Imperva Application Security Platform vs StackPath WAF comparison

Imperva and StackPath are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Imperva is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.3, while StackPath is ranked #48. Imperva holds a 8.1% mindshare in WAF, compared to StackPath’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Imperva users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StackPath users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 2026

Imperva Application Security Platform and StackPath WAF compete in the web application security category. Imperva has the advantage with comprehensive protection and a broader market presence, whereas StackPath's ease of integration and cost-effectiveness appeal to smaller organizations.

Features: Imperva Application Security Platform offers detailed analytics, threat intelligence, and robust DDoS protection. Its complete suite provides a strong shield against online threats. StackPath WAF is noted for its cloud-based firewall, flexible rule management, and real-time threat protection with advanced network edge technology.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Imperva's deployment process can be complex, requiring skilled personnel, but extensive documentation and personalized support are available. StackPath WAF provides a straightforward deployment process, appealing to businesses seeking quick implementation. The simplicity of StackPath's model benefits smaller teams, while Imperva offers strong customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Imperva Application Security Platform involves a higher initial setup cost, providing significant ROI through extensive security management and protection. StackPath WAF offers a budget-friendly pricing structure that delivers solid ROI, attractive to businesses seeking cost savings while maintaining essential security features.

To learn more, read our detailed Web Application Firewall (WAF) Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

March 2026

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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 ...

Mindshare comparison

As of April 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 Imperva Application Security Platform is 8.1%, up from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StackPath WAF is 0.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Imperva Application Security Platform	8.1%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall	5.4%
StackPath WAF	0.4%
Other	86.1%

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Featured Reviews

Dean Barisic

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.

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reviewer1247523

Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees

Solution ensures website availability and proactive threat mitigation

Over the seven years, the most valuable features of Imperva DDoS that I have found are related to DDoS attacks, which are a group of attacks, and not all of them can be resolved on the endpoint level before the website. Using the web firewall before the website is a common use case to protect against malicious requests to the website. I have utilized Imperva's Intelligent Traffic Filtering feature. This feature helps me understand how the attack is progressing and what is happening inside the requests to our website. It allows me to granularly grant or deny access to certain parts of our website. This helps when we know our customers and the types of requests that can be sent from them, enabling us to block some malicious requests. Imperva DDoS has User Behavior Analytics and Threat Intelligence on its board, and this helps us to be protected proactively. Imperva DDoS connects to its database of threats, storing whole information about attacks all over the world in one simple engine. Everyone can use this feature, which can connect to this engine and get information about what is going on at the world level. That is the way to be protected at the company's level. The integration capabilities of Imperva DDoS are very easy and simple. We can run it in 2 hours.

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Francesco MariaCompagnucci

RTD at Fidoka srl

Stable product with an easy setup process

We use StackPath WAF to protect small websites for our customers The product’s most valuable is WAF. The authentication feature helps us protect WordPress sites. The product’s performance for caching feature needs improvement. It could provide high security to handle large traffic volumes for…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We like that there's load balancing, firewall capabilities, DDoS protection, et cetera, all covered by Cloudflare."

"The setup process is very simple for me."

"It's pretty convenient and pretty easy to set up and run. And then kind of for static content, it also offers caching."

"I have not had any issues with this solution, and I would recommend it to others who are interested in using it."

"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."

"In general, it's a very good product: the solution is very stable, the performance is great, the product offers very good scalability, the pricing is very reasonable, the installation is very straightforward and quite simple, and technical support has a very fast response time and is helpful."

"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."

"The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

"On the activity log, I can see the exact details, the visit, and the threat."

"The solution is very good at intercepting traffic before it gets to our data centers."

"The solution integrates seamlessly with other tools and has a good alert mechanism."

"Essentially, it has added an extra layer of protection to my clients through their DNS routing service."

"Imperva is easy to use and deploy, and the UI is excellent."

"Very scalable and very stable firewall for web applications, with a good interface in its cloud version."

"If you are using the appliance as opposed to the virtual deployment, it can stand as the network layer-two and provide real transparency."

"There is no need to have an in-house WAF to manage and maintain; we are now able to bring a new website live within minutes, without false positive alerts, and it has improved user/customer experience and website performance."

More Imperva Application Security Platform pros

"The product’s most valuable is WAF. The authentication feature helps us protect WordPress sites."

Cons

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should improve visibility for a customer."

"We have noticed some latency when the call goes through the firewall. That could be improved."

"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 accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."

"The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced"

"The user interface is very simple and straightforward, but users need knowledge about DNS to accomplish tasks."

"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."

"The notification part could be improved. It's very much connected to Web Application Firewall, rate-limiting, and DDoS protection."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

"The only disadvantage of Imperva is that it is a pretty costly solution."

