Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway comparison

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

December 2025

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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:

ROI

Sentiment score

6.5

Cloudflare users experienced increased performance, security, and cost-effectiveness, leading to improved loyalty and revenue despite difficult ROI calculations.

Sentiment score

7.6

Cloudflare WAF offers essential protection with cost-effective features, supporting various platforms and enhancing website visibility and uptime.

Sentiment score

6.1

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway enhances cost-control and efficiency, offering 30-40% savings and reducing staffing needs, despite cost assessment challenges.

For the small project I was working on, using the basic tier provided a huge improvement at zero cost.

Wellington Malagutti

Security Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

In terms of return on investment with Cloudflare, it costs my time to set them up, but basically once they're set up, it's done.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

Owner at Hga consulting

My experience with the pricing or licensing of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is that many features can be accessed for free, so the pricing is definitely reasonable.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Owner at Hga consulting

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway significantly impacts our cost savings while maintaining higher performance.

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

If we can use a shared resource, then the return on investment is really nice.

Cloud Specialist at Diebold, Incorporated

We have seen a return on investment in terms of time-saving and cost-saving by not creating our own infrastructure.

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

Information Security and Compliance Officer at Carnation

Customer Service

Sentiment score

7.0

Cloudflare's customer service is quick, but technical support feedback is mixed, with improvement needed in responsiveness and detailed assistance.

Sentiment score

6.3

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's support is praised for responsiveness and helpfulness, despite challenges with contact and Indian support.

Sentiment score

6.4

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway's customer service is praised for responsiveness but criticized for delays and varying technical expertise.

Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model.

reviewer1245303

Senior Consultant CDN at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to call them.

Owner at Hga consulting

I have primarily worked not with the tool's customer support but with the product's sales engineers and technical sales engineers, who seem to know their stuff.

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Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to contact them.

Owner at Hga consulting

The technical support of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall rates between five and seven at maximum.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

IT Manager at Amla Commerce

I would say they provide the best support for Application Gateway because they own the product, so their support is top-notch.

Cloud Specialist at Diebold, Incorporated

There is room for improvement, specifically in paid support, by providing more direct contact.

Information Security and Compliance Officer at Carnation

I would rate Microsoft support as good because they have a very skilled technical support team in the background

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

Cloud Head at White-Spunner & Associates

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

8.1

Users praise Cloudflare for seamless scalability, effective traffic management, easy upgrades, and robust global infrastructure without disruptions.

Sentiment score

7.7

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall excels in scalability and ease of use, supporting large user bases efficiently with minimal management.

Sentiment score

7.4

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is praised for scalability and features, despite some challenges and integration flexibility with cloud platforms.

It is a SaaS tool, but the fact that they have workloads deployed across the world proves that it is a highly scalable tool.

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch

Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

The tool offers very good performance, even during high-traffic periods.

Engineer at SITMEXICO

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

Prajith Chowthee

Independent Consultant at Unaikui

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

The scalability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall rates between 8 to 9, as it depends upon the use cases and what exactly the client needs.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

IT Manager at Amla Commerce

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is a very scalable product.

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

It has the autoscaling feature, so there is not much concern around performance; it can scale significantly.

Cloud Specialist at Diebold, Incorporated

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is a scalable solution.

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

Cloud Head at White-Spunner & Associates

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

7.6

Cloudflare is highly rated for stability and uptime, with few past issues, especially on higher-tier plans.

Sentiment score

8.1

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is praised for its reliable performance, minimal downtime, and effective security features across industries.

Sentiment score

7.6

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is seen as stable and reliable, with most users rating it highly despite some configuration challenges.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

Prajith Chowthee

Independent Consultant at Unaikui

The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch

Engineer at SITMEXICO

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

IT Manager at Amla Commerce

We have been using it for the past two to three years, and there have been good results with no problems so far.

Cloud Specialist at Diebold, Incorporated

The stability is good, and except for a few instances, I don't see the non-availability of Azure Cloud services.

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

Cloud Head at White-Spunner & Associates

Room For Improvement

Enhancements needed in Cloudflare: analytics, CDN latency, API integration, user support, DNS, pricing, documentation, server coverage, WAF, and cache.

Cloudflare's Web Application Firewall requires ModSecurity upgrades, improved logging, integration, accuracy, more controls, and better documentation.

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway struggles with high costs, complexity, poor integration, limited features, and insufficient support and documentation.

Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.

Bilal Mujahid

Managed Services Manager at Adapture Technology Group

Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements.

Darryl Wethington

Senior Cloud Solution Architect at Integrated Technology Solution Group (ITSG)

There are some performance considerations when it comes to dynamic content that involves fetching data from databases or using APIs.

Animesh.Kumar

Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available.

reviewer2012637

Network Architect at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

I think they're doing a good job with DNS and as support for any domains that I create or that my clients create, it's mandatory for me to ensure they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider.

Owner at Hga consulting

They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

IT Manager at Amla Commerce

One feature I mentioned is the support for non-HTTPS protocols such as TCP, which could allow one endpoint for all kinds of protocols.

Cloud Specialist at Diebold, Incorporated

There is room for improvement in terms of support, such as assigning agents directly for more straightforward engagement.

Information Security and Compliance Officer at Carnation

In future releases of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, I would like to see more AI functionalities and a better dashboard as well as some customizations.

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

Setup Cost

Cloudflare offers scalable pricing, from free to enterprise plans, providing significant value especially for mid-sized companies.

Cloudflare's WAF offers competitive pricing from $20 to $10,000, seen as cost-effective but could improve transparency.

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway's pricing is seen as both expensive and competitive, depending on features and integration benefits.

I find it to be cheap.

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch

Engineer at SITMEXICO

I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.

Animesh.Kumar

Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions

The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

We would prefer to have it cheaper, but it is still expensive.

