Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs NetScaler comparison

Cloudflare and NetScaler are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Cloudflare is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.5, while NetScaler is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.2. Additionally, 95% of Cloudflare users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of NetScaler users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

NetScaler and Cloudflare compete in the web application delivery and security category. Cloudflare appears to have the upper hand due to its ease of configuration and robust security features.

Features: NetScaler offers a flexible deployment model, load balancing, SSL offload, and comprehensive application delivery capabilities tailored for large-scale, secure environments. Cloudflare provides comprehensive security with minimal false positives, ease of configuration, and DDoS protection, making it favorable for seamless security deployment.

Room for Improvement: NetScaler could enhance its feature innovation, ease of use, and multi-tenancy scaling, along with augmented support for scripting and better documentation. Cloudflare might benefit from updated core rule sets, improved documentation for beginners, and expanded integration capabilities to diminish false negatives.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetScaler is noted for its favor in on-premises environments due to its integration capabilities, though it can be complex. Customer service shows variability. In contrast, Cloudflare offers straightforward deployment in public cloud settings and positive customer service feedback, though initial setup guidance could be refined.

Pricing and ROI: NetScaler is generally more expensive with costs for licenses and additional services, yet it is seen to yield significant returns due to its extensive functionalities. Cloudflare's pricing is more accessible and transparent, appealing to those seeking cost-effective, secure solutions, often resulting in favorable ROI perceptions.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler

April 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:

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes

Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

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SachidDoshi

Senior Enterprise Security Architect at HGS - Hinduja Global Solutions

Offers a huge signature repository and is superiorly effective in mitigating DDoS attacks

The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced, which presently stands at two or three months. The product has a custom rule set that users can modify and manifest as needed. The vendor can probably shorten the learning curve using cutting-edge technologies like AI. The solution provider can also work around the web applications and identify the toolset that needs to be implemented to deploy the solution in less time. The vendor has launched a SASE product that can function with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall, but many improvements are needed in terms of features, such as the web filtering feature, and CASB has not yet been added.

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DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU

Cloud Consultant at Migros Ticaret A.Ş.

A tool for centralized management including inventory and sales tracking

Citrix ADM has the ability to implement policies to tighten security. For instance, you can restrict access to your network from outsiders or lack necessary security measures such as antivirus programs. Additionally, there's the Delivery Controller, which allows for comprehensive monitoring and management tasks such as remote restarts, maintenance, and registration. Another essential component is the Director, which provides detailed insights into sessions, including identifying session failures, connection issues, user lockouts, etc. It presents a list of problems to address, enabling you to click on them and resolve them efficiently.

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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

"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."

"Cloudflare consolidates various capabilities into one product, streamlining processes."

"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."

"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."

"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."

"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."

"Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick."

"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."

More Cloudflare pros

"There is a huge signature repository"

"It protects web applications efficiently."

"The Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."

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

"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."

"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."

"It's pretty convenient and pretty easy to set up and run. And then kind of for static content, it also offers caching."

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

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

"The best feature of Citrix is its track record of stability in its features."

"Content Redirection and SSO integration with Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop. The GUI was wonderful."

"Content Switching provides flexibility for routing traffic as desired to designated real servers. It also provides good geo capabilities through its GSLB feature."

"The most valuable feature is load balancing."

"The solution improves security performance."

"I like app flows and custom flows. They integrate with multiple flows."

"It is simple for both IT specialists and customers."

"It's very easy to configure."

More NetScaler pros

Cons

"If they improve on the placement of their data centers, it would be better. I'm living in a remote area. I would like to connect to them without any kind of lag."

"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."

"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."

"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."

"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."

"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."

"It would be good if Cloudflare could have more servers for better traffic routing or an increase in the traffic routed. This is what I'd like to improve in Cloudflare."

"Cloudflare's free plan is limited to 5,000 records for their free plan. They should increase that. For example, if I create a domain called abc.com and a subdomain called a.abc.com, my record count will be two. I can make a maximum of 5,000 subdomains. However, if we use our own DNS hosted on another provider, there is no limit. Their free plan also lacks name server customization."

More Cloudflare cons

"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well. They have documentation for everything you're looking for, but they lack a single piece of documentation to tie everything together. As a new user or beginner, it took us a little bit of time to figure out how to put all these things in place."

"The learning curve was steep initially."

"The reporting could be more granular."

"The notification part could be improved. It's very much connected to Web Application Firewall, rate-limiting, and DDoS protection."

"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."

"Support can be challenging at times."

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should improve visibility for a customer."

"The platform's control features related to real-time authentication and response time need improvement."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

"The product provides some templates to integrate with applications like MS Exchange, MS SharePoint, SAP Enterprise Portal, and others. However, the last update for these templates was 2013 (lots of applications are running on versions newer then 2013)."

"I would like to see them make it easier to do some of the more complex things. For example, a web re-direct requires two pieces to it. You have two ports and when people want to go to a web page, they just type in the webpage that on the backend it will redirect them to a secure link. The initial setup of that is cumbersome because you have to do it twice. There are things that can be replicated. The IP address, for example, is the same. This change would go a long way. Don't make me do it twice and don't make me have to read tons of documentation to figure out how to do it. Ease of configuration for some of the more complex processes would be a good improvement."

"When a new version comes out, sometimes, my existing configuration gets wiped out. They should work on this so that my existing configuration doesn't get impacted with an upgrade to a newer version. There could also reduce frequent firmware upgrade activities and have a stable version so that once we upgrade it, we don't have to upgrade it for two to three years."

"The technical support could be improved. They do not respond or assist customers in a timely manner."

"Mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexity."

"The security is okay, but the monitoring and reporting need improvement."

"Getting to use some of the advanced tools, even with the assistance of Citrix support, can be challenging."

"The technical support has room for improvement."

More NetScaler cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free version."

"I give the price a five out of ten."

"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."

"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."

"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."

"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"

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

"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."

"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."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"Price-wise, I feel that the solution is a little bit expensive."

"Licensing is adequate. I wanted to have a more prominent license, but until I do they don't give enough support. The additional cost would be too much."

"It is an enterprise solution. Thus, its costs are reasonable."

"The licenses for this product are payable as a yearly subscription, and carry a high price-point. The subscription scheme is quite complicated, and costs will increase with each additional feature that is required, outside of the basic setup."

"It's not for startups or SOHO."

"We have been evaluating F5, Citrix, and other ADC products. Citrix is the most expense of all of them."

"When compared to other solutions, the cost is high."

"It's an expensive product but it works well."

More NetScaler pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

21%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

See all answers

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...

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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.

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What do you like most about Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

The product has a valuable security control functionality.

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

Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

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

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What do you like most about Citrix ADC?

The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic ente...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADC?

After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?

Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexi...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

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Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 18% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 16% of the time

AWS WAF vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 10% of the time

Akamai App and API Protector vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 8% of the time

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 7% of the time

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

HAProxy vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs NetScaler

Compared 9% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NetScaler

Compared 8% of the time

VMWare Avi Load Balancer vs NetScaler

Compared 8% of the time

More NetScaler Competitors

Product Reports

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Cloudflare

May 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

May 2025

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

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Buyer's Guide

NetScaler

April 2025

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Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Cloudflare WAF

Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

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

One platform for a consistent application delivery and security experience because nobody has time to learn multiple systems to manage ADC deployments. NetScaler is built with a single code base using a software-based architecture, so no matter which ADC form factor you choose — hardware, virtual machine, bare metal, or container — the behavior will be the same.

NetScaler

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

ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler

April 2025

Free Report: Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler

Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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