"On the negative side, API security mainly supports cloud-based solutions, while most of my customers prefer on-prem setups, so achieving high performance with on-prem solutions would be beneficial."

"I would like to see automated reporting to improve visibility."

"They need to work on the customer support; in my opinion, this is their weakest point. Some of their support representatives really have no idea how their service works."

"It would be useful if the solution used more intelligence in attack protection."

"The process to upgrade from one version to another can be a lot simpler than it is currently."

"Our support is currently coming from the US, and it is not very good."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall could improve the API integration. It was complex for us."

More Imperva Application Security Platform cons

"The product’s performance for caching feature needs improvement."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."

"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 solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."

"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."

"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"

"The solution is expensive."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"There is a license or subscription renewal that our customers pay."

"For enterprise contracts you will be in touch with a dedicated account manager who will guide you regarding licensing."

"I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."

"Make sure you understand the way that Imperva charges. It's very affordable. However, I would like to see a package with the Virtual Patching included. You get to do patching separately."

"It is very costly, but the return on investment is very high. Its cost was around $70,000, and we got it back in just six months."

"It is expensive."

"There is a license for this solution and we purchase the license annually with no additional fees."

"The data packages are higher than our needs so we end up paying for data that we don't use."

More Imperva Application Security Platform pricing and cost advice

"The product is affordable."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

18%

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	84
Midsize Enterprise	25
Large Enterprise	62

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

The price of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is reasonable.

See all answers

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...

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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...

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Which Web Application Firewall (WAF) would you recommend? R&S or Imperva?

Imperva is a strong choice, given their security focus and ongoing R&D into the product in areas such as bot mana...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Imperva DDoS?

The pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Imperva DDoS are reasonable for the amount of technical capabilities provi...

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What needs improvement with Imperva DDoS?

I would like to see improvements in the pooling of threats and attacks, possibly to enlarge the scale of indicators o...

See all answers

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Comparisons

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 3% of the time

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Compared 2% of the time

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Compared 37% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

March 2026

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Download Cloudflare Web Application Firewall product report

Buyer's Guide

Imperva Application Security Platform

March 2026

Imperva Application Security Platform report

Download Imperva Application Security Platform product report

Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

March 2026

Download StackPath WAF product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF

Imperva Bot Management, Imperva Web Application Firewall, Imperva API Security

StackPath Web Application Firewall

Overview

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's intuitive dashboard enables users to build powerful rules through easy clicks and also provides Terraform integration. Every request to the WAF is inspected against the rule engine and the threat intelligence curated from protecting over 27 Million websites. Suspicious requests can be blocked, challenged or logged as per the needs of the user while legitimate requests are routed to the destination, agnostic of whether it lives on-premise or in the cloud. Analytics and Cloudflare Logs enable visibility into actionable metrics for the user.

Cloudflare

Imperva Application Security Platform delivers comprehensive and continuous web threat protection. Renowned for its ease of use, it shields web applications and databases from various cyber threats while integrating seamlessly with cloud and on-premises environments.

Imperva Application Security Platform protects web environments by offering advanced security measures against threats like DDoS attacks, SQL injections, and cross-site scripting. As a robust web application firewall, it provides extensive monitoring and bot management capabilities. The platform integrates content delivery networks for enhanced performance and scalability, while real-time traffic analysis ensures consistent protection. Despite its strengths, improvements can be made in policy management and customization options. Users seek better integration with third-party tools and more competitive pricing models. The inclusion of AI for enhanced analytics is also anticipated.

What are the key features of Imperva Application Security Platform?

Correlated Attack Validation: Enhances threat assessment by linking related security events.
Threat Radar: Offers visibility into potential and ongoing threats.
Virtual Patching: Provides protection against vulnerabilities without immediate code changes.
IncapRules: Allows creation of custom security policies.
DDoS Protection: Defends against large-scale distributed denial-of-service attacks.
CDN Integration: Improves content delivery speed and reliability.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

User-Friendly Administration: Simplifies setup and ongoing management tasks.
Seamless Integration: Ensures smooth operation with existing infrastructure.
Comprehensive Threat Protection: Shields digital assets from a wide range of threats.
Hands-On Support: Provides timely and effective customer service assistance.

Imperva Application Security Platform is implemented in industries needing strong database and application protection. Companies use it to enforce geolocation restrictions and manage bots, benefiting sectors like finance and e-commerce where data security and threat monitoring are critical. Its ability to protect and ensure data accessibility makes it integral to business operations prioritizing cyber resilience.

Imperva

StackPath WAF integrates multiple technologies, including Advanced Browser Validation and IP Reputation and Custom Rules engines, into an intelligent firewall that can be customized to meet your specific protection profile.

StackPath

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk

Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.

Robotics Cats, Jewlr

Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

March 2026

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