NGINX App Protect vs Radware Cloud WAF Service comparison

F5 and Radware are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. F5 is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.5, while Radware is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.8. Additionally, 95% of F5 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

NGINX App Protect and Radware Cloud WAF Service compete in the application security category. Radware Cloud WAF holds an edge with its comprehensive DDoS protection, API protection, and CDN capabilities which appeal to a broader range of users.

Features: NGINX App Protect provides robust security features such as auto-learning for application profiles, signature-based detection, and bot protection. It also offers flexibility with a command-line interface and reverse proxy capabilities for various applications. Radware Cloud WAF Service is known for its DDoS protection, API protection, and CDN features. It also excels in bot management and provides automated analytics for efficient event examination.

Room for Improvement: NGINX App Protect could enhance integration features, automation processes, and API scaling. Manual policy handling and the lack of WebSocket inspection are also noted drawbacks. Radware Cloud WAF Service could improve reporting tools, SSL certificate handling, and integration with enterprise tools such as SIEM. Easier configuration management and enhanced alerting systems are also recommended.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NGINX App Protect is mainly deployed in on-premises and private cloud environments, making it suitable for tailored deployments. However, users report mixed experiences with technical support, citing high costs and occasional delays. Radware Cloud WAF Service is usually implemented in public cloud environments, offering ease of deployment. The customer support is responsive, although support waits can occur due to high demand.

Pricing and ROI: NGINX App Protect is perceived as expensive but more affordable than some competitors like Imperva, with users noting a favorable ROI with improved network security. Radware Cloud WAF Service is seen as competitively priced, particularly when compared to solutions like F5. Users value its modular pricing model despite feedback on additional costs for features such as bot management, justifying its price with a robust package for many reviewers.

To learn more, read our detailed NGINX App Protect vs. Radware Cloud WAF Service Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

NGINX App Protect vs. Radware Cloud WAF Service

December 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:

ROI

Sentiment score

6.5

Cloudflare users experienced increased performance, security, and cost-effectiveness, leading to improved loyalty and revenue despite difficult ROI calculations.

Sentiment score

6.9

Organizations saw positive ROI with NGINX App Protect during COVID-19, improving security and integration, anticipating future benefits.

Sentiment score

6.1

Radware Cloud WAF Service enhances security, automates tasks, reduces costs, and improves uptime, efficiency, and bandwidth management.

For the small project I was working on, using the basic tier provided a huge improvement at zero cost.

Wellington Malagutti

Security Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

In terms of return on investment with Cloudflare, it costs my time to set them up, but basically once they're set up, it's done.

Herb Angle

Owner at Hga consulting

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the NGINX App Protect report

I wouldn't be able to give a number, but Radware Cloud WAF does save time for our staff due to the automation and excellent detection, which is invaluable.

Haris Ishaq

IT Engineer at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees

With our on-prem solution, we spent a lot of time on maintenance tasks, OS updates, and ensuring appliances ran smoothly, but with Cloud WAF, all that is managed by the cloud team, allowing us to focus on alert analysis.

Augustine Abule

Application Supervisor at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

We get major insights from the analytics rules and dashboards, allowing us to pinpoint main issues.

Tushar Makwana

IT Security Engineer at Adani Enterprises Ltd

For more quotes and insights, download the Radware Cloud WAF Service report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

7.0

Cloudflare's customer service is quick, but technical support feedback is mixed, with improvement needed in responsiveness and detailed assistance.

Sentiment score

6.3

NGINX App Protect support is praised for promptness and helpfulness but inconsistencies and costs affect user satisfaction.

Sentiment score

7.4

Radware Cloud WAF is praised for quick, knowledgeable support but needs improvements in API support and documentation clarity.

Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model.

reviewer1245303

Senior Consultant CDN at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to call them.

Herb Angle

Owner at Hga consulting

I have primarily worked not with the tool's customer support but with the product's sales engineers and technical sales engineers, who seem to know their stuff.

reviewer2541525

Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

They were quick and efficient when we had issues.

Jean-Marc Porchet

Project Manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the NGINX App Protect report

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate the technical support that Radware provides for Cloud WAF Service a perfect ten.

Tushar Makwana

IT Security Engineer at Adani Enterprises Ltd

I would give the Radware technical support a ten out of ten. They are definitely outstanding.

