NetScaler vs Radware Cloud WAF Service comparison

NetScaler and Radware are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. NetScaler is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.3, while Radware is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.8. Additionally, 91% of NetScaler users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Radware users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Citrix NetScaler and Radware Cloud WAF Service compete in the web application security and load balancing market. Citrix NetScaler appears to have the upper hand in integration with Citrix virtual applications, while Radware Cloud WAF Service excels in bot management and DDoS protection.

Features: Citrix NetScaler offers load balancing, SSL offloading, and seamless integration with Citrix virtual applications. Its flexible deployment models and TriScale architecture provide adaptability and cost efficiency. Radware Cloud WAF Service stands out with strong bot management, API protection, and DDoS prevention. It provides automated analytics and dynamic protection against emerging threats.

Room for Improvement: Citrix NetScaler users see room for improvement in user interface simplicity, advanced scripting capabilities, and support documentation. Some desire more stable firmware and a flexible licensing model. Radware Cloud WAF Service users suggest enhancements in API integration, better implementation documentation, and a comprehensive reporting system.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Citrix NetScaler is generally deployed on-premises or hybrid, offering diverse implementation scenarios but facing scalability challenges. Customer service feedback is mixed regarding technical expertise and responsiveness. Radware Cloud WAF Service, being primarily cloud-based, offers easier scalability but may encounter integration challenges. Its customer support receives praise for responsiveness, but localized support could improve.

Pricing and ROI: Citrix NetScaler is seen as expensive with a complex licensing model, though it provides value through comprehensive features. Smaller enterprises might find pricing a barrier. Radware Cloud WAF Service, also considered costly, offers competitive pricing among solutions like F5, providing value with its modular offerings and security features. Both products promise ROI through security and performance benefits, with expense considerations being important for potential adopters.

To learn more, read our detailed NetScaler vs. Radware Cloud WAF Service Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

NetScaler vs. Radware Cloud WAF Service

April 2025

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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

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes

Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

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DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU

Cloud Consultant at Migros Ticaret A.Ş.

A tool for centralized management including inventory and sales tracking

Citrix ADM has the ability to implement policies to tighten security. For instance, you can restrict access to your network from outsiders or lack necessary security measures such as antivirus programs. Additionally, there's the Delivery Controller, which allows for comprehensive monitoring and management tasks such as remote restarts, maintenance, and registration. Another essential component is the Director, which provides detailed insights into sessions, including identifying session failures, connection issues, user lockouts, etc. It presents a list of problems to address, enabling you to click on them and resolve them efficiently.

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OMPRAKASH

Assistant Manager (Network and Cyber Security) at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Consistently protect applications with advanced threat detection and active support

We have had a very good experience with Radware Cloud. It has significantly reduced attacks on our applications. All our critical applications are onboarded to Radware, which uses AI to automatically learn behavior patterns and refine security policies. It also provides comprehensive protection against the top ten web application security risks. Importantly, we have not experienced any zero-day attacks because Radware Cloud offers protection against emerging threats. The Emergency Response Team is very active, and I consistently receive excellent responses from them. It's a very comprehensive and user-friendly solution. It's easy to implement and integrate. We also have found it's easy to reach support if we need help. The solution has helped us enhance our cyber security posture. It's good for data protection. We've been able to protect our public-facing infrastructure. We haven't had any incidents or compromises in the entire three years we've used Radware. The Cloud WAF Service blocks unknown threats and attacks effectively. The analytics are very good. The API discovery feature is very helpful, and end-to-end API protection is useful. Everything is encrypted to ensure effective protection. We get Layer 7 protection from it. The API discovery is a very useful feature. It is easy to use. A few months before, I did a demo to learn more. We can see which APIs are being used or not. It helps us discover and remove unused APIs. In our case, we found 20 APIs that were not used by the team. We use the CDN features. It's pretty easy to use the combination of CDN and Cloud WAF. It helps your Radware Cloud connect with the nearest server or the Redware server. We have multiple servers worldwide, so this is useful for us. Integration is very easy. Sometimes, we have 10 to 15 applications hosted on the cloud. It's very easy to add applications. It's not complicated. From the Radware cloud, it's integrated with our SOC. All the logs are received by the SOC.

