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F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway 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 ...
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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)
Microsoft Azure Application...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
6th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (6th)
 

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 Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is 4.9%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway4.9%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall5.4%
F5 Distributed Cloud Services1.8%
Other87.9%
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.
SS
Cloud Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Mutual TLS has secured our web services and now needs broader protocol support
The most valuable feature we have found in Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is mutual TLS. We find mutual TLS valuable because we can verify the client securely by setting up the trust certificate of the client, and also if we do it at the client side as well. This successfully develops mutual trust, ensuring that we know the client who is calling our service is a legitimate client. That is a very nice feature.Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has helped manage our traffic efficiently because we have many web services that we can put behind the same URL, and we can have different URLs with the same Application Gateway with a limited number of listeners. We can do host-based routing as well as URL-based routing or path-based routing. It supports both, so we can have even a single URL supporting many applications, or we can have different URLs for different applications respectively. We have both use cases.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product has a valuable security control functionality."
"Technical support has a very fast response time and they are helpful."
"Cloudflare WAF provides protection through rules and functionalities like Cloudflare's SDRAP."
"The product has improved our security posture by blocking bad actors."
"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."
"It protects web applications efficiently."
"The integration of Cloudflare with Cloud Suite is its most valuable feature."
"The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides a single unified console for security operations, network operations, and DevOps across all environments."
"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."
"Technical support from F5 is good compared to Cisco and HP."
"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 is the market leader in load balancers and manages traffic really well."
"The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation."
"Some of the key features of this solution are the low-level maintenance required, floating proxy service, and load balancing."
"We chose this solution in the first place because it has access to Layer 7. I can control the requests and the content, which I can access on my network if I want to even if it's forbidden access to other external resources. If I want to monitor, for example, traffic, and apply this rule on Layer 7, I can do so. This was our main goal when implementing this application. We wanted to take advantage of the Gateway capabilities."
"Application Gateway automatically redirects unwanted users and takes care of the security aspect. It also handles the performance side of things, which is why we use it."
"The load balancing features are valuable."
"We find it valuable because it is compatible with our existing Azure solution."
"We use the product in front-end and back-end applications to do the load balancing smartly."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the web application firewall (WAF)."
"The solution's most valuable feature is an HTTP solution and SSL certificate. It is also easy to use."
 

Cons

"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well. They have documentation for everything you're looking for, but they lack a single piece of documentation to tie everything together. As a new user or beginner, it took us a little bit of time to figure out how to put all these things in place."
"They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long."
"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."
"The reporting could be more granular."
"The user interface is very simple and straightforward, but users need knowledge about DNS to accomplish tasks."
"We have noticed some latency when the call goes through the firewall. That could be improved."
"The dashboard could be more user-friendly."
"A key challenge arises when dealing with numerous integrations with HVAC systems. Depending on the specifics, there might be some configuration mismatches, which necessitate specific support."
"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF."
"Last year there was a downtime of 30 minutes across the cloud distributed console, and that was the only impact observed."
"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 pricing could be adjusted to better meet the needs of typical customers in regions like Poland, where the product is considered too expensive."
"For small players, it is completely not worth it."
"In the next release, the solution could improve the integration with Service Mesh and other Azure Security Services."
"Microsoft needs to work on their documentation."
"The user interface could be better."
"The monitoring on the solution could be better."
"The solution needs improvements in integrating different services and creating a better application balance."
"The product could be easier to use and implement."
"It could be easier to change servicing."
"Needs easier integration with the existing SIAM."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"It is not too pricey."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"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."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
Information not available
"We use the tool's basic subscription. Its licensing costs are monthly."
"The solution's pricing is not complex. It is not expensive from our point of view."
"The solution is cheaper than Imperva. I rate it four to five out of ten."
"The product is not expensive."
"The pricing is based on how much you use the solution."
"The solution is paid monthly. The solution is highly expensive."
"It is not expensive."
"The cost is not an issue."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Insurance Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

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 Business22
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise24
 

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's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?
We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides...
How does AWS WAF compare to Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Web Application Firewall or Microsoft...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Application Gateway automatically redirects unwanted users and takes care of the security aspect. It also handles the...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
No data available
Azure Application Gateway, MS Azure Application Gateway
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Information Not Available
Lilly, AccuWeather, AIRFRANCE, Honeywell
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.