CoreOS Clair vs NGINX App Protect comparison

Red Hat and F5 are both solutions in the Container Security category. Red Hat is ranked #29 with an average rating of 9.0, while F5 is ranked #23 with an average rating of 8.4. Red Hat holds a 0.5% mindshare in Container Security, compared to F5’s 0.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Red Hat users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of F5 users who would recommend it.

CoreOS Clair

Read 2 CoreOS Clair reviews

505 Views
500 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NGINX App Protect

Read 24 NGINX App Protect reviews

2,115 Views
296 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

CoreOS Clair

NGINX App Protect

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

CoreOS Clair and NGINX App Protect are both prominent solutions in their respective fields of vulnerability scanning and application protection. Users report greater satisfaction with NGINX App Protect's features, despite higher pricing, due to its robust capabilities and perceived value.

Features: CoreOS Clair is valued for its effective vulnerability scanning, integration with CI/CD pipelines, and comprehensive vulnerability management. NGINX App Protect is praised for its comprehensive security features, including WAF capabilities, advanced threat protection, and a broad range of security options.

Room for Improvement: CoreOS Clair users suggest enhancements in documentation, user experience, and interface intuitiveness. NGINX App Protect users recommend improvements in configuration complexity, support for broader environments, and easier user configuration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CoreOS Clair is known for its straightforward deployment and solid customer service. NGINX App Protect's deployment is more complex, but its customer service is highly rated for responsiveness and effectiveness.

Pricing and ROI: CoreOS Clair is noted for its reasonable setup cost and positive ROI. NGINX App Protect is more expensive but users feel it delivers good ROI due to its extensive feature set and comprehensive protection capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed CoreOS Clair vs. NGINX App Protect Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

CoreOS Clair vs. NGINX App Protect

July 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 865,384 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:

Categories and Ranking

CoreOS Clair

Ranking in Container Security

29th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

NGINX App Protect

Ranking in Container Security

23rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Web Application Firewall (WAF) (16th), API Security (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Container Security category, the mindshare of CoreOS Clair is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX App Protect is 0.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Container Security

Featured Reviews

Felipe Giffu

Red Hat Solution Architect at Seprol Computadores e Sistemas

An operational system, similar to Linux where you can run your applications inside containers

With CoreOS, you can run your applications inside containers. For example, if you have an application that needs to run on Linux, you can create and install a container. However, it's important to note that you don't install CoreOS inside a container; CoreOS is the host operating system that manages containers. When you mentioned using Nacula as part of your CI/CD pipeline, it means your application is deployed and managed automatically through the CI/CD process. Containers are used to deploy your application within this pipeline, but CoreOS does not run inside these containers. Instead, CoreOS is the base operating system that supports and manages these containers.

Read full review

Saurav Kumar

Senior security architecture at National Payment Corporation Of India

Offers protection to users from external threats

NGINX App Protect secures our company's application, and it has helped me a lot, considering that we have critical infrastructure in India where we see how lots of attacks come onto our organization's servers. The tool offers protection against multiple threats present in India's IT ecosystem. The tool helps our company to make our payments secure, meaning it has the ability to provide a secure payment environment in India. Speaking about the improvements in our company's application performance since implementing NGINX App Protect, the gRPC support for the solution is very low. My company is not getting any proper documentation on how to deploy gRPC over NGINX App Protect. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. People can use the product as their company's base server, WAF, or for its proxy manager, depending on the business requirements. My company follows PCI DSS compliance because we operate in a payment-related industry. Right now, my company follows all the standards, so we comply with all the requirements and policies. I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"CoreOS Clair's best feature is detection accuracy."

"With CoreOS, you can run your applications inside containers. For example, if you have an application that needs to run on Linux, you can create and install a container. However, it's important to note that you don't install CoreOS inside a container; CoreOS is the host operating system that manages containers."

"It has the best documentation features."

"The tool's most valuable feature is the OWASP certification. Additionally, the tool's ability to enforce strong passwords and OTP within minutes is impressive. With its analytics and recommendations, it is a very good solution."

"There's a cache, or it works like a proxy, so it can speed up applications."

"The tool is not complex and is very user-friendly."

"The most valuable feature of NGINX App Protect is the reverse proxy."

"NGINX App Protect's best features are auto-learning, which creates a profile of applications that are deployed, bot protection, and force protection, which lets you configure your brute force policy and alert for and prevent brute force attacks."

"It is a very good tool for load balancing."

"WAF is useful to track mitigation, inclusion, prevention, and the parametric firewall."

More NGINX App Protect pros

Cons

"It can be improved in its support response. They usually take up to seven days to resolve the issue."

"An area for improvement is that CoreOS Clair doesn't provide information about the location of vulnerabilities it detects."

"Areas for improvement would be if NGINX could scan for vulnerabilities and learn and update the signatures of DoS attacks."