Pankaj Kaushik

Security Operations Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

The support provided by Radware's Emergency Response Team is excellent.

OMPRAKASH

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

For more quotes and insights, download the Radware Cloud WAF Service report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

8.1

Users praise Cloudflare for seamless scalability, effective traffic management, easy upgrades, and robust global infrastructure without disruptions.

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

8.0

Radware Cloud WAF Service excels in scalability, handling traffic surges and diverse industries with seamless integration and high performance.

It is a SaaS tool, but the fact that they have workloads deployed across the world proves that it is a highly scalable tool.

reviewer2541525

Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

The tool offers very good performance, even during high-traffic periods.

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch

Engineer at SITMEXICO

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

Prajith Chowthee

Independent Consultant at Unaikui

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

No quotes available

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The scalability of Radware Cloud WAF Service rates as a perfect ten out of ten, as we haven't encountered any scaling issues.

Augustine Abule

Application Supervisor at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

The scalability of the Radware Cloud WAF Service deserves a full ten, as it is definitely scalable.

Rahul Tripathi

IT Engineer at Adani Enterprises Ltd

In terms of scalability, it's also a 10 out of 10 because we are using Radware Cloud WAF Service for more than 60,000 employees in our organization, and it works perfectly fine.

Ankit Tadha

SOC Analyst at Adani Enterprises Ltd

For more quotes and insights, download the Radware Cloud WAF Service report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

7.6

Cloudflare is highly rated for stability and uptime, with few past issues, especially on higher-tier plans.

Sentiment score

8.4

NGINX App Protect is praised for stability and integration, outperforming competitors, though minor improvements in HTML5 are needed.

Sentiment score

7.9

Radware Cloud WAF Service is praised for stability and reliability, with most users experiencing nearly perfect uptime.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

Prajith Chowthee

Independent Consultant at Unaikui

The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch

Engineer at SITMEXICO

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

It is a quality solution, and I would rate its stability as eight out of ten.

reviewer2676000

IT Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the NGINX App Protect report

I have never encountered downtime, maintenance-related issues, or latency.

OMPRAKASH

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

The stability of Radware Cloud WAF Service is excellent, and I would rate it as a ten.

Cristian Tello

Security Team Leader at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The stability of Radware Cloud WAF Service is perfect; I would rate it a ten out of ten.

Pranav-Patel

IT Manager at Adani Enterprises Ltd

For more quotes and insights, download the Radware Cloud WAF Service report

Room For Improvement

Enhancements needed in Cloudflare: analytics, CDN latency, API integration, user support, DNS, pricing, documentation, server coverage, WAF, and cache.

NGINX App Protect requires improved flexibility, UI, API, automation, network support, pricing, integration, and feature enhancements like security and documentation.

Radware Cloud WAF Service faces integration, support, and UI issues; improvements in language support and API management are needed.

Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.

Bilal Mujahid

Managed Services Manager at Adapture Technology Group

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.

Darryl Wethington

Senior Cloud Solution Architect at Integrated Technology Solution Group (ITSG)

There are some performance considerations when it comes to dynamic content that involves fetching data from databases or using APIs.

Animesh.Kumar

Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

There was more information from F5 regarding hardware requirements and specifications to deploy the service.

reviewer2676000

IT Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the NGINX App Protect report

It would be beneficial if we could perform POST requests and integrate our applications more effectively.

reviewer1854075

System Admin at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The documentation is not up to par, as while the platform's system is robust, the documentation, particularly for API integration, could be more developer-friendly with real-world use cases.

Tanuj-Garg

CIO at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

Improving dashboard capabilities to provide this information clearly for management is crucial.

OMPRAKASH

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

For more quotes and insights, download the Radware Cloud WAF Service report

Setup Cost

Cloudflare offers scalable pricing, from free to enterprise plans, providing significant value especially for mid-sized companies.

NGINX App Protect costs $3,000-$400,000 annually, considered expensive but competitive, with no hidden fees and strategic cost management possible.

Radware Cloud WAF is competitively priced with flexible licensing, customizable features, and negotiable terms, appealing to enterprise users.

I find it to be cheap.

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch

Engineer at SITMEXICO

I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.

