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Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) vs Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 16, 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

Cloudflare Web Application ...
Sponsored
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Check Point WAF (formerly C...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (5th)
Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
26th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
CDN (11th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (19th), API Security (16th), Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) (9th)
 

Featured Reviews

DB
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.
Mohan Janarthanan - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
Integrated web protection has reduced breaches and now prevents attacks across critical apps
I have been using it for six months, and the biggest advantages for me are that Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) offers more than other F5 firewalls, which have only application protection called ASM (Application Security Monitoring). In contrast, Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) provides protection on IPS along with application protection. Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) itself provides an IPS function where I can protect against my Layer 7 traffic, which is not available in other vendors. The traditional WAF does not have the capacity of IPS functions. The intrusion prevention capability, I can only see in Layer 3 functions and stateful functions, which is the traditional firewall capability. Other vendors are keeping this in their Web Application Firewall, but Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) has integrated it differently. False positives are significantly less here compared to traditional Web Application Firewalls because they are more focused on the AI front. Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) integrates an AI platform within the Web Application itself using API protection with AI and what they call GenAI protection. They excel at creating the profile itself, which is the basic functionality of WAF. Normally, I deploy in preventive mode, which takes some time for learning, but I prefer to operate in preventing mode only.
reviewer2812593 - PeerSpot reviewer
CIO at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Advanced threat protection has reduced financial risk and improves application security visibility
The issue I have with Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud is that the real-time analysis is not robust; I am unable to see all the logs of everything that happened, including what is passive. It only logs when there are suspicious activities, which means if something is not considered suspicious by Fortinet, I will not see the full picture. That is a disadvantage because it will not log unless it identifies an IOC or attacks, meaning I cannot see traffic information in a way that helps build more intelligence. The biggest issue I have with Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud is that the logging is not as extensive as I would prefer. For instance, if there was an issue two days ago and Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud did not mark it as a concern, I will not see any information about that, making it challenging to explain to customers if their request did not reach us. It hampers visibility from an API perspective. They need to enhance monitoring and logging to be more extensive and capture even passive activities. The AI integration in Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud is still new. The generative models are good, but there is much work left to improve. It is not as intelligent as it could be; thus, enhancements around the AI co-assistant would be beneficial. Additionally, logging and monitoring need improvement as I can capture traffic and investigate offline on my Fortinet firewall, including full traffic view, but Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud currently focuses only on security concerns, which does not give the complete picture.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This is a good product; it's reliable and scales well."
"This solution does a good job of preventing web application attacks, SQL injections, and cross-site scripting attacks."
"The product has a valuable security control functionality."
"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."
"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."
"Cloudflare has positively impacted my organization by making it easier for me to handle and set up DNS for multiple clients; I can easily go in and access their accounts, make changes they need, and it's a one-stop shop."
"The integration of Cloudflare with Cloud Suite is its most valuable feature."
"Technical support has a very fast response time and they are helpful."
"The tool's most valuable feature is AI, which makes operations easier. Moreover, it is easy to deploy."
"The most effective CloudGuard feature for threat prevention is its web app protection."
"Check Point CloudGuard WAF has really reduced the headache of IT engineers and has helped me in security through machine learning."
"In short, Check Point CloudGuard WAF is a powerful tool."
"User attitude reviews help us keep all online users compliant with company regulations and policies."
"The solution's strongest point is that you can connect everything to it, giving you a full view of what's connected."
"Check Point CloudGuard WAF has improved our organization by providing protection against web application attacks such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and bot threats."
"With the introduction of AI in general, Check Point CloudGuard WAF provides very high accuracy on the data, allowing me to avoid a lot of false positives and saving me time in determining if what I'm seeing is a possible attack."
"We have seen a reduction in incidents and a good return on investment from Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud, with our return on investment around 60%."
"My favorite Fortinet device is the FortiGate next-gen firewall itself; it is a complete suite with intrusion prevention, intrusion detection, anti-malware, anti-DDoS, and SD-WAN functionalities."
 

Cons

"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."
"The reporting could be improved if it were more granular."
"We don't even use Cloudflare Bot Management because it's too expensive; you need to pay per request, and it's much cheaper to get one or two additional machines."
"The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced"
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should include port forwarding features."
"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."
"I have experienced some difficulties with Cloudflare's support as a customer based in India."
"Its stability could be better."
"CloudGuard could improve in areas such as ease of integration with Fortinet and reducing costs associated with deployment in cloud environments like Azure."
"They need improved latency in the main window."
"Check Point CloudGuard Application Security needs to improve updates on integrations. It also needs to incorporate real-time monitoring features."
"I would like to be able to integrate the theme of Artificial Intelligence to help review issues and to monitor and view the security issue while also suggesting and interpreting and additionally configuring solutions - basically, acting as an interpreter."
"In my opinion, there is some room for improvement regarding pricing, which we require, and much of it relates to the license base and support."
"There are occasions when it interfaces with other systems, leading to a loss of visibility."
"Check Point CloudGuard WAF could be improved by simplifying the initial setup for a faster deployment, making the dashboard and reporting more customizable, and offering a more accessible pricing model."
"The User interface can be improved, especially for 1st time user."
"The issue I have with Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud is that the real-time analysis is not robust; I am unable to see all the logs of everything that happened, including what is passive."
"Real-time traffic analysis has posed an issue for us because we did not see logs for legitimate traffic."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"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."
"Check Point CloudGuard Application Security's pricing is comparable to other products in the market."
"I find the pricing to be reasonable."
"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 Application Security's pricing is not friendly."
"Considering all the benefits we've observed, we find the price to be satisfactory."
"The pricing is competitive compared to other solutions on the market. So, the licensing cost is average."
"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."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
19%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
26%
Healthcare Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business38
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise24
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudGuard for Application Security?
The pricing is reasonable, and I believe it is acceptable. I am satisfied with the timing.
What needs improvement with CloudGuard for Application Security?
The negative aspect is that Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) uses Check Point Harmony in its management cons...
What is your primary use case for CloudGuard for Application Security?
I want to protect my application hosted in my cloud by preventing attacks against my top OWASP Top 10 threats. I am e...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud?
Real-time traffic analysis has posed an issue for us because we did not see logs for legitimate traffic. A separate l...
What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud?
Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud is used as a WAF solution.
What advice do you have for others considering Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud?
We are a customer running Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud for both our organization and one for our customer. Three users ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
Check Point CloudGuard Application Security, CloudGuard Application Security, CloudGuard AppSec
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Orange España, Paschoalotto
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) vs. Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.