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Cloudflare vs F5 BIG-IP DNS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
6.2
Cloudflare's services enhanced security and efficiency, resulting in significant ROI, cost savings, and improved WordPress performance for businesses.
Sentiment score
8.6
F5 BIG-IP DNS provides significant ROI by reducing downtime, increasing availability, and enhancing performance, improving user experience and trust.
For the small project I was working on, using the basic tier provided a huge improvement at zero cost.
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.
Owner at Hga consulting
The return on investment for me is significant as time is the critical aspect.
Senior Network and Security Expert at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
F5 BIG-IP DNS provides a strong return on investment by minimizing downtime, improving application availability, preventing outages, and ensuring reliable service.
Associate Consultant at HCLSoftware
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.9
Cloudflare's support is responsive and knowledgeable, with varying experiences depending on the plan and need for faster escalation.
Sentiment score
7.5
F5 BIG-IP DNS delivers strong customer support and technical expertise, though response speed and cloud challenges may affect satisfaction.
Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model.
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
We use other solutions where support is available through Slack channels and is more interactive, with someone responding within a couple of minutes or seconds.
General Manager at bKash Limited
Regarding technical support from the vendor, I would rate it as good, even above average.
Solutions Architect at Mideast Communication Systems-MCS
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Cloudflare excels in scalability, supporting seamless transitions and performance during high-traffic periods, highly rated by users.
Sentiment score
9.1
F5 BIG-IP DNS is praised for scalability and managing vast DNS traffic across various infrastructures, including government use.
It is a SaaS tool, but the fact that they have workloads deployed across the world proves that it is a highly scalable tool.
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
Cloudflare's scalability is quite good; it is very easy to scale whenever we want to include multiple domains.
Senior Network and Security Expert at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
The core idea of F5 BIG-IP DNS is scalability, enabling organizations to handle massive DNS traffic and distribute application requests across multiple infrastructures.
Associate Consultant at HCLSoftware
I find it easy to scale F5 BIG-IP DNS as you can cluster them, so there are no limitations.
Solutions Architect at Mideast Communication Systems-MCS
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Cloudflare is reliable with high stability ratings, minimal issues, improved network connectivity, and praised fast DNS services.
Sentiment score
9.0
F5 BIG-IP DNS is renowned for its stability and reliability, outperforming competitors with no crashes or performance issues.
The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.
Engineer at SITMEXICO
Cloudflare's reliability and uptime has met my expectations; it has been quite good in general.
Senior Network and Security Expert at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
I consider the performance and stability of F5 BIG-IP DNS to be very stable unless there is incorrect sizing.
Solutions Architect at Mideast Communication Systems-MCS
 

Room For Improvement

Users suggest improvements in Cloudflare's features, pricing, support, analytics, documentation, and partner relations for better service experience.
F5 BIG-IP DNS requires interface, pricing, and documentation enhancements, better security, improved integration, and faster support response.
Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements.
General Manager at bKash Limited
What Cloudflare is doing internally is that it is stepping ahead in areas like detection and protection.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option.
Security Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
F5 BIG-IP DNS is not the best for DNS denial of service because they handle it as part of BIG-IP features, mainly used for GSLB, while other vendors provide complete DDI solutions, including DHCP, DNS, and IP address management, along with specialized DNS security, offering much more than just GSLB and basic recursive DNS security.
Solutions Architect at Mideast Communication Systems-MCS
The user interface could be more modern and simplified.
Associate Consultant at HCLSoftware
 

Setup Cost

Cloudflare provides cost-effective, feature-rich plans for varying traffic needs, offering significant value compared to competitors like Akamai.
F5 BIG-IP DNS offers valuable features but is costly, requiring either perpetual or subscription licenses, with mixed user reviews.
I find it to be cheap.
Engineer at SITMEXICO
The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high.
Security Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was good.
Associate Consultant at HCLSoftware
 

