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F5 Advanced WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 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

F5 Advanced WAF
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Imperva Web Application Fir...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of F5 Advanced WAF is 10.7%, down from 11.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Web Application Firewall is 5.6%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

Ahmed Moamen - PeerSpot reviewer
Protects applications with versatile authentication features
F5 offers a versatile solution that can be integrated with APM in cases where integration with an external IDB is needed. It is useful for authentication backup if the on-prem directory service is unavailable. Additionally, its WAF functionality is valuable for protecting applications from attacks. It is a versatile and strong solution that's easy to understand and deploy.
Mitesh D Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Effectively defends against threats like cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, and others
It does bring value. For example, consider a BFSI customer. Their application is critical and represents their brand. Without a WAF, an attack could take their application down, harming their reputation. It leads to hampering the customer's workflow. With an Imperva WAF, they protect against attacks like DDoS or SQL injection, ensuring their application remains available and customers are happy. That's the main benefit for both the customer and the organization. The impact depends on the customer's use case. If their business primarily operates online, a CDN is beneficial for traffic optimization. Moreover, the integration options depend on the specific use case of our customers. Generally, integration capabilities are good with SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) parts.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution's most valuable features include application DDoS protection, bot blocking, and HTTP header verifications."
"It can scale."
"The support experience is better than average."
"We can monitor IP locations, but we have constraints from each country. It has a replication feature. Licenses can be shared, taking turns with each license."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the WAF protection, Data Safe, and the seven-layer DDoS."
"The most valuable feature of F5 Advanced WAF is its grand unity of the implementation, where you have the freedom to configure based on how it affects your use case or your organization. With the default setting of implicit deny, you can gradually start defining and deploying the tool to align with your environment, whether it is outdated, recent, or futuristic. This allows you to customize the solution to protect you from threat actors. You have the ability to define what the advanced threat act should do - whether it should alert, deny, or both - and it will deliver based on your configuration. Unlike other online solutions, F5 Advanced WAF provides flexibility to deliver to your unique environment the way you want."
"It ensures compliance with security standards by providing features like PCI DSS checks."
"Very easy to implement and works well."
"There are some features that are configured by default, so even without doing much, it can still provide a level of protection."
"I am impressed with the product's scalability, availability, easy management, and security. We were able to integrate the product with Azure and Sentinel."
"The solution can be configured in just a couple of minutes."
"The most valuable feature of Imperva, in addition to its strong knowledge base, is its effective protection for web applications."
"The solution has been quite stable. I have not seen any bugs at all."
"The most valuable features of Imperva Web Application Firewall are the monitoring of databases and the dashboards are easy to understand."
"Very scalable and very stable firewall for web applications, with a good interface in its cloud version. Mitigation is its most valuable feature. The technical support for this product is also good."
"There is a quick switch between any of the the nodes if something goes wrong, where there's a there's an attack against a specific area. The security setup is reasonably easy. It's not a problem to do setups and rules and integrations. And, yeah, just the the back end team is also very willing to insist if there's questions that that we cannot answer or with these questions that we do have"
 

Cons

"It should be a little bit easy to deploy in terms of the overall deployment session. One of our customers is a bit unhappy about the reporting options. Currently, it automatically deletes event logs after some limit if a customer doesn't have any external Syslog server. It is a problem for those customers who want to review event logs after a week or so because they won't get proper reports or event logs. They should increase the duration to at least a month or two for storing the data on the device. F5 is not a leader in Gartner Quadrant, which affects us when we go and pitch this solution. Customers normally go and take a look at such annual reports, and because F5 is currently not there as a leader, the customers ask about it even though we are saying it is good in all things. F5 is not known for something totally different or unique. They were a major player in ADP, and they are just rebranding themselves into security. They should improve or increase their marketing as a security company now. They have already started to do that, but they should do it more so that when it comes to security, customers can easily remember F5. At the moment, if we say F5, load balancing comes to mind. With rebranding and marketing, all customers should get the idea that F5 is now mainly focusing on the security part of it, and it is a security company instead of load balancing. This is the first solution that should come to a customer's mind for a web application firewall."
"People who want to work with the device have to be pro in Linux"
"One improvement for AOF could be focusing on enhancing its AI engine to make it more mature."
"The pricing could be more flexible."
"F5 Advanced needs to improve its bot protection. The solution needs to have machine learning to learn the behavior of the customer to recognize the human versus the bot. This is a difficult feature to explain to our customers. I would like documentation about the bot feature to make it easier for the customer to understand."
"One area for improvement in the product is its SSO integration, which posed challenges and required significant effort to resolve."
"The solution should include RASP for another level of protection at the code itself."
"Its price should be better. It is expensive."
"It would be helpful to have a "recommended deployment", or even a list of basic features that should either be used or turned on by default."
"Their portal is very limited and needs improvement."
"There is nothing specific where the application firewall is falling short."
"The process to upgrade from one version to another can be a lot simpler than it is currently."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is very expensive."
"In the past, I have bugs on the WAF. I've contacted Imperva about them. Future releases should be less buggy."
"I don't really use it and therefore can't speak to areas of improvement."
"An improvement for Imperva WAF would be to reduce the number of false positives and create more strong use cases based on AI/ML or behavioral analytics."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is too high."
"The way we deployed it, I would rate it a four out of five in terms of pricing."
"Licensing fees for this solution are paid on a yearly basis."
"As far as the pricing of F5 Advanced WAF I would rate it a four out of five depending on what features I am looking for. Imperva is more expensive."
"F5 Advanced WAF is not a cost-effective solution. Although they are attempting to reduce prices with their VE and cloud options, they are more expensive than other solutions. The solution is more expensive on average."
"F5 bundles up services and the bundle is what you pay for rather than individual components."
"F5 Advanced WAF technical support comes at a cost, and it's expensive."
"The solution is very expensive so should only be used in the right environment."
"Make sure you understand the way that Imperva charges. It's very affordable. However, I would like to see a package with the Virtual Patching included. You get to do patching separately."
"The price of this solution is a little bit high compared to competitors."
"We sell three-year licenses for Imperva Web Application Firewall to our customers. The price is a little expensive."
"It is a very affordable solution."
"There is a license for this solution and we purchase the license annually with no additional fees."
"There are a couple of different licensing models."
"There are some licenses that you have to buy to use some features. Its price could be better. Price is always important because, at the end of the day, customers have a budget. If you can meet the budget, you can sell, and if you don't, you cannot sell."
"The pricing is somewhat expensive. It is actually a huge investment when compared to other countries."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about F5 Advanced WAF?
It's a fairly easy-to-use and user-friendly tool. My administrators and team also like its ability to customize the rules per the requirements.
What needs improvement with F5 Advanced WAF?
I do not have anything in mind right now that needs improvement. Generally, it works well. If we need any specific feature, we approach F5 directly.
Is Citrix ADC (formerly Netscaler) the best ADC to use and if not why?
For ADC, any ADC can do a good job. But in case if you want to add WAF functionality to the same ADC hardware you have to look for other ADC's like F5, Imperva, Radware, Fortinet, etc.
DDoS solutions: Any other solutions to consider aside from Radware DDoS Protection Service and F5 Silverline DDoS Protection?
You can have a look to Imperva Cloud WAF, the anti-DDoS mitigation is under 1s and works very well. I observed a lot of DDoS attacks that were well managed (even not seen by the customer) by Imperv...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

MAXIMUS, Vivo, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office, City Bank
BlueCross BlueShield, eHarmony, EMF Broadcasting, GE Healthcare, Metro Bank, The Motley Fool, Siemens
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Advanced WAF vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,957 professionals have used our research since 2012.