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Check Point DDoS Protector vs F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 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 DDoS Protector
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
20th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall...
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Check Point DDoS Protector is 1.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) is 1.3%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Petr Zemánek - PeerSpot reviewer
Protect from DDoS attacks with good management and easy setup
I have used Fortinet FortiDDoS. Fortinet is a little bit cheaper. Both solution was effective. The management of Check Point solution is a little bit better. It is 50 percent cheaper than Fortinet. It's very modern now to have an AI in the management for fast finding of attacks or investigation. Check Point have these features in a new releases.
Pawel Augustyn - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides outstanding resource management and application security across multiple geographies
The most valuable features for me are stability, availability, and security, along with the ability to manage multiple features to secure my applications. The solution also monitors and blocks unconventional requests and maintains security efficiently. The scalability feature also allows me to manage and allocate resources dynamically without disrupting production traffic.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It can be deployed as a hardware appliance, virtual appliance, or as a cloud service."
"The initial setup takes two hours."
"This product uses auto-learning and behavioral analysis to establish baselines for legitimate traffic, and automatically detects and blocks traffic behavior that does not conform."
"Check Point detects and automatically mitigates attacks, which helps our organization protect our infrastructure."
"The is a really low level of the false-positive alerts (when the clean traffic is marked as DDoS) due to some advanced techniques used by Check Point under the hood."
"From my experience, the best part of this solution is behavioral DDoS protection. The DDoS Protector can monitor the traffic, and based on the behavior, it can decide which traffic is malicious and which traffic is regular. It works dynamically, and it's a very good solution."
"It uses several layers of security."
"One of its most outstanding functions is the zero-day DDOS."
"It excels in preventing downtime and maintaining application performance, which is crucial for our clients' security and operational continuity."
"The solution is very straightforward. The usability is great."
"This product excells in every aspect from installation and the interface to providing superior network security."
"The features of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager that have proven most effective in securing the network are significant."
"The setup and functionality are fairly straightforward."
"It blocks various attacks and mitigates disasters from occurring."
"The most valuable features for me are stability, availability, and security, along with the ability to manage multiple features to secure my applications."
"I find the signature base is very helpful to see traffic"
 

Cons

"The product is expensive."
"The Check Point support language is only in English."
"For a long time, there was no software version of R80.10 available for the Check Point DDoS Protector software appliances, and we had to stay on the quite outdated R77.30 version."
"I would like applications for Android and IOS where we can follow the events, and, if necessary, make changes."
"Monitoring and reporting are the things that can be introduced in the future."
"It is an expensive tool for some companies."
"Check Point should develop a DDoS solution because they don't have one and we need to use another solution, in our case, Imperva. This is a problem because we need to have two firewalls. We would like to only have one solution because it would improve the management, we would have fewer incidents, and we wouldn't need to talk to more than one person for support."
"Check Point DDoS Protector does not provide the ability to upload data for the blacklist/whitelist in bulk, which is one of the big points that need to be improved to facilitate configurations."
"F5 should increase its capability to prevent zero-day attacks. Having advanced technology similar to other vendors like Palo Alto for zero-day attack prevention would be valuable."
"We needed to protect the database but the solution didn't offer a certain feature to do so."
"This would be absolutely the best network security solution if the price were not so high."
"There is room for improvement in Advanced Firewall Manager's dashboard statistics, especially during attacks."
"Firstly, geolocation currently relies on manual updates. It has to move to automatic updates. There are no automatic updates for this feature. If some IPs, countries, or service providers move to another country, now you will be allow IPs that you previously denied. This is because you depend on the database, which doesn't update automatically. This is really a very important area that they need to improve."
"We would have preferred to have support when we first started"
"Currently, we have eighty F5s and we need some kind of management software. It would be very helpful."
"NGINX, which F5 purchased, has room for improvement in its features, particularly its load balancing or application load balancing features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The appliance comes with a loaded hardware license, and additional options such as SSL can be purchased and enabled."
"I don't deal with the pricing, but it seems that you need to get basic support in order to upgrade the DDoS database for new attacks and so on."
"It's an expensive solution. It's one of the most expensive solutions in the world. It's cheaper than Palo Alto and Cisco but these are expensive solutions. Fortinet is cheaper."
"As per pricing, I would not say cheap, but little higher than cheap, but not very expensive. So you can say kind of value for money solutions."
"F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager is not an expensive solution."
"F5 BIG-IP AFM is an affordable solution. There were not any additional fees other than the standard licensing."
"The solution is slightly on the higher priced side."
"The product is expensive."
"It's very expensive, and you pay extra for the models."
"We have purchased a five-year licensing package for the product."
"The price of F5 BIG-IP AFM is a little more expensive than other firewalls on the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
32%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
18%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for Check Point DDoS Protector?
The main use case is to protect bank from DDoS attacks. We have it as a service device in network and but it's a common installation.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?
The standard license is reasonably priced, but additional features like the WAF can be more expensive. There are plenty of technical documents and a supportive community available, which helps mana...
What needs improvement with F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?
The appliance and features could be enhanced further, especially in terms of security. Some features like the WAF ( /categories/web-application-firewall-waf ) firewall may seem expensive compared t...
 

Also Known As

No data available
F5 AFM, F5 Advanced Firewall Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Boston Properties
City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point DDoS Protector vs. F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,856 professionals have used our research since 2012.