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Cloudflare vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 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

Cloudflare
Ranking in CDN
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
F5 Distributed Cloud Services
Ranking in CDN
10th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.4
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (20th), API Security (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 22.2%, up from 21.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Distributed Cloud Services is 1.3%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch - PeerSpot reviewer
Fast and secure deployments simplify operations for government and fintech clients
It is a fast and secure DNS. It is very easy to deploy, and my customers are happy with this tool. Additionally, the CDN performance in Mexico is excellent, providing fast service and tools. It offers reliability during high-traffic periods, ensuring no impact on the environment. It helps my clients avoid using on-premise boxes, simplifying operations as they only use the prices on Cloudflare.
FM
Protects web applications with comprehensive security features
All features are valuable. In a multi-cloud or distributed cloud, there are many protection possibilities from data to web application or API protection, including bot mitigation. This is a comprehensive package for web application security. The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong performance."
"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."
"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. You don't necessarily need a certificate if you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host."
"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."
"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."
"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."
"The tool is user-friendly."
"In a multi-cloud or distributed cloud, there are many protection possibilities from data to web application or API protection, including bot mitigation."
"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."
 

Cons

"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"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."
"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."
"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."
"It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal."
"The product needs to improve its automation."
"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."
"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF."
"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."
"The pricing could be adjusted to better meet the needs of typical customers in regions like Poland, where the product is considered too expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free version."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"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."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
Information not available
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Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Insurance Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
I am not involved in sales, so I do not deal with the pricing aspect directly. I give the cost of the solution a four out of ten since it is not a cheap product.
What needs improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
It's a long way to be perfect, of course, as with all solutions. The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF. There are some problems, mainly from the pers...
What is your primary use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
There are two main use cases for Distributed Call Services: DDoS or Distributed attacks protection and WAF web application security or firewall.
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
 

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.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare vs. F5 Distributed Cloud Services and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,140 professionals have used our research since 2012.