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F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Web Application ...
Sponsored
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
F5 Distributed Cloud Services
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
20th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
CDN (10th), API Security (9th)
Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
18th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 5.4%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Distributed Cloud Services is 1.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service is 0.9%, 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 (%)
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall5.4%
Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service0.9%
F5 Distributed Cloud Services1.8%
Other91.9%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

DB
CTO at PlayNirvana
Advanced security reporting has protected high-traffic betting platforms from constant attacks
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we have a dedicated IT team for that, and I'm not involved with Cloudflare much anymore. But if I were to compare them to F5, I would like to see more features that F5 offers. F5 has an option to bring the whole infrastructure, the whole WAF and all their packages, Bot Management, and everything else on your infrastructure. You need to install certain services from their side, and then you can choose if you would like requests to hit your servers immediately or if requests need to be proxied through F5 backbone. That would be a nice addition because we have 90% of the traffic as legit traffic coming from whitelisted servers. If it comes from whitelisted servers, I don't need to go every request through the backbone; I could easily just IP whitelist everything. Then I could maybe have Bot Management on my infrastructure that drastically reduces the price of Cloudflare. I would like to see Push CDN more improved in the next release of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. And maybe something similar to Pushpin that Fastly has, which is an option where you can push messages that then can be scaled globally over the network. From our perspective, if we have a listener that listens for stock updates, I would just need to have one processor that pushes those updates to the Cloudflare API, and then Cloudflare would broadcast that message to all listeners. Cloudflare will check the order of the message, and if you, as a customer, are not connected or have some kind of network issue, when you reconnect, you will receive the latest state and missing updates.
Mohan Janarthanan - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
Centralized security has protected APIs and optimized multi‑cloud traffic management
F5 Distributed Cloud Services has been used for two years for DDoS protection, and there is a particular feature called API protection. Within API protection, there is malicious user mitigation, which is one particular technology that has been implemented. This is a kind of advanced bot attack prevention. Malicious user mitigation is an AI/ML-based technology that was introduced by the F5 team, and this particular MUG protects rate limiting. If some users are having anomaly detection or someone is trying to do a bot attack, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge for that particular user alone and not for all users. For example, if someone is trying to act as a rogue, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge in the backend system on that particular system, so they cannot try again and again at the same time. It is for a concurrent session, and it will give the CAPTCHA challenge. This MUG, malicious user mitigation, prevents bot attacks. F5 Distributed Cloud Services includes the real-time intelligence feature, which helps with threat response strategies from a threat intelligence perspective. For example, if there are geo-restrictions or geo-based restrictions, sometimes people may come in through proxy-based servers, and it will prevent that. The load balancing feature optimizes application performance. Observability is the basic piece where F5 got introduced. This observability piece provides end-to-end visibility on the application performance. It gives complete end-to-end visibility across network latency and application performance issues. Sometimes when it is getting more than 200 pages, it throws errors such as 300, 400, or whatever has been configured, including 500 errors. F5 Distributed Cloud Services has helped improve traffic management efficiency. Most applications are hosted in the Check Point and F5 firewall, F5 web application firewall, where applications and traffic management can be accessed in a single dashboard. Automated threat detection is a basic feature of F5 Distributed Cloud Services meant for that purpose. There are two scenarios with automated threat detection, which is provided by F5. It is a completely machine learning solution that came from the bot defense, and it automatically protects against sophisticated attacks.
NiteshSharma - PeerSpot reviewer
Pre Sales Architect at network techlab
Comprehensive web protection has secured public apps and supports advanced audit requirements
Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service has multiple valuable aspects. The WAF solution secures whatever public domains have been published by the public platform or internal servers exposed to public users. Firewalls have limitations, which is why I suggest using a WAF solution. The firewall provides the same features but in a limited edition. When discussing the SaaS platform or Layer 7 layer of security, you will receive multiple benefits. Firewalls have limitations with signatures, bot protection, and DOS protection. Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service is a dedicated WAF product that handles all DOS protection, bot protection, API security, endpoint connectivity, signature-based support, and top 10 OWASP support. Multiple features are available. AI and ML-based technology is available in almost every tool today. When discussing troubleshooting, there are AI models that will solve your problem and provide information. AI is helpful because it will give you proper information regarding errors and troubleshooting.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The impact of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's integration with existing web technologies on our site's performance and security measures is quite great, actually."
"We extensively use the solution every day. The solution is very stable; we haven’t seen any glitches."
"The product has a valuable security control functionality."
"Cloudflare has positively impacted my organization by making it easier for me to handle and set up DNS for multiple clients; I can easily go in and access their accounts, make changes they need, and it's a one-stop shop."
"I have not had any issues with this solution, and I would recommend it to others who are interested in using it."
"Cloudflare WAF provides protection through rules and functionalities like Cloudflare's SDRAP."
"This solution does a good job of preventing web application attacks, SQL injections, and cross-site scripting attacks."
"Very glad the WAF rulesets works out of box, and requires very little tuning or maintenance."
"F5 is known for being the best load balancer in the market. Customers with an existing module can easily adopt additional modules without investing in new hardware."
"In a multi-cloud or distributed cloud, there are many protection possibilities from data to web application or API protection, including bot mitigation."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides a single unified console for security operations, network operations, and DevOps across all environments."
"The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services is the market leader in load balancers and manages traffic really well."
"Technical support from F5 is good compared to Cisco and HP."
"I rate the overall solution ten out of ten."
"It is user-friendly and easy to work with."
"The initial setup is pretty easy, and it is easier than for the on-premises solution."
"Regular updates are one of the aspects I appreciate about Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service, and it is provided by a leading brand in cybersecurity."
"The company provides technical support, and they are mostly available 24/7."
"Fortinet FortiWeb offers a variety of protections, including machine learning that helps protect web applications."
"The stability of the solution is excellent."
"Fortinet has created a holistic product that integrates features including AI and API protection, with straightforward automation and articulate reporting that even less experienced engineers can use easily."
 