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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

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."

"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."

"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."

"Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick."

"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."

"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."

"The UI is good."

"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."

More Cloudflare pros

"I like app flows and custom flows. They integrate with multiple flows."

"It is the best product out there."

"I would say the rewriting and redirection functions are must-have's for us."

"For NetScaler, our major use cases are database load balancing, PowerVPN VPN access gateway, WAF (Web Application Firewall), and content switching."

"The most valuable feature of Citrix ADC is its ease of use."

"The solution was very easy to deploy."

"When our primary link goes down I can still get to my Cisco devices and the NetScaler devices on-prem because of the SDN solution. If the internet connection at one of the branches goes down, we can still route them, they still get internet based on the SDN solution through one of the other sites. They can carry on working."

"I found that the GUI was very easy to to navigate. If you were looking for something, it was fairly easy to find. There's a lot of third-party documentation and information available online as well."

More NetScaler pros

"Radware Cloud WAF Service has several valuable features, with good support and a user-friendly GUI."

"Geo-blocking is one of the most valuable features we use the most; most of our users are in North, Central, and South America, so we use geo-blocking to block access from other countries."

"The most important aspect of Radware Cloud WAF is that it is over the cloud, offering a comprehensive solution that includes WAF, API protection, bots, and Layer 7 DDoS."

"Radware Cloud WAF Service ensures our systems are stable, running smoothly, and blocking all attacks effectively."

"The most valuable features of Radware Cloud WAF Service include its automation and learning capabilities for protection, as well as its superior bot mitigation."

"The solution requires very little maintenance; we install it, it works without any problems, is reliable, and we can almost forget about it."

"The most valuable feature of Radware Cloud WAF Service is the visibility into attacks that are being cut off instantly."

"Importantly, we have not experienced any zero-day attacks because Radware Cloud offers protection against emerging threats."

More Radware Cloud WAF Service pros

Cons

"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."

"DNS Management."

"For large enterprises, the pricing is okay. However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high. A mid-tier pricing option would be beneficial."

"Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements."

"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."

"We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."

"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."

"Support response time could be improved."

More Cloudflare cons

"The only thing customers told me that could be improved is that they would like to be able to purchase and receive the products in one box, rather than two boxes. This is something related to marketing, though."

"The technical support could be better. Whenever I contacted support, I rarely got the solution that we needed. And most of the time, I finished fixing the problem by looking on the internet or by finding documents about the problem on Google."

"Its GUI should be improved. Its CLI is powerful, but GUI needs more features."

"The reporting is not so good. They don't have an application to connect the logs."

"I would like to see them make it easier to do some of the more complex things. For example, a web re-direct requires two pieces to it. You have two ports and when people want to go to a web page, they just type in the webpage that on the backend it will redirect them to a secure link. The initial setup of that is cumbersome because you have to do it twice. There are things that can be replicated. The IP address, for example, is the same. This change would go a long way. Don't make me do it twice and don't make me have to read tons of documentation to figure out how to do it. Ease of configuration for some of the more complex processes would be a good improvement."

"There are some drawbacks, such as using EUG for specific configurations. It could be improved."

"Deployment is complicated."

"An area for improvement would be the difficulty in finding information about standard licensing costs over the internet. They should provide some reference prices on the net to be quickly referred to."

More NetScaler cons

"Sometimes, I encounter issues with password reset."

"If we want to publish services to a limited number of providers and we only want those providers to connect, we need to forward those requests to the Radware support team and they apply them, but it takes some time."

"Some of the tools are a bit difficult to navigate, and the user interface could be more user-friendly."

"We've had some issues with putting certificates in."

"There is a lot more that is expected from Radware's automated analytics for looking at events. There needs to be more context of where protection is required these days."

"An area of improvement is the visibility at the attack level."