Cloud Specialist at Diebold, Incorporated

Azure solutions are quite expensive.

Information Security and Compliance Officer at Carnation

When it comes to pricing for Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, I would rate it a seven out of ten.

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

Valuable Features

Cloudflare enhances performance and security with CDN caching, DDoS protection, and an easy-to-use dashboard, benefiting many users.

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall provides scalable DDoS protection, configurable rules, advanced features, and comprehensive support with minimal false positives.

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway enhances traffic control and security with features like URL routing, autoscaling, and customizable policies.

The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security.

Darryl Wethington

Senior Cloud Solution Architect at Integrated Technology Solution Group (ITSG)

Techniques like minification and image compression reduce the size of assets, leading to better performance and faster user load times.

Animesh.Kumar

Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions

The solution has been able to compare it to the market, and I think the product has taken great strides in automating quite a bit of things, and they use a lot of AI.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

The custom rules and the geo-redundant geographical rule feature, which allows me to implement geographical rules for customers, add significant value.

reviewer2012637

Network Architect at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

The best features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall are multiple, including the WAF, rate limiter, and bot attack protection.

IT Manager at Amla Commerce

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools add a layer that we're able to visualize and see before it actually hits the local firewall.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Owner at Hga consulting

We are using it for some of the security features for our applications, particularly for securing traffic in transit with SSL.

Information Security and Compliance Officer at Carnation

The Web Application Firewall (WAF) in Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has been very effective in protecting applications from security threats.

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

The gateway's Web Application Firewall feature enhances security as it is the first entry point to your network from the outside world.

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

Cloud Head at White-Spunner & Associates

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare

Featured Reviews

Has helped manage client domains with streamlined access control and threat visibility

Owner at Hga consulting

I don't know what areas could be improved with Cloudflare WAF; Cloudflare is constantly improving and adding features to their feature set. They're doing a good job, and as far as DNS and support for any domains that I create or my clients create, it's mandatory for me to make sure that they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider. The Cloudflare load balancing capability hasn't really helped in enhancing my website's uptime and resiliency because we don't really get that much traffic; it's mostly remote users, and web hosting is done by a web hosting service. It doesn't pay to try to host your own website.

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Effectively protects clients from automated threats and ensures global security

IT Manager at Amla Commerce

I cannot say much about areas of improvement for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall because I haven't gone through deep understanding of it, as I am still learning. However, they need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long. If I took 48 hours to answer a request at my company, it would be a tough time to see or address the issue, and it would be frustrating.

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Mutual TLS has secured our web services and now needs broader protocol support

Cloud Specialist at Diebold, Incorporated

The most valuable feature we have found in Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is mutual TLS. We find mutual TLS valuable because we can verify the client securely by setting up the trust certificate of the client, and also if we do it at the client side as well. This successfully develops mutual trust, ensuring that we know the client who is calling our service is a legitimate client. That is a very nice feature.Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has helped manage our traffic efficiently because we have many web services that we can put behind the same URL, and we can have different URLs with the same Application Gateway with a limited number of listeners. We can do host-based routing as well as URL-based routing or path-based routing. It supports both, so we can have even a single URL supporting many applications, or we can have different URLs for different applications respectively. We have both use cases.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	25

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	22
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	24

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...

Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?

Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...

What do you like most about Cloudflare?

Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.

What do you like most about Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

The product has a valuable security control functionality.

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

The price of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is reasonable.

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

I don't really use the rule-based logic feature or utilize the WAF's ability to scale as a cloud-based service. I don...

What's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?

We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides...

How does AWS WAF compare to Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?

Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Web Application Firewall or Microsoft...

What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?

Application Gateway automatically redirects unwanted users and takes care of the security aspect. It also handles the...

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 51% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Compared 3% of the time

Myra Security DDoS Protection vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 11% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 7% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 6% of the time

Azure Web Application Firewall vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 6% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall Competitors

HAProxy vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 8% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 8% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 8% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 8% of the time

Akamai App and API Protector vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway Competitors

Product Reports

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Cloudflare

January 2026

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

January 2026

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Download Cloudflare Web Application Firewall product report

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

December 2025

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

Download Microsoft Azure Application Gateway product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Cloudflare WAF

Azure Application Gateway, MS Azure Application Gateway

Overview

Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.

Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.

What are Cloudflare's key features?

CDN Caching: Enhances website speed through content delivery network caching.
Web Application Firewall: Protects websites from online threats.
DDoS Mitigation: Shields against distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DNS Management: Offers easy-to-use and flexible domain management.
SSL Certificates: Ensures secure connections between users and servers.
Analytics: Provides insights with robust analytics tools.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Enhanced Security: Strengthening web security with DDoS and firewall protection.
Speed Improvement: Faster content delivery with CDN caching.
Operational Simplicity: Simplifies website optimization through a user-friendly interface.
Scalable Solutions: Scales with global reach, lowering latency for improved performance.
Cost Efficiency: Offers layers of valuable functionality with pricing options.

Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.

Cloudflare

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's intuitive dashboard enables users to build powerful rules through easy clicks and also provides Terraform integration. Every request to the WAF is inspected against the rule engine and the threat intelligence curated from protecting over 27 Million websites. Suspicious requests can be blocked, challenged or logged as per the needs of the user while legitimate requests are routed to the destination, agnostic of whether it lives on-premise or in the cloud. Analytics and Cloudflare Logs enable visibility into actionable metrics for the user.

Cloudflare

Azure Application Gateway is a web traffic load balancer that enables you to manage traffic to your web applications. Traditional load balancers operate at the transport layer (OSI layer 4 - TCP and UDP) and route traffic based on source IP address and port, to a destination IP address and port.

To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk

Lilly, AccuWeather, AIRFRANCE, Honeywell