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NGINX App Protect vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 25, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.9
Organizations saw positive ROI with NGINX App Protect during COVID-19, improving security and integration, anticipating future benefits.
Sentiment score
7.3
Prisma Cloud improves security, reduces risk, and enhances efficiency with automation, despite cost challenges and complex ROI calculations.
It eliminates the need for additional hardware, making it a financially and technically sound investment.
From a security standpoint, we have significantly enhanced our client's security posture by implementing Prisma Cloud.
The platform is not famous for being cheap. It is quite expensive, but we know that we have the protection, so there is enough value for what we pay for.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.3
NGINX App Protect support is praised for promptness and helpfulness but inconsistencies and costs affect user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
7.1
Prisma Cloud generally receives high praise for its responsive technical support, despite occasional delays and region-specific variability.
They were quick and efficient when we had issues.
Whenever I have issues with the solution, I will get an immediate response from the product team and they will try to close the issue as soon as possible.
When you send them a message, you get a response in a minute or two.
They can respond with technical documentation or pass on the case to the next level because it requires the development of a new feature or changing a feature due to a bug.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.5
NGINX App Protect is scalable with diverse options but faces deployment, traffic, and configuration centralization challenges noted by users.
Sentiment score
7.8
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks offers scalable, flexible performance across multi-cloud environments, supporting seamless expansion and integration.
It's very scalable and very easy to use.
I would rate the scalability of Prisma Cloud as an eight out of ten.
I am highly impressed with the product's scalability.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
NGINX App Protect is praised for stability and integration, outperforming competitors, though minor improvements in HTML5 are needed.
Sentiment score
8.0
Prisma Cloud is generally stable with minimal issues, rare downtimes, and is highly rated by users for reliability.
It is a quality solution, and I would rate its stability as eight out of ten.
I cannot recall any downtime with the solution.
I would rate it a ten out of ten for stability.
The tool responds well in small-scale infrastructures, functioning perfectly without any issues.
 

Room For Improvement

NGINX App Protect requires improved flexibility, UI, API, automation, network support, pricing, integration, and feature enhancements like security and documentation.
Prisma Cloud needs better documentation, usability, automation, security features, customizable reports, and faster support for improved efficiency.
There was more information from F5 regarding hardware requirements and specifications to deploy the service.
It is a SaaS solution, but some of my clients have a local regulatory requirement, and they want to install it locally on their premises.
From a developer's perspective, especially for organizations like banks developing their applications, ensuring API security before deploying them to the cloud is crucial.
Prisma Cloud is an excellent tool.
 

Setup Cost

NGINX App Protect costs $3,000-$400,000 annually, considered expensive but competitive, with no hidden fees and strategic cost management possible.
Prisma Cloud's higher pricing is justified by its comprehensive features, but licensing complexity concerns some enterprise buyers.
Prisma Cloud is remarkably expensive.
The cost was not on the higher side.
That's why a lot of our clients are shifting from cloud-native to Prisma Cloud: because of its effectiveness and because it is budget-friendly as well.
 

Valuable Features

NGINX App Protect provides comprehensive security features including automation, containerization, and flexible API connectivity for robust application protection.
Prisma Cloud offers multi-cloud security with compliance, automation, CI/CD integration, and quick threat response via a centralized platform.
The most valuable feature is the ability to operate in a DevOps environment and to be configured through API and pipeline by the developers themselves.
Detecting bots and blocking IPs have proven effective for securing applications.
Security posture management is the most valuable feature.
We could spread the Prisma Cloud platform to 16 countries without encountering any kind of problem.
Prisma Cloud provides risk clarity at runtime and across the entire pipeline, like, showing issues as they're discovered during the build phases.
 

Categories and Ranking

NGINX App Protect
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
15th
Ranking in Container Security
21st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
API Security (2nd)
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
5th
Ranking in Container Security
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (1st), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of NGINX App Protect is 1.8%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is 2.1%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

Tomaz Sobczak - PeerSpot reviewer
Signature-based detection, DOS protection, and bot protection
NGINX App Protect is easier to automate and configure, or manage from an API. This is good for securing applications. However, it's not suitable for more complex tasks. NGINX App Protect positively impacted performance changes. There's a cache or it works like a proxy, so it can speed up applications. It can also offload some functions from servers, which NGINX can handle faster.
Mohammad Qaw - PeerSpot reviewer
It gives you one console to see all of your assets, review their configurations, and build your processes
Most customers use Prisma Cloud for visibility and compliance. Prisma has so many features, but many organizations do not use them. They primarily use the visibility part to connect all their cloud accounts and hosts for visibility to see if they are missing any security controls or if they have any misconfigurations. You can connect it to cloud environments such as Azure, AWS, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba, etc., or to an on-prem data center. Prisma Cloud gives you so many options to automate processes related to your daily operations. When it comes to cybersecurity, you can automate things with their existing APIs. They also have out-of-the-box integrations with many solutions. I have not seen any limitations. Everything is customizable. You can do whatever you want, defining the reporting and custom use cases. They recently updated the UI, so it's much better than before.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Retailer
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Educational Organization
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX App Protect?
I don't know the pricing yet because in my other project, I was not part of the buying side and I was just starting to look at options.
What needs improvement with NGINX App Protect?
It would be better if it were easier to implement and if there was more information from F5 regarding hardware requirements and specifications to deploy the service, to avoid disruptions after impl...
What is your primary use case for Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks ?
Prisma Cloud helps support DevSecOps methodologies, making those responsibilities easier to manage.
What Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform do you recommend?
We like Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, since it offers us incredible visibility into our entire cloud system. We are able to easily see where our container vulnerabilities lie and and where cl...
What do you think of Aqua Security vs Prisma Cloud?
Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valuable feature and their speed of integration is very good. The initial setup was ...
 

Also Known As

NGINX WAF, NGINX Web Application Firewall
Prisma Public Cloud, RedLock Cloud 360, RedLock, Twistlock, Aporeto
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Amgen, Genpact, Western Asset, Zipongo, Proofpoint, NerdWallet, Axfood, 21st Century Fox, Veeva Systems, Reinsurance Group of America
Find out what your peers are saying about NGINX App Protect vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.