Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services comparison

Check Point Software Technologies and F5 are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Check Point Software Technologies is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.7, while F5 is ranked #16 with an average rating of 9.0. Check Point Software Technologies holds a 2.1% mindshare in WAF, compared to F5’s 1.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Check Point Software Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of F5 users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 16, 2026

Check Point WAF and F5 Distributed Cloud Services are both designed for web application security. F5 Distributed Cloud Services has an edge due to its robust features, suggesting it is worth the investment despite Check Point WAF's favorable pricing.

Features: Check Point WAF offers comprehensive threat prevention, customizable rules, and AI-based threat detection. F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides global server load balancing, real-time intelligence for threat mitigation, and advanced capabilities for DDoS protection.

Room for Improvement: Check Point WAF could benefit from enhanced API security, more sophisticated AI algorithms, and an improved user interface for beginners. F5 Distributed Cloud Services could improve its deployment simplicity, reduce setup complexity, and expand support for smaller enterprises.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Check Point WAF is known for straightforward deployment and strong customer service. F5 Distributed Cloud Services offers a technically sophisticated deployment process that may require additional setup time and technical expertise.

Pricing and ROI: Check Point WAF provides cost-efficient setup with quicker ROI due to its affordability. F5 Distributed Cloud Services, although potentially higher in initial cost, offers substantial ROI for larger enterprises with its extensive features and long-term benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) vs. F5 Distributed Cloud Services Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) vs. F5 Distributed Cloud Services

June 2026

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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 Web Application ...

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 4.0%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) is 2.1%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Distributed Cloud Services is 1.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF)	2.1%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall	4.0%
F5 Distributed Cloud Services	1.9%
Other	92.0%

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Featured Reviews

Dean Barisic

CTO at PlayNirvana

Advanced security reporting has protected high-traffic betting platforms from constant attacks

I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we have a dedicated IT team for that, and I'm not involved with Cloudflare much anymore. But if I were to compare them to F5, I would like to see more features that F5 offers. F5 has an option to bring the whole infrastructure, the whole WAF and all their packages, Bot Management, and everything else on your infrastructure. You need to install certain services from their side, and then you can choose if you would like requests to hit your servers immediately or if requests need to be proxied through F5 backbone. That would be a nice addition because we have 90% of the traffic as legit traffic coming from whitelisted servers. If it comes from whitelisted servers, I don't need to go every request through the backbone; I could easily just IP whitelist everything. Then I could maybe have Bot Management on my infrastructure that drastically reduces the price of Cloudflare. I would like to see Push CDN more improved in the next release of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. And maybe something similar to Pushpin that Fastly has, which is an option where you can push messages that then can be scaled globally over the network. From our perspective, if we have a listener that listens for stock updates, I would just need to have one processor that pushes those updates to the Cloudflare API, and then Cloudflare would broadcast that message to all listeners. Cloudflare will check the order of the message, and if you, as a customer, are not connected or have some kind of network issue, when you reconnect, you will receive the latest state and missing updates.

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Krishnakumar Mahadevan

CISO at Spink Solutions Private Limited

Cloud security has strengthened risk posture and improved advanced threat visibility

There are some API gateway and API securities I mentioned. If these are incorporated with AI-related features, particularly those seven key vulnerabilities I mentioned—token theft and tool poisoning—that would be beneficial. AI-related features are not included yet in Check Point CloudGuard WAF. However, they are present in FortiGate. That is the advantage of FortiGate now. FortiGate is stopping all AI-related vulnerabilities now. FortiGate has this capability. It is unfortunate that even Palo Alto also lacks one or two of these features. Check Point Quantum is very good, without a doubt. However, their capabilities are not in comparison with Palo Alto. There are some features, but there are some gaps in comparison with Palo Alto.

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Mohan Janarthanan

Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions

Centralized security has protected APIs and optimized multi‑cloud traffic management

F5 Distributed Cloud Services has been used for two years for DDoS protection, and there is a particular feature called API protection. Within API protection, there is malicious user mitigation, which is one particular technology that has been implemented. This is a kind of advanced bot attack prevention. Malicious user mitigation is an AI/ML-based technology that was introduced by the F5 team, and this particular MUG protects rate limiting. If some users are having anomaly detection or someone is trying to do a bot attack, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge for that particular user alone and not for all users. For example, if someone is trying to act as a rogue, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge in the backend system on that particular system, so they cannot try again and again at the same time. It is for a concurrent session, and it will give the CAPTCHA challenge. This MUG, malicious user mitigation, prevents bot attacks. F5 Distributed Cloud Services includes the real-time intelligence feature, which helps with threat response strategies from a threat intelligence perspective. For example, if there are geo-restrictions or geo-based restrictions, sometimes people may come in through proxy-based servers, and it will prevent that. The load balancing feature optimizes application performance. Observability is the basic piece where F5 got introduced. This observability piece provides end-to-end visibility on the application performance. It gives complete end-to-end visibility across network latency and application performance issues. Sometimes when it is getting more than 200 pages, it throws errors such as 300, 400, or whatever has been configured, including 500 errors. F5 Distributed Cloud Services has helped improve traffic management efficiency. Most applications are hosted in the Check Point and F5 firewall, F5 web application firewall, where applications and traffic management can be accessed in a single dashboard. Automated threat detection is a basic feature of F5 Distributed Cloud Services meant for that purpose. There are two scenarios with automated threat detection, which is provided by F5. It is a completely machine learning solution that came from the bot defense, and it automatically protects against sophisticated attacks.

