Cloudflare vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) comparison

The compared Cloudflare and F5 solutions aren't in the same category. Cloudflare is ranked #1 in DDOS , with an average rating of 8.8, and holds a 16.7% mindshare in the category. F5 is ranked #2 in ADC , with an average rating of 8.7, and holds a 15.3% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Cloudflare users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 83% of F5 users who would recommend it.

Cloudflare

Read 77 Cloudflare reviews

37,802 Views
5,670 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

Read 123 F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) reviews

6,850 Views
5,069 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

Cloudflare

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cloudflare and F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloudflare vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

February 2025

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Helped 879,455 peers since 2012

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

6.9

Users experienced mixed returns from F5 BIG-IP, praising deployment and security, despite some criticisms of pricing and cloud transitions.

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.

Herb Angle

Owner at Hga consulting

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

The major return on investment is the security of our data.

Bonieber Orofeo

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

For more quotes and insights, download the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) report

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

6.7

Customer service is generally praised for professionalism and expertise, but some experience delays and inconsistent response quality.

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.

Herb Angle

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.

reviewer2541525

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

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

I would rate the technical support of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) nine out of ten.

Bonieber Orofeo

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

Overall, my experience with F5 is very good compared to Radware.

Pawan Thakur

Project Manager at IBM

For more quotes and insights, download the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) report

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

7.4

F5 BIG-IP LTM offers scalable solutions with flexible deployment, efficiently managing large environments, preferred for modular growth and adaptability.

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

reviewer2541525

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.

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch

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

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) report

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

8.0

F5 BIG-IP LTM is stable and resilient, with users rating its reliability high despite occasional hardware or update issues.

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

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) report

Room For Improvement

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

F5 BIG-IP LTM faces criticism for high costs, inflexible licensing, complex management, and needing improved UI, synchronization, and security.

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 pricing of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is on the higher side compared to competitors, but it is worth it.

Pawan Thakur

Project Manager at IBM

For more quotes and insights, download the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) report

Setup Cost

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

F5 BIG-IP LTM is costly but offers performance benefits, with various licensing options and potential discounts to match competitors.

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.

reviewer2541525

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

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

The product is costly.

Bonieber Orofeo

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

For more quotes and insights, download the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) report

Valuable Features

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

F5 BIG-IP LTM provides efficient traffic management, security features, and customization options with a user-friendly interface and robust performance.

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.

reviewer2541525

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

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

The impact of SSL offloading on reducing server load and latency is very much positive because whatever traffic we receive, we encrypt at our F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) level, which has definitely reduced the additional load and SSL decryption load on the servers, so it has very much helped us and it is very smooth; it will not take much time and will not impact our regular traffic.

Pawan Thakur

Project Manager at IBM

One of the most beneficial features of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is its ability to identify compromised traffic and its capabilities in authentication.

Bonieber Orofeo

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

For more quotes and insights, download the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) report

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (12th)

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

123

Ranking in other categories

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Enterprise Networking solutions, they serve different purposes. Cloudflare is designed for Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection and holds a mindshare of 16.7%, down 18.0% compared to last year.
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), on the other hand, focuses on Application Delivery Controllers (ADC), holds 15.3% mindshare, up 15.3% since last year.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cloudflare	16.7%
Arbor DDoS	9.8%
Radware DDoS	8.2%
Other	65.3%

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)	15.3%
NetScaler	13.2%
HAProxy	9.9%
Other	61.6%

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

Herb Angle

Owner at Hga consulting

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

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.

Read full review

Bonieber Orofeo

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

Identifying compromised traffic and securing data has been a significant advantage

One of the most beneficial features of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is its ability to identify compromised traffic and its capabilities in authentication. Additionally, the security aspect of it provides a significant advantage as it helps us secure our data, which is a major investment and benefit for us. Before using this system, we had difficulties in storing our data and managing the traffic that comes in and out.

Read full review

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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection solutions are best for your needs.

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Comparison Review

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Security Expert with 51-200 employees

Nov 6, 2013

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

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	62
Midsize Enterprise	32
Large Enterprise	85

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 ...

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 that offers great redundancy and advanced security with built-in unmetered and ...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?

The pricing of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is on the higher side compared to competitors, but it is worth it.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP?

Our main use cases involve multiple applications, so we are using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) services, and we are using WAF and ASM services to secure those applications and load balance...

See all answers

What do you like most about F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)?

The solution is robust and reliable.

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 51% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare

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

Compared 22% of the time

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

Compared 7% of the time

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

Compared 7% of the time

A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 7% of the time

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

January 2026

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

January 2026

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) report

Download F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP

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

F5 BIG-IP LTM optimizes the speed and reliability of your apps via both network and application layers. Using real-time protocol and traffic management decisions based on app and server and connection management conditions, and TCP and content offloading, BIG-IP LTM dramatically improves application and infrastructure responsiveness. BIG-IP LTM's architecture includes protocol awareness to control traffic for the most important applications. BIG-IP LTM tracks the dynamic performance levels of servers and delivers SSL performance and visibility for inbound and outbound traffic, to protect the user experience by encrypting everything from the client to the server.

BIG-IP LTM provides enterprise-class Application Delivery Controller (ADC). You get granular layer 7 control, SSL offloading and acceleration capabilities, and advanced scaling technologies that deliver performance and reliability on-demand. The highly optimized TCP/IP stack combines TCP/IP techniques and improvements in the latest RFCs with extensions to minimize the effect of congestion and packet loss and recovery. Independent testing tools and customer experiences show LTM's TCP stack delivers up to a 2x performance gain for users and a 4x increase in bandwidth efficiency.

Sample Customers

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

Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

February 2025

Free Report: Cloudflare vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.

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We monitor all Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.