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F5 Advanced WAF vs Wallarm NG WAF comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 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)
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Wallarm NG WAF
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
39th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
API Security (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of F5 Advanced WAF is 3.9%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Wallarm NG WAF is 1.0%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 Advanced WAF3.9%
Wallarm NG WAF1.0%
Other95.1%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2797602 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Security Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Granular security policies have protected critical applications and ensure safe user and admin access
Improvements could be made regarding the log information from the backend CLI. There are enhancements needed; if a request gets blocked on the TCP layer, there should be traces or data to verify which source generated these requests, including the source and port information for initiation. These data are missing from F5 Advanced WAF. Besides that, another improvement could be refining the bot detection to minimize false positives; it should be able to verify more granularly between legitimate and non-legitimate clients. Overall, I find everything else good. A wish list feature I have is for the Technical Assistance Center (TAC) to respond more promptly. Their response time needs improvement; while they do not take excessive time, it can be enhanced, especially given it is a security product.
it_user796242 - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Helps us to monitor attacks to our sites and prevents a lot of them
Set up Wallarm as a reverse proxy. Do not replace your web server. Use Wallarm first in monitoring mode, then learn from Wallarm which type of request is false positive and which type of request is not. This process takes a couple of weeks for very highly-loaded web applications (few millions of unique visitors in one month). Then you can turn Wallarm into blocking mode and everything will be fine. Do not forget to build a monitoring system, the wave, and API for it. Before we started using Wallarm, I already knew Ivan (CEO) and Stepan (COO) from a couple of years before. Ivan had his own security company and Stepan was working on a Russian security magazine called Xakep. They told us that they wanted to create a new WAF and already had a working version of it. They asked me to test it. We did tests, and it was really good. After few month after testing, we signed an agreement. Our choice was made not because we knew these guys for a long time, but because the product was really cool and we were glad to start using it as one of the first on the market!

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The level of configurability that I get with F5 Advanced WAF solution is immense, and I have to be a bit aware of how it works and all of its features, but at the end of the day, it is all about the administration expertise that I will require to have and use it to my liking based on the kind of services that I have onboarded on my solution itself."
"It is a versatile and strong solution that's easy to understand and deploy."
"The whole mechanism of F5 Advanced WAF is effective."
"F5 products are highly stable, top-notch solutions, and we have also the expertise to deploy and design the F5 and Palo Alto product lines."
"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."
"The ROI is very impressive as it is crucial for financial applications to be protected efficiently."
"F5 Advanced WAF is reliable."
"F5 Advanced WAF is a stable solution, we are satisfied. It is more stable than ForiWeb."
"With active threat detection, we are no longer over-swamped with tons of useless events."
"Helps us to monitor situation in regards to attacks to our sites and prevents a lot of them."
"They are the only solution that fits our success criteria and business objectives: WAF must have a low (<5%) false negative rate and be ready to protect from all well-known web attacks."
"The most powerful feature is the ability to first learn what type of query to make to your web application when it is attacked and what type of query creates a false positive to your app."
"Vulnerability scanner and WAF are valuable features."
"Perimeter control and active vulnerability scanner are the most valuable features."
 

Cons

"There is a learning curve that extends the time of implementation."
"People who want to work with the device have to be pro in Linux"
"Support is a little slow."
"For me, an area for improvement in F5 Advanced WAF is the reporting as it isn't so clear."
"I would like to see a better interface and better documentation compatibility with other products. It's more complicated with OWASP."
"The solution's dashboard could be improved. When you're moving from policy to policy, the logs and the integration of the logs in other systems aren't straightforward."
"The BIG-IQ is supposed to centralize the management for all of the boxes but it's not very effective."
"I would like for there to be a cloud-based solution, this would also help to improve scalability."
"The biggest problem for us was the stability and speed using the first version of Wallarm. Now, it is fine."
"Wallarm uses a learning mechanism to detect attacks and to avoid false positives. If Wallarm blocks some illegitimate request, then you can go to the management console and mark this request as false positive, but sometimes this does not work properly."
"Technical support is 6 or 7 out of 10. Sometimes we have had trouble with communication and understanding."
"It needs more customization in PDF reports."
"There were several stability issues during the first pilot."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think the price is very high."
"It is a little bit costly, but it has all the features that are required."
"The price of F5 Advanced WAF could improve it is expensive."
"The pricing for F5 Advanced WAF is comparable to a Rolls-Royce. Its price is a bit high when you compare it with other vendors. F5 Advanced WAF is a bit expensive. The customer was on a three-year plan and it was around $560,000."
"Licensing fees for this solution are paid on a yearly basis."
"F5 Advanced WAF technical support comes at a cost, and it's expensive."
"Pricing for this solution is higher than average."
"After buying the program, you just pay for the support every year."
"​Pricing must be cheaper than the competition and the licensing must be good.​"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Government
11%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise31
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced WAF?
F5 Advanced WAF is somewhat costly compared to other vendors, but it is worth the investment due to the stability it provides to the environment and infrastructure.
What needs improvement with F5 Advanced WAF?
Improvements could be made regarding the log information from the backend CLI. There are enhancements needed; if a request gets blocked on the TCP layer, there should be traces or data to verify wh...
What is your primary use case for F5 Advanced WAF?
My main use case for F5 Advanced WAF is to protect external and internal applications from cyber attacks and to prevent malicious payloads and malicious data from reaching servers. Even if maliciou...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

No data available
Wallarm NG-WAF
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

MAXIMUS, Vivo, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office, City Bank
Panasonic. Miro. Rappi. Wargaming. Gannett. Omio. Acronis. Workforce Software. Tipalti. SEMRush.
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Advanced WAF vs. Wallarm NG WAF and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.