Valuable Features

Cloudflare offers superior caching, DNS management, and security, enhancing performance, global reach, and domain management with innovative features.
F5 BIG-IP DNS provides security, scalability, and performance enhancements with features like GTM, GSLB, DNS monitoring, and easy integration.
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.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Most of our DNS records that are presented to the internet are proxied whenever possible, providing another layer of defense from our perspective.
Senior Security Engineer at ManpowerGroup
Cloudflare has positively impacted our organization by giving us flexibility to manage the DNS part, being quite fast, and allowing us to manage everything from a single dashboard.
Senior Network and Security Expert at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
The best feature of F5 BIG-IP DNS is global server load balancing. It intelligently directs user DNS requests to the most optimal data center based on server health and geographical location, and it enhances performance.
Associate Consultant at HCLSoftware
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Ranking in Domain Name System (DNS) Security
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (10th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (2nd), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (15th)
F5 BIG-IP DNS
Ranking in Domain Name System (DNS) Security
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Domain Name System (DNS) Security category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 4.8%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 BIG-IP DNS is 3.8%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Domain Name System (DNS) Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare4.8%
F5 BIG-IP DNS3.8%
Other91.4%
Domain Name System (DNS) Security
 

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager at bKash Limited
Advanced protection has secured critical web workloads and provides clear traffic visibility
From a security perspective, there remains a security loophole, as some browsers in the market can bypass the Turnstile solution, which requires approximately 40 seconds to do so. From a performance perspective, this is acceptable. We also tried Google reCAPTCHA, and that can also be bypassed. From a security perspective, I would say neither solution is completely secured. Regarding uptime, we have faced a couple of incidents due to Cloudflare in recent years, so I cannot say we receive 100% uptime for our region. We sometimes face challenges, including downtime and other issues. As a result, we are not receiving 100% uptime from Cloudflare's solution. Since most of our customers are in this region, we need alternatives. We need something more competitive than Cloudflare. Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, Cloudflare has three points of presence already, and we cannot find any other solution provider in Bangladesh as an alternative, which presents another challenge. Competitor solutions have more attack signatures, which ensure better security compared to Cloudflare's predefined configurations. Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements. Cloudflare could improve in this area. Additionally, regarding visibility, Cloudflare has static visibility, but they could adopt dynamic graph features for their customers.
RR
Associate Consultant at HCLSoftware
Global load balancing has ensured continuous availability and optimized user response times
While F5 BIG-IP DNS is a very powerful solution, some improvements could enhance the overall experience. For example, the user interface could be more modern and simplified. The reporting and analytics features can be improved. Simplified deployment for cloud-native environments could be improved. Overall, F5 BIG-IP DNS is a robust and reliable solution for global traffic management and application availability. With its advanced traffic steering capability, we are definitely getting great benefits from that. However, the user interface is the major thing I think can be improved. The cost also can be reduced. Those are the two or three points that need to be improved. There is some scope for improvement, including the user interface and pricing. That is why I gave it a nine.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise10
 

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 GRE tunnels. We have decreased site load times on Mobile 3G from 8 to 1,6 seconds ...
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 that offers great redundancy and advanced security with built-in unmetered and ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare DNS?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cloudflare are a bit on the higher side overall.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 BIG-IP DNS?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was good. We got great support from the F5 sales team. They helped us to deploy it in our organization.
What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP DNS?
While F5 BIG-IP DNS is a very powerful solution, some improvements could enhance the overall experience. For example, the user interface could be more modern and simplified. The reporting and analy...
What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP DNS?
My main use case for F5 BIG-IP DNS is creating an active-active setup. With two data centers, if I want to make them active-standby or active-active, my major use case is to redirect traffic from o...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
F5 BIG-IP DNS, F5 DNS Delivery
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Ricacorp Properties, Bangladesh Post Office, Shawbrook Bank, Shinsegae Internet Duty Free
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare vs. F5 BIG-IP DNS and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.