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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

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

"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."

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

"Very glad the WAF rulesets works out of box, and requires very little tuning or maintenance."

"In general, it's a very good product: the solution is very stable, the performance is great, the product offers very good scalability, the pricing is very reasonable, the installation is very straightforward and quite simple, and technical support has a very fast response time and is helpful."

"I'm highly satisfied. It's remarkably user-friendly, enabling me to quickly identify issues, and deploy solutions, and it offers the necessary features."

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

"Cloudflare WAF provides protection through rules and functionalities like Cloudflare's SDRAP."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

"It has allowed us to use components with known vulnerabilities, which have been prevented based on their multiple databases that have correlated incidents, helping the development of applications to be fast, efficient, and safe, which is what we were looking for."

"I find the configuration and real-time monitoring features valuable."

"Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) helps my clients reduce total cost of ownership, and the return on investment was really high for Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF), and it was the only product with GenAI security features compared to other WAF products."

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

"Check Point CloudGuard WAF delivers clear efficiency gains over traditional WAFs in three main areas: operations, accuracy, and cost optimization."

"It helps us streamline our revenue streams, and we're spending less money on application security."

"It provides advanced analytics that gives each team time to prepare for any threat that might occur in the future."

"Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) is especially valuable because of its cloud-native architecture and AI autonomous protection capabilities."

More Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) pros

"F5 Distributed Cloud Services is the market leader in load balancers and manages traffic really well."

"In a multi-cloud or distributed cloud, there are many protection possibilities from data to web application or API protection, including bot mitigation."

"The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation."

"I appreciate the UI of F5 Distributed Cloud Services and the backend cost, alongside the actual value proposition that they provide with the load balancer, which is excellent."

"F5 is known for being the best load balancer in the market. Customers with an existing module can easily adopt additional modules without investing in new hardware."

"F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides a single unified console for security operations, network operations, and DevOps across all environments."

"Technical support from F5 is good compared to Cisco and HP."

"Elastic environments are the most valuable features because I can pull these apps and migrate the on-premises environment to the Distributed Cloud environment, and this capability is very strong and the security regarding the apps is really very powerful."

Cons

"The user interface is very simple and straightforward, but users need knowledge about DNS to accomplish tasks."

"WAF doesn't directly affect bandwidth costs. It saves costs on protection. However, with the correct setup, it's difficult to determine if it saves costs overall due to the fixed enterprise plan fee."

"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well."

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

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

"The ModSecurity core rules need to be updated."

"The learning curve was steep initially."

"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

"CloudGuard could improve in areas such as ease of integration with Fortinet and reducing costs associated with deployment in cloud environments like Azure."

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

"Pricing is high, although possibly justified by the service received."

"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."

"The documentation of each of the tools that they offer needs to be better."

"If the price could come down, I would be very happy with the product."

"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."

More Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) cons

"The worst experience is that with so many solutions available, it is very complicated to know all of the solution modules, and the offers from F5 Distributed Cloud Services are vast."

"Last year there was a downtime of 30 minutes across the cloud distributed console, and that was the only impact observed."

"The pricing could be adjusted to better meet the needs of typical customers in regions like Poland, where the product is considered too expensive."

"One area where F5 Distributed Cloud Services can be improved is in API security, which can be enhanced."

"For small players, it is completely not worth it."

"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF. There are some problems, mainly from the perspective of implementation and customer expectations, which sometimes differ from reality."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."

"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 Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."

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

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

"It is not too pricey."

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

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"Considering all the benefits we've observed, we find the price to be satisfactory."

"I find the pricing to be reasonable."

"Check Point CloudGuard WAF is expensive compared to Azure WAF."

"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 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."

"It is not cheap, but it is worth it."

"The tool's licensing costs are yearly and competitive."

"Check Point CloudGuard Application Security's pricing is comparable to other products in the market."

More Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

19%

Outsourcing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	39
Midsize Enterprise	21
Large Enterprise	25

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	5

Questions from the Community

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

The price of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

We are using Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools with their Zero Trust, so e...

See all answers

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

All original equipment manufacturers mention zero-day attacks and the exploitation of previously unknown vulnerabilit...

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What needs improvement with CloudGuard for Application Security?

Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) needs to offer more competitive pricing. There are many other cloud WAF pro...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for CloudGuard for Application Security?

I typically use Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) for protecting cloud workspaces, which includes cloud appli...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?

F5 Distributed Cloud Services is affordable. I think it is very affordable. I do not think it is expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services?

I need to think about this for the future. F5 Distributed Cloud Services needs to create links with Amazon and Google...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?

