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F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs Upwind comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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 Distributed Cloud Services
Ranking in API Security
9th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
CDN (10th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (20th)
Upwind
Ranking in API Security
11th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.7
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (30th), Container Security (29th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (16th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (20th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (13th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (6th), AI Security (69th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the API Security category, the mindshare of F5 Distributed Cloud Services is 5.3%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Upwind is 3.9%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 Distributed Cloud Services5.3%
Upwind3.9%
Other90.8%
API Security
 

Featured Reviews

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.
GF
Head Of Security Operation And Response at a hospitality company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Gaining Confidence in Cloud Security with Improved Vulnerability Management
In general, I think that Upwind as a product makes a disruption in the concept of shift left; they come with a new approach by the runtime sensor that they made, making life for the AppSec team much easier. It's a good question about the best features Upwind offers, but in general, they build a great product. One feature I can think about is their very strong API, allowing us to export most of the data to crunch and work with it. To me, having a wide API to interact with the data is very important. In general, we use the API to export the asset and then compare it with our findings to improve triage, ensuring we are not missing anything. This is one of the main use cases for the API. Having access to this API changes our team's efficiency dramatically; programmability makes everyone's life much easier. The operation reduces because of the time that analysts need to spend on triaging, and it also minimizes friction with developers, which is something Upwind helps us with. Upwind positively impacts our organization overall by helping with the CIS benchmark for Kubernetes, which is definitely one of the strongest parts. Second, by reducing the number of vulnerabilities, we automatically reduce the number of tickets opened with the dev team, which is a big win. It also helps us to tune our vulnerability program better regarding classification and priority.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Healthcare Company
8%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 out of ten since it is not a cheap product.
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 observed. Since 30 minutes of downtime is huge for applications, maintenance, it impa...
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 DDoS protection. There are two scenarios involving web applications and mobile ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Upwind?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing process were pretty reasonable.
What needs improvement with Upwind?
Currently, we are working with Upwind on API security, which is something we want them to keep pushing. We also want them to be able to record SSH sessions; it's a tough request.
What is your primary use case for Upwind?
I have several use cases for Upwind. I will start with our private cloud that is based on Kubernetes, so we're using it also for Cloud Detection and Response and also for vulnerability scanning. We...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Upwind Security Upwind Platform for AWS Security Hub, Upwind Security Upwind for AWS Security Hub Extended
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
StockX, Yotpo, bill, Digital Turbine, nanit, CallRail, boomi
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs. Upwind and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.