Cloudflare vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway comparison

The compared Cloudflare and Microsoft 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. Microsoft is ranked #4 in ADC , with an average rating of 7.6, and holds a 6.6% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Cloudflare users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Cloudflare

Read 77 Cloudflare reviews

37,802 Views
5,670 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Application...

Read 50 Microsoft Azure Application Gateway reviews

6,806 Views
2,178 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Cloudflare

Microsoft Azure Application...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cloudflare and Microsoft Azure Application Gateway 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. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway Report (Updated: February 2023).

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

February 2023

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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

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.

Herb Angle

Owner at Hga consulting

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

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

Bonieber Orofeo

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

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

reviewer5599486

Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

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

Shehzad Ali

Information Security and Compliance Officer at Carnation

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

6.4

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.

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

reviewer5599486

Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

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

Shehzad Ali

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

DevenderVannela

Cloud Head at White-Spunner & Associates

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

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.

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

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is a very scalable product.

Bonieber Orofeo

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

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

reviewer5599486

Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is a scalable solution.

DevenderVannela

Cloud Head at White-Spunner & Associates

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

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

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

reviewer5599486

Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

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

DevenderVannela

Cloud Head at White-Spunner & Associates

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

Room For Improvement

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

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

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

reviewer5599486

Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

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

Shehzad Ali

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.

Bonieber Orofeo

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

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

Setup Cost

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

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.

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

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

reviewer5599486

Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Azure solutions are quite expensive.

Shehzad Ali

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.

Bonieber Orofeo

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

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

Valuable Features

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

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.

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

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

Shehzad Ali

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.

Bonieber Orofeo

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.

DevenderVannela

Cloud Head at White-Spunner & Associates

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

Microsoft Azure Application...

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (4th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (5th)

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.
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, on the other hand, focuses on Application Delivery Controllers (ADC), holds 6.6% mindshare, down 8.5% 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 (%)
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway	6.6%
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)	15.3%
NetScaler	13.2%
Other	64.9%

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

reviewer5599486

Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

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

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.

Read full review

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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

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	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 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'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 excellent support. Azure Front Door can quickly detect abnormalities before the...

See all answers

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 Azure Application Gateway web application firewall software was the better fit ...

See all answers

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 performance side of things, which is why we use it.

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% 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

HAProxy vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 8% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF 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

Imperva Application Security Platform 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

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

January 2026

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

December 2025

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

Download Microsoft Azure Application Gateway product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

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

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.

Lilly, AccuWeather, AIRFRANCE, Honeywell

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

February 2023

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