"Right now, the tool doesn't provide an option revolving around update feeds, specifically the signature update option in the UI."

"Its technical support could be better."

"Currently, the policies have to be handled manually, and you have to create from scratch, which can be a bit time-consuming, in a large environment."

"It doesn't have more advanced features like no false-positive security, which you can configure in Advanced WAF."

"The product's price is high, making it an area of concern where improvements are required. The tool's licensing model is also not good."

"Setting policies and parameters through the UI should be more automated because the process is manual, where we can only edit one rule at a time."

"I encountered issues with NGINX App Protect while trying to upgrade custom rules."

More NGINX App Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"CoreOS Clair is open-source and free of charge."

"There are not any additional costs we had to pay to use NGINX App Protect."

"The price of NGINX App Protect is approximately $3,000 annually. All of our licenses are observed by a managed service partner."

"There are no additional fees."

"The licensing fees for this solution are pretty expensive for what it does, but there is no alternative."

"The price of NGINX App Protect is not much different from the products that fall under the leader category of Gartner Magic Quadrant."

"Our licensing costs are about $40,000 a year."

"NGINX App Protect is expensive."

"NGINX is not expensive."

More NGINX App Protect pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Container Security solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

11%

Performing Arts

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

15%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CoreOS Clair?

If you work with CoreOS or OpenShift, you don't need to pay for CoreOS separately. When you pay for OpenShift, you get CoreOS included, so you don't need to pay for the operating system separately....

See all answers

What needs improvement with CoreOS Clair?

It can be improved in its support response. They usually take up to seven days to resolve the issue.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for CoreOS Clair?

We use the tool to manage and secure the event file system. CoreOS Clair is an operational system that is very similar to Linux and offers benefits to other Linux operating systems. One major advan...

See all answers

What do you like most about NGINX App Protect?

It's very easy to deploy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX App Protect?

I don't know the pricing yet because in my other project, I was not part of the buying side and I was just starting to look at options.

See all answers

What needs improvement with NGINX App Protect?

It would be better if it were easier to implement and if there was more information from F5 regarding hardware requirements and specifications to deploy the service, to avoid disruptions after impl...

See all answers

Comparisons

JFrog Xray vs CoreOS Clair

Compared 23% of the time

Snyk vs CoreOS Clair

Compared 20% of the time

Trivy vs CoreOS Clair

Compared 18% of the time

Tenable.io Container Security vs CoreOS Clair

Compared 16% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs CoreOS Clair

Compared 14% of the time

More CoreOS Clair Competitors

Azure Front Door vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 16% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 15% of the time

AWS WAF vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 8% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 8% of the time

FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF) vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 8% of the time

More NGINX App Protect Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Container Security

July 2025

Download CoreOS Clair product report

Buyer's Guide

NGINX App Protect

August 2025

Download NGINX App Protect product report

Also Known As

No data available

NGINX WAF, NGINX Web Application Firewall

Overview

Clair is an open source project for the static analysis of vulnerabilities in appc and docker containers.

Vulnerability data is continuously imported from a known set of sources and correlated with the indexed contents of container images in order to produce lists of vulnerabilities that threaten a container. When vulnerability data changes upstream, the previous state and new state of the vulnerability along with the images they affect can be sent via webhook to a configured endpoint. All major components can be customized programmatically at compile-time without forking the project.

Red Hat

NGINX App Protect application security solution combines the efficacy of advanced F5 web application firewall (WAF) technology with the agility and performance of NGINX Plus. The solution runs natively on NGINX Plus and addresses some of the most difficult challenges facing modern DevOps environments:

Integrating security controls directly into the development automation pipeline
Applying and managing security for modern and distributed application environments such as containers and microservices
Providing the right level of security controls without impacting release and go-to-market velocity
Complying with security and regulatory requirements

NGINX App Protect offers:

Expanded security beyond basic signatures to ensure adequate controls
F5 app‑security technology for efficacy superior to ModSecurity and other WAFs
Confidently run in “blocking” mode in production with proven F5 expertise
High‑confidence signatures for extremely low false positives
Increases visibility, integrating with third‑party analytics solutions
Integrates security and WAF natively into the CI/CD pipeline
Deploys as a lightweight software package that is agnostic of underlying infrastructure
Facilitates declarative policies for “security as code” and integration with DevOps tools
Decreases developer burden and provides feedback loop for quick security remediation
Accelerates time to market and reduces costs with DevSecOps‑automated security

Sample Customers

eBay, Veritas, Verizon, SalesForce

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

CoreOS Clair vs. NGINX App Protect

July 2025

Free Report: CoreOS Clair vs. NGINX App Protect

Find out what your peers are saying about CoreOS Clair vs. NGINX App Protect and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our CoreOS Clair vs. NGINX App Protect report.

See our list of best Container Security vendors.

We monitor all Container Security 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.