"They have a portal for webinar training but because we are in a Spanish-speaking country, it is difficult for us to watch them. Not all of us are fluent in English, but most of the courses and webinars are in English. That part could be improved..."

"I would like to see an improvement in the twenty-four-seven support service."

More Radware Cloud WAF Service cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I give the price a five out of ten."

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

"We are using the free tier of the solution."

"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"When compared to other solutions, the cost is high."

"It is true that it is a bit pricey compared to newer technologies coming to the market. For example, A10 is a load balancer that does everything that Citrix can and it does a lot more than what NetScaler does when it comes to the security space, and their prices are so cheap. Every box comes with its own license and support built into it. When you compare that with NetScaler, you have to buy licenses separately, you have to buy a support agreement that is going to be separate. A small NetScaler, even if it is a VPX which is a virtual server, could cost you close to $150,000 to $200,000 dollars. So the pricing is really high."

"The price for Citrix ADC here in Mexico was good, when you compare it with F5 and Radware."

"I rate the pricing an eight out of ten since it is expensive."

"Price-wise, I feel that the solution is a little bit expensive."

"You get the value for your money. There aren't any hidden fees."

"For the specific use case that my customers primarily engage with, I would give the pricing a rating of seven out of ten."

"Citrix ADM costs us approximately $5000 per month."

More NetScaler pricing and cost advice

"I believe the prices are fair."

"The pricing is fair; it's neither particularly cheap nor expensive."

"The price is a bulk average."

"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 pricing is fair."

"When compared to Akamai and F5, Radware's pricing and licensing are highly competitive."

"We are paying $20,000 annually for six licenses that provide basic WAF functionality."

"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."

More Radware Cloud WAF Service pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

15%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

24%

Retailer

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?

Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...

See all answers

What do you like most about Cloudflare?

Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.

See all answers

What do you like most about Citrix ADC?

The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic ente...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADC?

After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?

Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexi...

See all answers

What do you like most about Radware Cloud WAF Service?

One of the most valuable features we have found in the solution is protection against attacks from botnet networks an...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Radware Cloud WAF Service?

I would rate the cost around seven out of ten. Radware provides many different options, but it may not be affordable ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Radware Cloud WAF Service?

Some of the tools are a bit difficult to navigate, and the user interface could be more user-friendly. It is not the ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

HAProxy vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs NetScaler

Compared 9% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NetScaler

Compared 8% of the time

More NetScaler Competitors

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Radware Cloud WAF Service

Compared 28% of the time

AWS WAF vs Radware Cloud WAF Service

Compared 24% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Radware Cloud WAF Service

Compared 18% of the time

Imperva Web Application Firewall vs Radware Cloud WAF Service

Compared 9% of the time

Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs Radware Cloud WAF Service

Compared 6% of the time

More Radware Cloud WAF Service Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

NetScaler

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Radware Cloud WAF Service

April 2025

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Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall

No data available

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

One platform for a consistent application delivery and security experience because nobody has time to learn multiple systems to manage ADC deployments. NetScaler is built with a single code base using a software-based architecture, so no matter which ADC form factor you choose — hardware, virtual machine, bare metal, or container — the behavior will be the same.

NetScaler

Radware’s Cloud WAF provides enterprise-grade, continuously adaptive web application security protection. Based on Radware’s ICSA Labs certified, market-leading web application firewall, it provides full coverage of OWASP Top-10 threats and zero-day attacks, while implementing both negative and positive web application security models to automatically adapt protections to evolving threats and protected assets.

Radware’s Cloud WAF offers full web security protection including OWASP Top-10 coverage, advanced attack protection and 0-day attack protection by implementing both negative and positive web application security models. It provides organizations “frictionless” application protection by automatically detecting and protecting new web applications as they are added to the network through automatic policy generation technology.

Radware

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

NetScaler vs. Radware Cloud WAF Service

April 2025

Free Report: NetScaler vs. Radware Cloud WAF Service

Find out what your peers are saying about NetScaler vs. Radware Cloud WAF Service and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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