Cons

"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."
"We don't even use Cloudflare Bot Management because it's too expensive; you need to pay per request, and it's much cheaper to get one or two additional machines."
"The ModSecurity core rules need to be updated."
"Cloudflare should update the version of the ModSecurity core rule set that they run on."
"They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well."
"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should include port forwarding features."
"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF. There are some problems, mainly from the perspective of implementation and customer expectations, which sometimes differ from reality."
"For small players, it is completely not worth it."
"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF."
"The pricing could be adjusted to better meet the needs of typical customers in regions like Poland, where the product is considered too expensive."
"Last year there was a downtime of 30 minutes across the cloud distributed console, and that was the only impact observed."
"For small players, it is completely not worth it."
"The utilization of AI in Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service still needs to be upgraded and improved."
"I do not have any notes on improvement."
"To measure the success of Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service's services and reporting capability, there is one drawback."
"It is expensive. Actually, it is expensive."
"The only thing I encountered was related to integration, mostly concerning translation."
"The usability of the interface could be improved as it is not user-friendly."
"Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service could be improved with better logging capabilities, as many come with less spacing, necessitating a FortiSIM for enhanced functionality."
"What I think could be improved in the future is the inclusion of runtime application self-protection, as RASP is currently not part of the program, but it would be beneficial if that could be added into the FortiAP-S Cloud product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not too pricey."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I believe the pricing is not the best, but it's reasonable and acceptable. We also use the McAfee system in parallel. In terms of pricing, its okay - not great, but not bad either. It falls in the middle, which is acceptable. In terms of support licensing, last time, we were searching for a solution, and we considered products from resellers rather than directly from the cloud provider. However, the pricing we encountered was exceptionally high. As a result, we are inclined to select support from the reseller."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
We are using Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools with their Zero Trust, so e...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
I am not involved in sales, so I do not deal with the pricing aspect directly. I give the cost of the solution a four...
What needs improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
Last year there was a downtime of 30 minutes across the cloud distributed console, and that was the only impact obser...
What is your primary use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
F5 Distributed Cloud Services is being used for web application firewall along with API security, bot protection, and...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service?
It is expensive. Actually, it is expensive. When discussing small organizations, I would not recommend it to them. I ...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service?
Currently, I want to add that Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service is offering only two-factor authentication. I ...
What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service?
When discussing Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service, I always recommend it. Either I can recommend F5. Most user...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
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Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs. Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.