F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs Fortinet FortiDDoS comparison

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS

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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:

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 19.6%, up from 19.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) is 1.4%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiDDoS is 2.9%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes

Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

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Richard Polyak

Sr. Architect at NBC Universal

Straightforward setup with very good granularity and performance

Our company uses the solution as a data center firewall. It is hard to determine all users within our infrastructure. It depends on systems we put behind the solution. Its internal but also a data center firewall. Sometimes, there are hooks from the solution to our external infrastructure or…

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Yazan Omar

Systems Engineer at aic²

An easy-to-use tool with great GUI

The product's initial setup phase was really easy. There is a lot of time involved in the testing phase and other processes related to the area of deployment, so it may take up to two weeks to deploy the solution. The solution is deployed on an on-premises model. One person is enough to take care of the deployment phase of the product. The person involved in the deployment phase needs to better understand topologies when dealing with Fortinet.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."

"Centralized, full-featured DNS."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."

"Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website."

"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is that it has a free version. They give us the free version with the anti-DDoS features and also the load balancing solution."

"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page 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."

More Cloudflare pros

"The decryption is great."

"The most valuable feature of F5 BIG-IP AFM is the iRules where I can customize the configuration."

"The most valuable feature of F5 BIG-IP AFM is all of my workers enjoy using it."

"The features of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager that have proven most effective in securing the network are significant."

"This product excells in every aspect from installation and the interface to providing superior network security."

"The protection is very useful."

"The solution is easily deployable and has great functionality."

"The solution is very straightforward. The usability is great."

More F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) pros

"We have researched them all, and it's a good solution all around."

"The product's initial setup phase was really easy."

"The most valuable feature is the cloud DDoS scrubbing capability."

"The solution is very user-friendly and very easy to use."

"It is a user-friendly product in terms of monitoring and updating policies."

"This solution can protect Layer 3, Layer 4 and Layer 7 attacks of applications for us."

"Packet inspection has been effective for mitigating DDoS attacks."

"I find the interface easy to use."

More Fortinet FortiDDoS pros

Cons

"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."

"Cloudflare does not have an on-premise solution. If they had different approaches they could be better suited to accommodate more customers, such as on-premise and hybrid deployments. For example, hybrid deployments would be useful where you could move the traffic from the enterprise to the cloud."

"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."

"Support response time could be improved."

"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."

"There are some issues with the CDN services."

"It would be beneficial for us if Cloudflare could offer a scrubbing solution. This would involve taking a snapshot of my website and keeping it live during a DDoS attack, ensuring uninterrupted service for our users. DDoS attacks are typically short in duration, and having Cloudflare maintain the site's availability from its secure network would enhance the overall user experience. I would appreciate it if Cloudflare could consider implementing this feature. Many organizations already utilize similar capabilities in their CDN platforms, where a static snapshot of the web page is displayed during DDoS attacks. In terms of features, Cloudflare needs to enhance its resilience and stay more focused on adopting new technologies. For instance, solutions like F5 XC Box, Access Solution, and Distributed Cloud Solution have impressive features, and Cloudflare should strive to match and exceed those capabilities. There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features. Cloudflare should prioritize enhancements in areas such as behavioral DDoS and protection against SQL injection attacks, considering the prevalent trend of public exposure to the internet for business reasons. Overall, Cloudflare needs to invest more in advancing its feature set."

"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."

More Cloudflare cons

"The initial setup of F5 BIG-IP AFM in a complex environment was simple. However, the full deployment took us approximately one year."

"Apart from the price, I feel no other areas need improvement."

"Deployment times vary according to the customer. It needs to be heavily configured. You need to look and you need to observe the behavior of the traffic before you can start configuring everything. It can take time."

"Currently, we have eighty F5s and we need some kind of management software. It would be very helpful."

"There should be simplified and better integration with BIG-IQ."