I collect reviews for F5 Distributed Cloud Services and F5 Silverline Managed Services. I work with F5 Distributed Cl...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

Radware Cloud WAF Service vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

Azure Web Application Firewall vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 4% of the time

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Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF)

Compared 10% of the time

AWS WAF vs Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF)

Compared 10% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF)

Compared 8% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF)

Compared 7% of the time

Checkmarx One vs Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF)

Compared 6% of the time

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Azure Front Door vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Compared 12% of the time

Akamai vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Compared 9% of the time

Cloudflare vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Compared 8% of the time

Radware Cloud WAF Service vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Compared 7% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Compared 6% of the time

More F5 Distributed Cloud Services Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

July 2026

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Download Cloudflare Web Application Firewall product report

Buyer's Guide

Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF)

July 2026

Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) report

Download Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) product report

Buyer's Guide

F5 Distributed Cloud Services

June 2026

Download F5 Distributed Cloud Services product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF

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

No data available

Overview

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall integrates DDoS protection, load balancing, and firewall capabilities. Its ease of use, configurability, and robust security measures make it a versatile choice for protecting web applications.

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall provides a comprehensive defense against threats with advanced reporting and robust security measures. It includes DNS integration, rate limiting, and extensive rule sets, all within a SaaS model that allows API configurability. Users value its caching, scalability, and pricing, although enhancements are needed in rate-limiting and third-party integration. Improvements in customer support, especially in India, real-time controls, and user documentation are also desired. Users seek a more intuitive dashboard, better log management, and improved alert systems, along with multitenancy capabilities and enhanced reporting.

What are the key features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

DDoS Protection: Shields applications from denial-of-service attacks
Load Balancing: Ensures efficient traffic distribution
DNS Integration: Enhances domain name system security
Rate Limiting: Controls traffic flow and reduces abuse
Extensive Rule Sets: Offers customizable security rules

What benefits and ROI can users find in reviews?

Scalability: Easily adapts to growing business needs
Pricing: Offers reasonable pricing structure
Caching: Improves application performance and speed
Configurable Security: Provides customizable defense settings
Efficient Management: Simplifies security and application control

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall finds application in industries like banking and retail by acting as a comprehensive security gateway, managing authentication and authorization while protecting web applications from malicious Layer 7 traffic. It also implements load balancing, CDN, and zero-trust policies, supported by advanced reporting, analytics tools, and threat scoring to meet specific industry needs.

Cloudflare

Check Point WAF uses AI-driven threat prevention with seamless API integration, offering advanced DDoS protection. It auto-learns attack patterns, updates protection, and minimizes false positives. Its interface simplifies policy management for secure web applications across cloud environments.

Check Point WAF combines AI-driven threat detection with streamlined policy management to provide effective security for web applications and APIs. It offers zero-day protection, threat intelligence, and advanced DDoS protection. Users enjoy robust logging and compliance management across multi-cloud environments. Integration is smooth, with reduced reliance on signatures, facilitating multi-layer security. Despite its strengths, users note areas for improvement, such as latency and pricing, and call for enhancements in API security, real-time monitoring, and reporting. Challenges include integration complexity and limited technical support accessibility. Effective application security across dynamic environments is a key offering.

What are Check Point WAF's key features?

AI-Driven Threat Prevention: Utilizes AI to identify and block threats, minimizing false positives.
Seamless API Integration: Ensures integration into existing infrastructures without delays.
Advanced DDoS Protection: Safeguards against large-scale attacks to maintain service availability.
Auto-Learning Capability: Continuously adapts to new threat patterns for improved security.
User-Friendly Management: Simplifies policy and compliance management tasks.

What benefits can users expect from Check Point WAF?

Extensive Logging: Enables comprehensive analysis and auditing through detailed records.
Reduced Total Cost of Ownership: Provides cost-effective security measures in cloud environments.
Zero-Day Protection: Offers proactive defense against unidentified vulnerabilities.
Streamlined Deployment: Reduces deployment times with easy integration processes.
Robust Multi-Layer Security: Reinforces application security without heavy reliance on signatures.

Check Point WAF finds particular relevance in industries requiring robust cybersecurity measures such as finance, healthcare, and e-commerce. These sectors benefit from its advanced threat detection and adaptive security policy management, crucial for securing sensitive data across multi-cloud infrastructures. By managing API usage efficiently, it helps maintain regulatory compliance while ensuring optimal operation. Enhanced traffic logging and malware threat management add to its appeal for organizations focusing on securing transactions and sensitive information.

Check Point Software Technologies

F5 Distributed Cloud Services excel in enhancing security, optimizing web application delivery, and ensuring robust network performance. Users value its integrated Web Application Firewall, DDoS protection, global server load balancing, and intuitive management interface. It boosts organizational efficiency, reduces operational costs, and scales seamlessly, making it essential for businesses operating in distributed environments.

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk

Orange España, Paschoalotto

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) vs. F5 Distributed Cloud Services

June 2026

Free Report: Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) vs. F5 Distributed Cloud Services

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