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Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs Contrast Security Assess comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

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

Check Point CloudGuard WAF
Ranking in Application Security Tools
9th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (11th)
Contrast Security Assess
Ranking in Application Security Tools
27th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (26th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Check Point CloudGuard WAF is 0.1%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 0.7%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Dialungana Malungo - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
ToddMcAlister - PeerSpot reviewer
It has an excellent API interface to pull APIs.
Assess has brought our development time down because it helps create code the first time. Instead of going through the Jenkins process to build an application, they can see right off the bat that if there are errors in the code and fix them before it even goes to build.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It seamlessly protects through machine learning, giving us visibility into potential attacks and where they come from."
"The integration with other Microsoft products, especially Visual Studio, is seamless."
"It offers high performance and improved productivity for users."
"The communication between the on-premises device and the cloud for analysis and feedback is a valuable feature."
"I find the configuration and real-time monitoring features valuable."
"The DirectStorage gives me a vision that I did not have of the check that occurs on the web servers."
"Check Point CloudGuard WAF offers comprehensive monitoring and alerting for my entire VMware virtual environment."
"The solution's ability to handle multiple websites and applications without needing more expensive hardware is a key advantage."
"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."
"This has changed the way that developers are looking at usage of third-party libraries, upfront. It's changing our model of development and our culture of development to ensure that there is more thought being put into the usage of third-party libraries."
"By far, the thing that was able to provide value was the immediate response while testing ahead of release, in real-time."
"The most valuable feature is the continuous monitoring aspect: the fact that we don't have to wait for scans to complete for the tool to identify vulnerabilities. They're automatically identified through developers' business-as-usual processes."
"When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities."
"The accuracy of the solution in identifying vulnerabilities is better than any other product we've used, far and away. In our internal comparisons among different tools, Contrast consistently finds more impactful vulnerabilities, and also identifies vulnerabilities that are nearly guaranteed to be there, meaning that the chance of false positives is very low."
"No other tool does the runtime scanning like Contrast does. Other static analysis tools do static scanning, but Contrast is runtime analysis, when the routes are exercised. That's when the scan happens. This is a tool that has a very unique capability compared to other tools. That's what I like most about Contrast, that it's runtime."
"The solution is very accurate in identifying vulnerabilities. In cases where we are performing application assessment using Contrast Assess, and also using legacy application security testing tools, Contrast successfully identifies the same vulnerabilities that the other tools have identified but it also identifies significantly more. In addition, it has visibility into application components that other testing methodologies are unaware of."
 

Cons

"The creation of security profiles for each application takes a lot of time."
"I feel like I need more clarity in understanding pricing for DDoS protection."
"The UI interface needs improvement because there are a number of bugs. Integration with the SIEM platform is currently one of the key challenges that need to be addressed."
"When I migrate the traffic from our mobile application to CloudGuard, we are not getting what we expected."
"In terms of features, I do not have any negatives. Their integration is extremely quick. It is better than others I have been involved with in the past. Their pricing model, however, can be better."
"Pricing and licensing are really expensive for this product. While it provides a very good security level, the price for each service is high."
"It doesn't detect user activity like some of its competitors. It's not a vulnerability, but it's a legitimate activity that it doesn't detect. It only detects vulnerabilities or misconfigurations."
"I would like it to be able to analyze more complex functions, although I did not examine the case study of more complex implementations. Things like forum fields, etc seem to need a little more focused protection of the fields scheme validation."
"To instrument an agent, it has to be running on a type of application technology that the agent recognizes and understands. It's excellent when it works. If we're using an application that is using an unsupported technology, then we can't instrument it at all. We do use PHP and Contrast presently doesn't support that, although it's on their roadmap. My primary hurdle is that it doesn't support all of the technologies that we use."
"Personalization of the board and how to make it appealing to an organization is something that could be done on their end. The reports could be adaptable to the customer's preferences."
"The out-of-the-box reporting could be improved. We need to write our own APIs to make the reporting more robust."
"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."
"I think there was activity underway to support the centralized configuration control. There are ways to do it, but I think they were productizing more of that."
"The solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."
"The setup of the solution is different for each application. That's the one thing that has been a challenge for us. The deployment itself is simple, but it's tough to automate because each application is different, so each installation process for Contrast is different."
"Regarding the solution's OSS feature, the one drawback that we do have is that it does not have client-side support. We'll be missing identification of libraries like jQuery or JavaScript, and such, that are client-side."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Check Point CloudGuard Application Security's pricing is not friendly."
"It is not cheap, but it is worth it."
"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."
"Check Point CloudGuard WAF is expensive compared to Azure WAF."
"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."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly and competitive."
"Check Point CloudGuard Application Security's pricing is comparable to other products in the market."
"I like the per-application licensing model... We just license the app and we look at different vulnerabilities on that app and we remediate within the app. It's simpler."
"For what it offers, it's a very reasonable cost. The way that it is priced is extremely straightforward. It works on the number of applications that you use, and you license a server. It is something that is extremely fair, because it doesn't take into consideration the number of requests, etc. It is only priced based on the number of onboarded applications. It suits our model as well, because we have huge traffic. Our number of applications is not that large, so the pricing works great for us."
"You only get one license for an application. Ours are very big, monolithic applications with millions of lines of code. We were able to apply one license to one monolithic application, which is great. We are happy with the licensing. Pricing-wise, they are industry-standard, which is fine."
"It's a tiered licensing model. The more you buy, as you cross certain quantity thresholds, the pricing changes. If you have a smaller environment, your licensing costs are going to be different than a larger environment... The licensing is primarily per application. An application can be as many agents as you need. If you've got 10 development servers and 20 production servers and 50 QA servers, all of those agents can be reporting as a single application that utilizes one license."
"The product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten."
"The good news is that the agent itself comes in two different forms: the unlicensed form and the licensed form. Unlicensed gives use of that software composition analysis for free. Thereafter, if you apply a license to that same agent, that's when the instrumentation takes hold. So one of my suggestions is to do what we're doing: Deploy the agent to as many applications as possible, with just the SCA feature turned on with no license applied, and then you can be more choosy and pick which teams will get the license applied."
"The solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 it was amazing to see the results.
What needs improvement with CloudGuard for Application Security?
There are improvements that can be made regarding pricing since it has a high initial cost. If they could reduce that, it would be beneficial. Additionally, it has a complex initial configuration. ...
What do you like most about Contrast Security Assess?
When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities.
What needs improvement with Contrast Security Assess?
Technical support for the solution should be faster. We have to further analyze what kind of CVEs are in the reported libraries and what part of the code is affected. That analysis can be added to ...
What advice do you have for others considering Contrast Security Assess?
Contrast Security Assess is deployed on-cloud in our organization. I would recommend Contrast Security Assess to other users. It's a really good tool. It provides lots of details on web-based vulne...
 

Also Known As

Check Point CloudGuard Application Security, CloudGuard Application Security, CloudGuard AppSec
Contrast Assess
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Orange España, Paschoalotto
Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs. Contrast Security Assess and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.