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Check Point Quantum Force vs Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 22, 2026

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

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Ranking in Firewalls
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
591
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (2nd), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (1st), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st), ZTNA (1st), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
Check Point Quantum Force
Ranking in Firewalls
28th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Palo Alto Networks NG Firew...
Ranking in Firewalls
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
199
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Abhinandan Yadav - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Engineer at Arrow PC Network Pvt Ltd
Unified security and sd-wan have improved uptime and cut wan costs for multi-site branches
Users report stability issues in certain versions, which requires regular updates. Real-world attacks have also highlighted the need for urgent patching of vulnerabilities.Fortinet FortiGate, while a powerful and feature-rich web firewall, could improve in areas like firmware stability, documentation, and ease of use. The learning curve can be steep for some users. For beginners, support quality can vary, and frequent updates with occasional vulnerabilities call for careful patch management. However, once Fortinet FortiGate is configured, it remains highly reliable and efficient. Customer support needs improvement, as I find it very slow, with reports from other users reflecting that customer support is inadequate.
Abnet Tsegaye Belay - PeerSpot reviewer
Cybersecurity Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Has strengthened perimeter security through AI-driven protection and unified management
I have noticed some limitations with Check Point Quantum Force. There is a limitation in integrating with existing infrastructure, such as orchestration and logging, specifically with VPNs. VPNs are hard and sophisticated to deploy on this firewall. However, it is improving currently. Some performance aspects need higher resources. If you do not give it higher resources, it will slow down your network. It is a trade-off - if you have higher resources, you will have good performance. The complexity of configuring a VPN needs to be improved because we need to go back and forth to configure VPNs. It has to be simpler to understand.
Abhinandan Yadav - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Engineer at Arrow PC Network Pvt Ltd
Advanced visibility has transformed security policies and provides proactive threat prevention
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are powerful, but there are areas for improvement that could enhance their effectiveness, such as cost and licensing models. One of the main challenges we face is the high cost, especially for small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs), with licensing for features such as threat prevention, URL filtering, and WildFire being quite expensive. Additionally, centralized management with Panorama is a dependency for managing multiple firewalls, leading to added costs and complexity, and the built-in centralized management features could be made more user-friendly. Moreover, the learning curve associated with the initial setup and advanced configuration including NAT, decryption, and routing can be complex for new users, and enhancements in logging and reporting could also improve the user experience. There are a few more areas where improvements could streamline operations, such as optimizing commit times. Sometimes committing changes takes a noticeable amount of time, particularly for larger configurations, so a faster commit option would significantly help during urgent troubleshooting. Easier policy troubleshooting is necessary as well. Even though logs are detailed, finding the exact rule match and issue can still be time-consuming in complex environments, so having automated policy simulation and a recommendation tool would expedite troubleshooting. Additionally, better default templates and best practices for SMB data centers and branch offices would speed up deployment and reduce errors. Enhancing integration visibility through a unified dashboard would simplify monitoring, and improving the firmware upgrade process to allow for a more seamless zero downtime upgrade would also enhance operations, as upgrades are stable but typically require careful planning and downtime.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Fortinet FortiGate is highly recommended because they update everything every second."
"The biggest lesson would be that Fortinet FortiGate provides a high level of security at a good total cost of ownership."
"What I like the most is the configuration and that it's simple, and straightforward to maintain."
"I have found the decryption of Fortinet FortiGate IPS very good. It's called SSL deep inspection, it's working very well. This is how you decrypt access and traffic, and it is through the IPS antivirus center. Additionally, the UI is user-friendly."
"The reporting on employee behavior and the prevention of new viruses are essential features."
"Overall, it’s a good solution, and I would recommend it to others."
"At least one part I am headache free that I don't have to categorize all the websites and that security has been pre-categorized by the people, and that the services are getting updated."
"We have found it to be very reliable and that's why our teams and various users in our company use it as our main firewall every day."
"The most valuable features I find in Check Point Quantum Force are the security policy features, including all security features that are provided by firewall, IPS/IDS."
"The security features and layered security features are better compared to others."
"In performance and threat prevention, it has benefited my cybersecurity strategy."
"The outcomes from Check Point Quantum Force firewall gave us the ability to be fit and secure from the cyber world."
"Palo Alto NGFW provides a unified platform that natively integrates all security capabilities."
"The tool's most valuable features are its security features, which are highly valued based on market standards and Gartner reports. We conducted a POC before procuring it, and from that perspective, it is very good. The machine learning feature helps prevent more threats, but no device or firewall can be 100 percent secure because threats evolve daily."
"Flexible and integrates well with apps and other security tools."
"The ease of use and the ease of configuration of our policies are the most valuable features."
"Palo Alto offers better Layer 7 protection than competing solutions by Cisco and Fortinet. I also like the VPN client more. The interface is simple, so administrators can deploy and configure it much faster than other firewalls"
"The basic configuration will only take 15 minutes to set up"
"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are the best in the field in terms of usability and coverage."
"Mechanically, all firewalls work in a similar fashion, but what makes Palo Alto different is that it also has some of the threat hunt capabilities; it is a little bit better than other vendors."
 

