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F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs Radware Cloud WAF 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 ...
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Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
5th
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)
16th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
CDN (6th), API Security (6th)
Radware Cloud WAF Service
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 4.7%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Distributed Cloud Services is 1.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Radware Cloud WAF Service is 2.1%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Radware Cloud WAF Service2.1%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall4.7%
F5 Distributed Cloud Services1.9%
Other91.3%
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.
AT
SOC Analyst at Adani Enterprises Ltd
Has significantly improved threat visibility and reduced false positives through intelligent bot detection and real-time analysis
The best features of Radware Cloud WAF Service that I prefer most include the bot protection. Its deployment was very smooth and flexible when I started deploying it. The reporting and visibility feature of the Bot Manager are noteworthy, as the dashboard gives clear insight into the traffic, activity, and block threats. The AI threat intelligence feature is quite impressive. In terms of blocking unknown threats and attacks, I assess Radware Cloud WAF Service as quite impressive; if I have to rate it out of 10, I would rate it eight and a half. The automated analytics for looking at events with Radware Cloud WAF Service is generally fine, and whenever we use it, it gives almost perfect results. In API protection with Radware Cloud WAF Service, we have multiple applications that we are using currently, and whenever there is any threat related to an API, it helps us provide detailed insight. Additionally, whenever there is unusual API traffic, it helps us monitor and detect threats.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have not had any issues with this solution, and I would recommend it to others who are interested in using it."
"The security features are valuable. The particular feature we use is called OWASP."
"The product has a valuable security control functionality."
"For us, the key feature of Cloudflare is DDoS protection and IP hiding, especially since we are a crypto company."
"We like that there's load balancing, firewall capabilities, DDoS protection, et cetera, all covered by Cloudflare."
"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."
"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."
"The solution protects our application, which runs on the HTTP protocol, from DDoS attacks."
"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."
"The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation."
"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 provides a single unified console for security operations, network operations, and DevOps across all environments."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services is the market leader in load balancers and manages traffic really well."
"Elastic environments are the most valuable features because I can pull these apps and migrate the on-premises environment to the Distributed Cloud environment, and this capability is very strong and the security regarding the apps is really very powerful."
"The best feature is the SQL injection signatures, and another is the DDoS protection. Radware is more efficient than other solutions."
"The real-time BLA detection and mitigation processes have significantly enhanced our threat management with Radware Cloud WAF Service."
"Radware Cloud WAF Service offers better protection and can even provide significantly better security."
"I particularly appreciate the low administrative burden of this solution, as well as the excellent monitoring tools."
"Radware Cloud WAF Service is really good for protecting against zero-day attacks as it protects our organization and businesses effectively."
"My experience with the technical support of Radware Cloud WAF Service is that they are excellent, and I have established a strong relationship with the executive leadership up to Roy, the CEO."
"Radware Cloud WAF Service has had a positive impact on my organization through its great ability to detect unauthorized access, as incidents have decreased and the performance of our machines has improved."
"The most valuable features of Radware Cloud WAF Service include its automation and learning capabilities for protection, as well as its superior bot mitigation."
 

Cons

"The dashboard could be more user-friendly."
"If they add logs history within the Cloudflare offering, that would be a great benefit."
"We have noticed some latency when the call goes through the firewall. That could be improved."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well."
"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."
"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."
"The reporting could be improved if it were more granular."
"Its stability could be better."
"Last year there was a downtime of 30 minutes across the cloud distributed console, and that was the only impact observed."
"The worst experience is that with so many solutions available, it is very complicated to know all of the solution modules, and the offers from F5 Distributed Cloud Services are vast."
"The pricing could be adjusted to better meet the needs of typical customers in regions like Poland, where the product is considered too expensive."
"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."
"For small players, it is completely not worth it."
"Radware Cloud WAF Service has limited integrations, and I would like to see it integrate with our use of Azure DevOps."
"My experience with Radware Cloud WAF Service's customer support could be better."
"The only improvement I have directly for Radware is its costs, because they are very high."
"They've changed their process for call logging. I suppose it's fine, but I used to be able to send emails in. They could also build up more local resiliency here in South Africa. They're working on that, so it isn't much of an issue now."
"Sometimes, I encounter issues with password reset."
"The integration part could be better."
"In Radware Cloud WAF Service, areas for improvement include behavioral and anomaly detection, where it could be better by reducing false positives. The"
"Some of the tools are a bit difficult to navigate, and the user interface could be more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"The solution is expensive."
"It is not too pricey."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
Information not available
"We evaluated other options and, if I remember correctly, one of them was Fortinet, but they didn't seem as effective as Radware. But the price was the biggest difference. Radware had the best price for our type of network and level of scaling."
"The price is a bulk average."
"When compared to Akamai and F5, Radware's pricing and licensing are highly competitive."
"We are based in El Salvador and don't have a direct license with Radware; we purchase the license through resellers. The pricing is reasonable, as I managed an Akamai product in a previous position, and Cloud WAF is competitively priced."
"The pricing is fair. We compared Radware to others using industry reviews and Radware is at the top right now."
"If you plan to deploy Cloud WAF, keep in mind that the product is priced based on the megabits of traffic that pass through and the number of transactions. You should get your requirements correct up front. The active attackers feed and CDN services cost extra, so you need to negotiate these features upfront."
"We are paying $20,000 annually for six licenses that provide basic WAF functionality."
"Radware Cloud WAF Service falls within a mid-range price bracket compared to other web application firewall solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Energy/Utilities Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software 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 Business15
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise45
 

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?
F5 Distributed Cloud Services is affordable. I think it is very affordable. I do not think it is expensive.
What needs improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
I need to think about this for the future. F5 Distributed Cloud Services needs to create links with Amazon and Google...
What is your primary use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
I collect reviews for F5 Distributed Cloud Services and F5 Silverline Managed Services. I work with F5 Distributed Cl...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Radware Cloud WAF Service?
The cost of Radware Cloud WAF Service is actually a bit high, but given all these benefits, the investment makes sense.
What needs improvement with Radware Cloud WAF Service?
Something that could be added to Radware Cloud WAF Service would be a bit more training and not having to depend so m...
What is your primary use case for Radware Cloud WAF Service?
Radware Cloud WAF Service protects the web applications that are the APIs and transactional systems. In the WAF, all ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Information Not Available
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs. Radware Cloud WAF Service and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.