"Firstly, geolocation currently relies on manual updates. It has to move to automatic updates. There are no automatic updates for this feature. If some IPs, countries, or service providers move to another country, now you will be allow IPs that you previously denied. This is because you depend on the database, which doesn't update automatically. This is really a very important area that they need to improve."

"The web gateway feature could improve in F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)."

"We would have preferred to have support when we first started"

More F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) cons

"All the thresholds that need to be configured should be included in the default so that user will not forget or misconfigure."

"I would like to see analytics, big data."

"The tool needs to focus more on the area of application traffic management, where it currently has some shortcomings."

"There aren't really any aspects of the solution we are unhappy with. It's been a positive experience overall."

"I find that there have been issues in the past year with the solution hanging. It freezes often."

"The main improvement would be to change the firewall model, however, currently, everything is fixed and working well."

"The primary area for improvement is the on-premises capacity limit, currently fixed at 10 GB."

"The solution can be a little more user-friendly and it can be more affordable."

More Fortinet FortiDDoS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

"A free version of the solution is available."

"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."

"I give the price a five out of ten."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The product is expensive."

"As per pricing, I would not say cheap, but little higher than cheap, but not very expensive. So you can say kind of value for money solutions."

"F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager is not an expensive solution."

"We have purchased a five-year licensing package for the product."

"We need to pay a yearly licensing fee for the solution."

"It's very expensive, and you pay extra for the models."

"The price of F5 BIG-IP AFM is a little more expensive than other firewalls on the market."

"It is somewhat on the expensive side although it is worth the additional cost."

More F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) pricing and cost advice

"The solution is reasonably priced."

"The product’s pricing needs improvement."

"It's quite pricey."

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850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

17%

Government

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 GR...

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...

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 do you like most about F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?

CGNAT is one of its strong areas.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?

The standard license is reasonably priced, but additional features like the WAF can be more expensive. There are plen...

What needs improvement with F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?

The appliance and features could be enhanced further, especially in terms of security. Some features like the WAF ( /...

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

Arbor would be the best bid, apart from Arbor, Palo Alto and Fortinet have good solutions. As this is an ISP, I would...

What do you like most about Fortinet FortiDDoS?

The product's initial setup phase was really easy.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiDDoS?

Fortinet FortiDDoS offers lower costs compared to other solutions. The licensing costs are annually renewed.

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Compared 3% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Arbor DDoS vs F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)

Compared 48% of the time

AWS Shield vs F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)

Compared 16% of the time

Radware DDoS Protection Service vs F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)

Compared 15% of the time

A10 Thunder TPS vs F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)

Compared 12% of the time

Cloudflare One vs F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)

Compared 9% of the time

More F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) Competitors

Arbor DDoS vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 27% of the time

Radware DDoS Protection Service vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 12% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 11% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 7% of the time

AWS Shield vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 7% of the time

More Fortinet FortiDDoS Competitors

Product Reports

Cloudflare

Download Cloudflare product report

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)

Download F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) product report

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) report

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

March 2025

Download Fortinet FortiDDoS product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

F5 AFM, F5 Advanced Firewall Manager

Fortinet DDoS, FortiDDos

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“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. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“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.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) is a high-performance, full-proxy network security solution designed to protect networks and data centers against incoming threats that enter the network. Built on F5’s industry-leading BIG-IP hardware and software platforms, BIG-IP AFM provides a scalable platform that delivers the flexible performance and control needed to mitigate aggressive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) and protocol attacks before they overwhelm and degrade applications and infrastructure availability.

For service providers, BIG-IP AFM IPS does even more, protecting the network edge and performing traffic inspection and protocol adherence for prevalent service provider protocols such as SS7, Diameter, HTTP/2, GTP, SCTP and SIP traffic coming into the network over UDP, TCP, and SCTP.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are ever-evolving and use a variety of technologies. To successfully combat these attacks, you need a dynamic, multi-layered security solution. FortiDDoS protects from both known and zero day attacks with very low latency. It’s easy to deploy and manage, and includes comprehensive reporting and analysis tools.

Fortinet

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office

Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS