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F5 Rules for AWS WAF vs Symantec Web Application Firewall 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 Rules for AWS WAF
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
15th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Business Rules Management (3rd)
Symantec Web Application Fi...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
31st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 4.0%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Rules for AWS WAF is 0.4%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Web Application Firewall is 0.8%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall4.0%
F5 Rules for AWS WAF0.4%
Symantec Web Application Firewall0.8%
Other94.8%
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.
Vibin Thomas - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Team Lead - Content Security at Valuepoint Systems
Advanced protection has reduced web attacks and improves application performance and operations
One area where F5 Rules for AWS WAF can be improved is in simplifying the tuning process. While F5 Rules for AWS WAF is powerful, fine-tuning it to match specific application behavior can sometimes be complex and time-consuming, especially for teams without deep WAF expertise. Another improvement could be enhanced visibility and reporting. Although AWS WAF provides logs, having more intuitive and built-in dashboards or clearer categorization of rule triggers would make it easier to quickly identify and analyze attack patterns. Additionally, expanding the capabilities around bot management and behavior analysis would be beneficial compared to some dedicated bot management solutions. More advanced detection techniques could further strengthen the protection against sophisticated automated traffic. Finally, providing more predefined templates or best practice recommendations for different application types would help speed up the deployment and reduce the initial configuration effort.
Vatsal Mehta - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, Co-Founder & CEO at HEDEHI Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
Boosts Security Measures with Easy Deployment and Implementation
Regarding areas for improvement in Symantec Web Application Firewall, I think they can enhance the features they currently focus on, as there are various types of web applications, and it would be great if they could develop features to cater to all these types. For example, a feature to scan for unauthorized plugins or extensions could let us know if those extensions are authorized, unauthorized, or malicious. There's room for improvement in Symantec Web Application Firewall by introducing AI into their dashboard so that we can query the dashboard and fetch data insights, similar to querying ChatGPT for answers. They currently have this feature but can make improvements for better querying to get insights.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."
"There is a huge signature repository"
"The setup process is very simple for me."
"The initial setup process is simple."
"The solution protects our application, which runs on the HTTP protocol, from DDoS attacks."
"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."
"The Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."
"This is a good product; it's reliable and scales well."
"Overall, the combination of reduced manual effort, improved security posture, and better application performance has delivered a strong return on investment."
"In the past few years, we have zero security incidents, indicating a return on investment."
"F5 Rules for AWS WAF is definitely recommended. It is a good tool for anyone to try and see if it matches their use case, and it is something that an organization can really benefit from."
"F5 Rules for AWS WAF should be highly recommended for AI applications, as security is a major concern, and using F5 helps prevent security issues and stabilizes organizations and applications."
"F5 Rules for AWS WAF has positively impacted us by improving our web application security without adding too much operational overhead."
"F5 Rules for AWS WAF is a strong, enterprise-focused solution for organizations that need robust web application security, centralized policy management, and better visibility into application layer threats within AWS environments."
"F5 Rules for AWS WAF's OWASP protection and bot protection have reduced attacks on my applications by 72 to 90%."
"After implementing F5 Rules for AWS WAF, we observed a reduction of approximately 60 to 70% in web application security incidents reaching our application team, particularly blocking common threats like bot traffic and SQL injections without impacting our downstream systems."
"The setup was straightforward."
"The solution has an up-to-date data repository to deal with external threats."
"The best feature of Symantec Web Application Firewall is that it is very easy to use, and the deployment and implementation processes are really easy."
"This product is doing what it should and what we are expecting from it."
"The interface is user-friendly."
"It provides us with a sense of security."
 

Cons

"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."
"Its stability could be better."
"The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced"
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well."
"WAF doesn't directly affect bandwidth costs. It saves costs on protection. However, with the correct setup, it's difficult to determine if it saves costs overall due to the fixed enterprise plan fee."
"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."
"The user interface is very simple and straightforward, but users need knowledge about DNS to accomplish tasks."
"The ModSecurity core rules need to be updated."
"It's too early to talk about a return on investment with F5 Rules for AWS WAF."
"The additional costs for F5 Rules for AWS WAF are quite high, as F5 managed rules require a separate subscription on top of the standard AWS WAF charges; it would be great if it would be pre-integrated."
"From an improvement standpoint, one area where F5 Rules for AWS WAF could improve is in simplifying policy management and making advanced configurations more intuitive, especially for teams that are newer to enterprise WAF technologies."
"An area for improvement I see is that while everything is in good shape, I demand continuous improvisation of these rule sets."
"One area where F5 Rules for AWS WAF can be improved is in simplifying the tuning process."
"I think F5 Rules for AWS WAF could be improved mainly around visibility, specifically having more actionable recommendations for false positives."
"There are potential false positives in F5 Rules for AWS WAF that sometimes require tuning."
"F5 Rules for AWS WAF can be improved by simplifying the tuning process to reduce false positives and providing more built-in dashboards for better visibility and further customization."
"It would be an improvement if the management dashboards were not reliant upon Java."
"On a scale from one to 10, I would give it a five. I'm not convinced that it's necessarily the best solution going forward in the future."
"One of our issues is that sometimes scanning slows down the endpoints."
"There's room for improvement in Symantec Web Application Firewall by introducing AI into their dashboard so that we can query the dashboard and fetch data insights, similar to querying ChatGPT for answers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"The solution is expensive."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"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."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
33%
Comms Service Provider
16%
Computer Software Company
6%
Energy/Utilities Company
5%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
No data available
 

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 Rules for AWS WAF?
My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing for F5 Rules for AWS WAF was good with purchasing and the s...
What needs improvement with F5 Rules for AWS WAF?
From an improvement standpoint, one area where F5 Rules for AWS WAF could improve is in simplifying policy management...
What is your primary use case for F5 Rules for AWS WAF?
My main use case for F5 Rules for AWS WAF is strengthening web application security for internet-facing applications ...
What needs improvement with Symantec Web Application Firewall?
Regarding areas for improvement in Symantec Web Application Firewall, I think they can enhance the features they curr...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Web Application Firewall?
Our use case for Symantec Web Application Firewall is primarily for security purposes as we develop web application s...
What advice do you have for others considering Symantec Web Application Firewall?
I would recommend Symantec Web Application Firewall to other users due to all the benefits I mentioned earlier, such ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
No data available
Symantec WAF, Blue Coat Protecting Web Applications
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
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Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Rules for AWS WAF vs. Symantec Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.