Cons

"However, the problem is that their subscription price is very high."
"Some features of Fortinet FortiGate are actually fee enabled that are inconvenient for deploying in production. Other issues relate to isolation with Cisco products and your server."
"I would say 8 out of 10 regarding the stability of Fortinet FortiGate. It requires a lot of bug fixing and what I understand, Fortinet is fast enough to provide bug fixes and patches, but usually I suggest Fortinet should do thorough testing of their releases and software releases and once probably they can reduce the frequency of new releases but make it stable."
"In the future, I would like to see improvements made to cloud-based management."
"If they had better integration with security products, such as Cisco ISE or Rapid Threat Containment, then it would be an improvement."
"The search tool needs improvement. It's very difficult to search for policies right now."
"I think that the infrastructure for the VPN could be improved. The way that it is bundled also made it difficult to use and sell as it is too expensive."
"From my point of view, I think Fortinet has to extend the solution into the cloud and provide all the security features from the cloud and not be dependent on the firewall appliances."
"I see good competition which is less expensive."
"I have observed weaknesses in Check Point Quantum Force, particularly when configuring tunnels from any point product to a peer, which has very complex configuration requirements."
"Check Point Quantum Force does not have strong local support. We are based in India, and Check Point Quantum Force does not have extensive local support in our region."
"The complexity of configuring a VPN needs to be improved because we need to go back and forth to configure VPNs."
"When the primary Palo Alto Networks firewall fails over to the secondary, it requires manual intervention to bounce the IPsec for it to work properly. Unlike BGP peering, which automatically changes from idle to established, this process needs automation. In Cisco, there is no need to bounce the IPsec traffic during failover, and I suggest automation for Palo Alto Networks in that process."
"The reports it provides are not helpful."
"Palo Alto claims their NG Firewalls are highly customizable, but this isn't always true."
"Having a better pricing model would make this product more competitive, and more affordable for our customers."
"Palo Alto needs to adjust their pricing a little bit."
"Their support is very limited. It's limited compared to the competitors."
"This solution is definitely not scalable."
"The only problem that I see with the Palo Alto NGFW being an all-in-one appliance is that because of the different features that are being put into a single appliance, the OS tends to be beefier. Over the eight years, we have seen that the number of features or analyses being put into the appliance itself has a tendency to slow down the appliance, especially at the time of bootup. So, any time we are doing maintenance work, the time required for the appliance to boot up and be fully functional again is significantly longer than eight years ago. They could find a way to make this all-in-one appliance faster."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive solution."
"The price of FortiGate support is too expensive."
"The price of Fortinet FortiGate is reasonable for an SME."
"Setup cost may be not so low, as you expect, because it depends on different factors, but TCO for 5 years may pleasantly surprise you."
"FortiGate SWG is reasonably priced."
"There is a license required to use Fortinet FortiGate with all the features. It has to be updated with the threats on an ongoing basis for the signatures to prevent threats and a license is needed to receive those security updates."
"The price for the Fortinet FortiGate is reasonable. Secure SD-WAN is free of charge. If you have their firewall, it's free of charge. It's very tempting."
"Licensing for Fortinet FortiGate is on a yearly basis. Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
Information not available
"It is very expensive. You pay for a year."
"Palo Alto is one of the most expensive firewalls in the world. Everyone knows that. But you need at least one layer from Palo Alto to protect your environment because it is the strongest company in the security field."
"It has a yearly subscription."
"It could be less expensive."
"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are affordable, and we get what we pay for."
"The price is expensive, especially in Turkey, where I am located... Palo Alto is very expensive compared to other vendors, like Fortinet."
"The pricing for Palo Alto is very high. The price difference with other vendors is huge because Palo Alto has been the market leader for the last five or six years, and they have a reliable product."
"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls' price is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
No data available
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business367
Midsize Enterprise135
Large Enterprise193
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business77
Midsize Enterprise56
Large Enterprise85
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?
When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...
What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?
From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...
What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?
As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Check Point Quantum Force?
In terms of pricing, setup cost, and licensing, many users and clients say that the pricing is high. The license stru...
What needs improvement with Check Point Quantum Force?
I would assess Check Point Quantum Force's real-time threat intelligence in guarding against ransomware as not effect...
What is your primary use case for Check Point Quantum Force?
I am dealing mostly with firewalls and I am working with Check Point Quantum Force. I have utilized the capability to...
What is a better choice, Azure Firewall or Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls?
Azure Firewall Vs. Palo Alto Network NG Firewalls Both solutions provide stellar stability and security. Azure Firew...
Features comparison between Palo Alto and Fortinet firewalls
In the best tradition of these questions, Feature-wise both are quite similar, but each has things it's better at, it...
Which is better - Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls or Sophos XG?
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls have both great features and performance. I like that Palo Alto has regular threat si...
 

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall
No data available
Palo Alto NGFW, Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya
Information Not Available
SkiStar AB, Ada County, Global IT Services PSF, Southern Cross Hospitals, Verge Health, University of Portsmouth, Austrian Airlines, The Heinz Endowments
Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point Quantum Force vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.