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HAProxy vs Indusface AppTrana comparison

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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
HAProxy
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
14th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (3rd), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (6th), Bot Management (7th), Service Mesh (2nd)
Indusface AppTrana
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
27th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (20th), Bot Management (12th)
 

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 HAProxy is 2.4%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Indusface AppTrana is 0.5%, 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%
HAProxy2.4%
Indusface AppTrana0.5%
Other91.7%
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.
Shrinivas Devarkonda - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of DevOps at TripFactory
Handles high traffic efficiently and simplifies complex routing with rule-based logic
I think HAProxy is good as it stands now, but I believe there could be improvements. gRPC has recently been implemented, which is great, along with TLS 1.2 and 1.3 support, and HTTP 2.0 is also available. However, I'm unsure about the benchmark of those HTTP 2.0 requests on HAProxy. If there were any other protocol with better performance than HTTP 2.0, or perhaps mTLS and other similar features, including that in HAProxy would be really great. For improvements, I think that during setup and configuration, the steps provided are neat and clear. Anyone can easily install and configure it. There are many kernel tuning parameters also available, which is great. For specific improvement, in terms of logging, I think printing the full object of the request may help, or if there's a way to reference two requests, it would be beneficial to find a complete session history from a logged-in customer, as it would help analyze customer and user analytics.
Arshad Nr - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Security Consultant at CyberNxt Solutions LLP
Provides comprehensive executive vulnerability scanning report for applications
Dashboards are very helpful for showcasing Top 5 attacked applications, Top 5 Vulnerable applications, and Top 5 Vulnerabilities affected in Applications. It helped me to prioritize the resources to secure and showcase the same to management. We don't need to analyze manually to identify all the applications and logs to find top priorities. The Apptrana helped to identify it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The rate limiting features and customizations in terms of URL match and applying policies are valuable to me."
"It is configurable via API."
"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."
"The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10."
"This solution does a good job of preventing web application attacks, SQL injections, and cross-site scripting attacks."
"Technical support has a very fast response time and they are helpful."
"Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before."
"The solution protects our application, which runs on the HTTP protocol, from DDoS attacks."
"We never have any downtime with it."
"I can simplify configurations of many internal services (e.g. Web server configs) by moving some elements (like SSL) to HAProxy. I can also disable additional applications, like Varnish, by moving traffic shaping configurations to HAProxy."
"We use the solution for load balancing."
"The features I find valuable in this solution are session control which automatically disconnects users that forget to log off, and the ability to write rules to either allow or block certain file requests."
"It’s a reliable product with good technical support."
"With each new release, I find very useful features and love each addition."
"We don't have a problem with the user interface. it's good."
"We were able to use HAProxy for round robin with our databases, or for a centralized TCP connection in one host."
"AppTrana helped us to protect the public-hosted Web, API, and Mobile applications by acting as a strong WAF solution which has Machine learning compatibility that analyzes and blocks the Behavior DDoS attacks."
"We use Indusface AppTrana as a firewall."
 

Cons

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should include port forwarding features."
"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."
"We have noticed some latency when the call goes through the firewall. That could be improved."
"They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long."
"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 notification part could be improved. It's very much connected to Web Application Firewall, rate-limiting, and DDoS protection."
"The dashboard could be more user-friendly."
"Cloudflare should update the version of the ModSecurity core rule set that they run on."
"We need to handle new connections by dropping, or queuing them while the HAProxy restarts, and because HAProxy does not handle split config files."
"I would improve the web-based UI, but it’s a matter of personal preference."
"HAProxy needs to improve its ability to handle a lot of connections, to be more like NGINX."
"I'm unsure about the benchmark of those HTTP 2.0 requests on HAProxy."
"The configuration should be more friendly, perhaps with a Web interface. For example, I work with the ClusterControl product for Severalnines, and we have a Web interface to deploy the HAProxy load-balancer."
"Dynamic update API. More things should be possible to be configured during runtime."
"We've changed solutions as it doesn't fit with our current needs."
"If nbproc = 2, you will have two processes of HAProxy running. However, the stats of HAProxy will not be aggregated, meaning you don't really know the collective status in a single point of view."
"AppTrana should improve its backend and frontend connections and loading speed. It is slower compared to other cloud solutions and sometimes it does not sync properly with front-end options and backend."
"The solution should add an enhanced dashboard to make it easy to navigate."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"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 tool is open-source."
"HAProxy is free software. There are optional paid products (support/appliances)."
"HAProxy is an open-source solution."
"The only cost is for the image manager, who is responsible for uploading the image, and that is trivial."
"When it comes to pricing HAProxy is free."
"The product is open source."
"Test/lab virtual machines can be installed without a licence. They can't be used for performance testing but otherwise behave like production nodes."
"I use the open-source version of the product. I don't have experience with the licensed version of the solution."
"Indusface AppTrana is an affordable and cost-effective solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
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 Business17
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise16
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...
Do you recommend HAProxy?
I do recommend HAProxy for more simple applications or for companies with a low budget, since HAProxy is a free, open...
What do you like most about HAProxy?
The solution is effective in managing our traffic.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HAProxy?
Since we used the open-source version, we were not concerned about pricing, setup cost, or licensing.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Indusface AppTrana?
Indusface AppTrana is an affordable and cost-effective solution.
What needs improvement with Indusface AppTrana?
AppTrana should improve its backend and frontend connections and loading speed. It is slower compared to other cloud ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
AppTrana
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
Shoppers Stop, TCS
Find out what your peers are saying about HAProxy vs. Indusface AppTrana and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.