reasons. Overall, Cloudflare needs to invest more in advancing its feature set."

"Cloudflare does not have an on-premise solution. If they had different approaches they could be better suited to accommodate more customers, such as on-premise and hybrid deployments. For example, hybrid deployments would be useful where you could move the traffic from the enterprise to the cloud."

"The product needs to improve its automation."

"DNS Management."

"Cloudflare's free plan is limited to 5,000 records for their free plan. They should increase that. For example, if I create a domain called abc.com and a subdomain called a.abc.com, my record count will be two. I can make a maximum of 5,000 subdomains. However, if we use our own DNS hosted on another provider, there is no limit. Their free plan also lacks name server customization."

More Cloudflare cons

"There are occasions when it interfaces with other systems, leading to a loss of visibility."

"Cost reduction and trial period extension should be considered with some lucrative discount offerings in buying standard versions."

"Deeper and more transparent integration between Cloud Application Security and analysis monitoring tools could be very valuable - although the solution currently offers integrations with third-party security tools."

"When I migrate the traffic from our mobile application to CloudGuard, we are not getting what we expected."

"They might be able to add more integrations."

"They should improve in the delivery of more detailed reports with more information."

"CloudGuard for Application Security, like the other Check Point applications, has been presenting major latency problems when entering their administrative portal."

"I have encountered issues with Check Point CloudGuard Application Security's technical support. It also has missing configuration features."

More Check Point CloudGuard WAF cons

"The dashboard could be more user-friendly."

"We have noticed some latency when the call goes through the firewall. That could be improved."

"I have experienced some difficulties with Cloudflare's support as a customer based in India."

"The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced"

"There could be an option to duplicate the cluster to maintain the consistency of rules."

"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."

"A key challenge arises when dealing with numerous integrations with HVAC systems. Depending on the specifics, there might be some configuration mismatches, which necessitate specific support."

"Its stability could be better."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."

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

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."

"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."

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

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

"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is competitive compared to other solutions on the market. So, the licensing cost is average."

"As Infiniti customers, the pricing is manageable, as we have allowances dedicated to each Check Point product. The price is not as high compared to other options I have dealt with in the past."

"The pricing is not that expensive considering what it offers."

"I work for an Indian banking client. In India, companies are on a budget. The company liked Check Point very much, but it was a little bit costly compared to FortiWeb. However, it had more features compared to FortiWeb."

"The sales team or account managers from Check Point are top-notch. As I am using other products as well, my pricing was competitive compared to others."

"If the pricing for the Infinity platform covers everything, it would be more straightforward. I had a hard time selling it to our CEO as a former CFO because of the differentials. There are different deltas year to year over a five-year period. It is very difficult to explain. It would be easier to digest for our executives if there was a flatter scale"

"The base solution costs approximately 30,000 euros, with an additional 2,000 euros per year for licenses and support."

"I find the pricing to be reasonable."

More Check Point CloudGuard WAF pricing and cost advice

"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."

"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."

"The solution is expensive."

"It is not too pricey."

"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."

"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"

"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."

"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.

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849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Educational Organization

22%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

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...

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.

What do you like most about CloudGuard for Application Security?

We have not had any incidents. We could realize its benefits immediately. We watched and monitored the traffic, and i...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudGuard for Application Security?

I am less knowledgeable with prices because I only define the requirements and look at the execution. I know that its...

What needs improvement with CloudGuard for Application Security?

I would like it to be able to analyze more complex functions, although I did not examine the case study of more compl...

What do you like most about Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

The product has a valuable security control functionality.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before.

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available. This improvement wo...

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Compared 3% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Imperva Web Application Firewall vs Check Point CloudGuard WAF

Compared 19% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Check Point CloudGuard WAF

Compared 17% of the time

AWS WAF vs Check Point CloudGuard WAF

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Check Point CloudGuard WAF

Compared 12% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Check Point CloudGuard WAF

Compared 8% of the time

More Check Point CloudGuard WAF Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 17% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 16% of the time

AWS WAF vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 10% of the time

Akamai App and API Protector vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 8% of the time

Airlock vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall Competitors

Product Reports

Cloudflare

Download Cloudflare product report

Check Point CloudGuard WAF

Download Check Point CloudGuard WAF product report

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Download Cloudflare Web Application Firewall product report

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Check Point CloudGuard Application Security, CloudGuard Application Security, CloudGuard AppSec

Cloudflare WAF

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

Check Point CloudGuard WAF (Web Application Firewall) is a cloud-native security solution designed to protect web applications and APIs from known and unknown threats. It employs contextual AI and machine learning to prevent zero-day attacks without relying on traditional signature-based detection methods, ensuring that applications remain secure even as new threats emerge.

CloudGuard WAF offers preemptive protection against vulnerabilities by using machine learning to identify and block zero-day threats like Log4Shell and Spring4Shell. It provides precise detection capabilities, minimizing the need for constant fine-tuning and reducing false positives. Designed for cloud-native environments, CloudGuard WAF integrates seamlessly with CI/CD pipelines, supporting automated deployment and configuration through infrastructure as code (IaC) or APIs.

Key Features of CloudGuard WAF:

ML-Based Threat Prevention: Stops application-layer attacks, including those listed in the OWASP Top 10, with minimal tuning and no reliance on signature updates.
API Discovery and Security: Identifies and secures APIs, preventing misuse and enforcing API schemas to protect against unauthorized access.
Bot and DDoS Prevention: Detects and mitigates automated attacks that can disrupt services or degrade customer experiences.
Intrusion Prevention (IPS): Provides protection against over 2,800 web-related CVEs using Check Point’s award-winning IPS technology.

Benefits of CloudGuard WAF:

Zero-Day Protection: Mitigates risks from newly discovered vulnerabilities without waiting for signature updates.
Reduced Operational Overhead: Eliminates the need for constant manual tuning and exception handling, simplifying security management.
Comprehensive API Security: Enhances control over your attack surface by discovering and securing all APIs, including shadow, rogue, and deprecated endpoints.
Fast and Easy Deployment: Deployable within minutes via WAF as a Service (WAFaaS), requiring only a one-time DNS configuration for immediate protection.

CloudGuard WAF is particularly suitable for organizations using modern, cloud-based architectures that require robust, automated security measures for both applications and APIs. Its capabilities are valuable for industries that handle sensitive data, such as finance or healthcare, where compliance and data protection are critical. Pricing and support are typically customized to the specific needs and scale of the deployment, with options for continuous updates and maintenance through Check Point's managed services.

CloudGuard WAF by Check Point provides advanced, AI-driven protection for web applications and APIs, offering automated, precise threat prevention and easy integration with cloud-native environments, ensuring robust security without the need for extensive manual configuration.

Check Point Software Technologies

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's intuitive dashboard enables users to build powerful rules through easy clicks and also provides Terraform integration. Every request to the WAF is inspected against the rule engine and the threat intelligence curated from protecting over 27 Million websites. Suspicious requests can be blocked, challenged or logged as per the needs of the user while legitimate requests are routed to the destination, agnostic of whether it lives on-premise or in the cloud. Analytics and Cloudflare Logs enable visibility into actionable metrics for the user.

Cloudflare

Sample Customers

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

Orange España, Paschoalotto

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk

Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs. Cloudflare Web Application Firewall