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Checkmarx One vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 4, 2025

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

Checkmarx One
Ranking in API Security
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (2nd), Vulnerability Management (12th), Container Security (14th), Static Code Analysis (2nd), Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) (2nd), DevSecOps (3rd), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (10th), Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) (3rd), AI Security (3rd)
F5 Distributed Cloud Services
Ranking in API Security
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
CDN (6th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the API Security category, the mindshare of Checkmarx One is 7.1%, up from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Distributed Cloud Services is 3.8%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Checkmarx One7.1%
F5 Distributed Cloud Services3.8%
Other89.1%
API Security
 

Featured Reviews

Shahzad Shahzad - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Solution Architect | L3+ Systems & Cloud Engineer | SRE Specialist at Canada Cloud Solution
Enable secure development workflows while identifying opportunities for faster scans and improved AI guidance
Checkmarx One is a very strong platform, but there are several areas where it can improve to support modern DevSecOps workflows even better. For example, better real-time developer guidance is needed. The IDE plugin should offer richer AI-powered auto-fixes similar to SNYK Code or GitHub Copilot Security, as current guidance is good but not deeply contextual for large-scale enterprise codebases. This matters because it reduces developer friction and accelerates shift-left adoption. More transparency control over the correlation engines is another need. The correlation engine is powerful but not fully transparent. Users want to understand why vulnerabilities were correlated or de-prioritized, which helps AppSec teams trust the prioritization logic. Faster SAST scan and more language coverage is needed since SAST scan can still be slow for very large mono-repos and there is limited deep support for new language frameworks like Rust and Go, along with advanced coverage for serverless-specific frameworks. This matters because large organizations want sub-minute scans in CI/CD as cloud-native ecosystems evolve fast. A strong API security module is another area for enhancement. API security scanning could be improved with active testing, API discovery, full Swagger, OpenAPI, drift detection, and schema-based fuzzing. This is important as API attacks are one of the biggest AppSec risks in 2025. Checkmarx One is strong, but I see a few areas for improvement including faster SAST scanning for large mono-repos, deeper language framework support, more transparent correlation logic, and stronger API security that includes discovery and runtime context. The IDE plugin could offer more AI-assisted fixes, and the SBOM lifecycle tracking can evolve further. Enhancing integration with SIEM and SOAR would also make enterprise adoption smoother, and these improvements would help developers and AppSec teams move faster with more accuracy.
Mohan Janarthanan - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has made our organization more efficient with our whole code scan/deployment process for our software applications."
"We are using Checkmarx for analyzing threats."
"It's not an obstacle for developers. They can easily write their code and make it more secure with Checkmarx."
"We have been using this product extensively for a lot of applications to identify as well as employ proper remediation which makes the application secure including information issues which might get neglected with a manual code review process."
"They have some of the best features which make the product wonderful."
"The most valuable features are the easy to understand interface, and it 's very user-friendly."
"From my point of view, it is the best product on the market."
"The tool's valuable features include integrating GPT and Copilot. Additionally, the UI web representation is very user-friendly, making navigation easy. GPT has made several improvements to my security code."
"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."
"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."
"The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation."
"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."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides a single unified console for security operations, network operations, and DevOps across all environments."
 

Cons

"I can't create a business case with multiple-factor authentication."
"Implementing a blackout time for any user or teams: Needs improvement."
"I really would like to integrate it as a service along with the SAP HANA Cloud Platform. It will then be easy to use it directly as a service."
"Checkmarx isn't accredited by the US government for DOD networks, so we've been forced to remove it from the network."
"Checkmarx One can be improved on the side of faster scans, especially when our CI pipelines are scanning for vulnerabilities."
"From an administrative standpoint, I would rate Checkmarx with a five out of ten."
"We are trying to find out if there is a way to identify the run-time null values. I am analyzing different tools to check if there is any tool that supports run-time null value identification, but I don't think any of the tools in the market currently supports this feature. It would be helpful if Checkmarx can identify and throw an exception for a null value at the run time. It would make things a lot easier if there is a way for Checkmarx to identify nullable fields or hard-coded values in the code. The accessibility for customized Checkmarx rules is currently limited and should be improved. In addition, it would be great if Checkmarx can do static code and dynamic code validation. It does a lot of security-related scanning, and it should also do static code and dynamic code validation. Currently, for security-related validation, we are using Checkmarx, and for static code and dynamic code validation, we are using some other tools. We are spending money on different tools. We can pay a little extra money and use Checkmarx for everything."
"We had to lock the number of CPUs used to not crash the Checkmarx Audit."
"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."
"For small players, it is completely not worth it."
"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."
"One area where F5 Distributed Cloud Services can be improved is in API security, which can be enhanced."
"The pricing could be adjusted to better meet the needs of typical customers in regions like Poland, where the product is considered too expensive."
"Last year there was a downtime of 30 minutes across the cloud distributed console, and that was the only impact observed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not expensive, but sometimes, their pricing model or licensing model is not very clear. There are similar variables, such as projects or developers, and sometimes, it is a little bit confusing."
"The solution's price is high and you pay based on the number of users."
"I would rate the solution’s pricing an eight out of ten. The tool’s pricing is higher than others and it is for the license alone."
"​Checkmarx is not a cheap scanning tool, but none of the security tools are cheap. Checkmarx is a powerful scanning tool, and it’s essential to have one of these products."
"The tool's pricing is fine."
"The solution is costly."
"We have a subscription license that is on a yearly basis, and it's a pretty competitive solution."
"It is the right price for quality delivery."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise46
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What alternatives are there for Fortify WebInspect and Fortify SCA?
I would like to recommend Checkmarx. With Checkmarx, you are able to have an all in one solution for SAST and SCA as well. Veracode is only a cloud solution. Hope this helps.
What is the biggest difference between Veracode and Checkmarx?
According to my experience of using both the tools in different organizations Veracode is a Cloud-native, managed AppSec platform with strong focus on ease of use, it is SaaS delivery, and provide...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Checkmarx?
Checkmarx One is a premium solution, so budget accordingly. Make sure you understand how licensing scales with additional applications and users. I advise negotiating multi-year contracts or bundle...
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.
What needs improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
One area where F5 Distributed Cloud Services can be improved is in API security, which can be enhanced.Specifically, the confidence level on API security that F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides...
What is your primary use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
My main use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services is WAF protection.I am using F5 Distributed Cloud Services primarily for securing my infrastructure with layer 7 protection, which F5 provides. Th...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

YIT, Salesforce, Coca-Cola, SAP, U.S. Army, Liveperson, Playtech Case Study: Liveperson Implements Innovative Secure SDLC
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Checkmarx One vs. F5 Distributed Cloud Services and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
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