Animesh.Kumar

Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions

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

reviewer2541525

Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the NGINX App Protect report

Pricing could be more competitive, especially for smaller customers.

reviewer2102988

EVP, Chief Digital officer and head of Cybersecurity at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

I find Radware Cloud WAF to be a quite expensive product compared to others.

reviewer2667027

engineer with 51-200 employees

The pricing is not cheap; it is expensive, but it is effective.

reviewer2619747

Cyber security manager at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Radware Cloud WAF Service report

Valuable Features

Cloudflare enhances performance and security with CDN caching, DDoS protection, and an easy-to-use dashboard, benefiting many users.

NGINX App Protect provides comprehensive security features including automation, containerization, and flexible API connectivity for robust application protection.

Radware Cloud WAF Service offers advanced, AI-enhanced security with Layer 7 defense, DDoS protection, and easy integration for organizations.

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

Darryl Wethington

Senior Cloud Solution Architect at Integrated Technology Solution Group (ITSG)

Techniques like minification and image compression reduce the size of assets, leading to better performance and faster user load times.

Animesh.Kumar

Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions

The solution has been able to compare it to the market, and I think the product has taken great strides in automating quite a bit of things, and they use a lot of AI.

reviewer2541525

Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

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.

reviewer2676000

IT Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Detecting bots and blocking IPs have proven effective for securing applications.

Jean-Marc Porchet

Project Manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the NGINX App Protect report

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.

reviewer2102988

EVP, Chief Digital officer and head of Cybersecurity at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

It has features such as API security that protect against advanced attacks, including business logic attacks.

Augustine Abule

Application Supervisor at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

The automated analytics for looking at events in Radware Cloud WAF Service are working for us; the automatic event correlation is very beneficial to analyze how the alerts and events occur and visualize the patterns of network traffic and other traffic going in and out from the application via Radware Cloud WAF Service.

Rahul Tripathi

IT Engineer at Adani Enterprises Ltd

For more quotes and insights, download the Radware Cloud WAF Service report

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare

Featured Reviews

Herb Angle

Owner at Hga consulting

Has helped manage client domains with streamlined access control and threat visibility

I don't know what areas could be improved with Cloudflare WAF; Cloudflare is constantly improving and adding features to their feature set. They're doing a good job, and as far as DNS and support for any domains that I create or my clients create, it's mandatory for me to make sure that they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider. The Cloudflare load balancing capability hasn't really helped in enhancing my website's uptime and resiliency because we don't really get that much traffic; it's mostly remote users, and web hosting is done by a web hosting service. It doesn't pay to try to host your own website.

Read full review

Jean-Marc Porchet

Project Manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Blocking IPs and detecting bots enhances security for medical websites

I was researching products like NGINX App Protect and F5 Advanced WAF for long-term options. I have some use for such a solution, but probably not before next year Detecting bots and blocking IPs have proven effective for securing applications. We were able to block groups of IP addresses that…

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Ankit Tadha

SOC Analyst at Adani Enterprises Ltd

Has significantly improved threat visibility and reduced false positives through intelligent bot detection and real-time analysis

The best features of Radware Cloud WAF Service that I prefer most include the bot protection. Its deployment was very smooth and flexible when I started deploying it. The reporting and visibility feature of the Bot Manager are noteworthy, as the dashboard gives clear insight into the traffic, activity, and block threats. The AI threat intelligence feature is quite impressive. In terms of blocking unknown threats and attacks, I assess Radware Cloud WAF Service as quite impressive; if I have to rate it out of 10, I would rate it eight and a half. The automated analytics for looking at events with Radware Cloud WAF Service is generally fine, and whenever we use it, it gives almost perfect results. In API protection with Radware Cloud WAF Service, we have multiple applications that we are using currently, and whenever there is any threat related to an API, it helps us provide detailed insight. Additionally, whenever there is unusual API traffic, it helps us monitor and detect threats.

Read full review

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

18%

Energy/Utilities Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	25

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	11

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	37

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 NGINX App Protect?

It's very easy to deploy.

See all answers

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 t...

See all answers

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 requir...

See all answers

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

Regarding current pricing, it is managed by our higher authorities, but I believe the price is reasonable for our org...

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What needs improvement with Radware Cloud WAF Service?

Although I don't consider it to have significant downsides, I believe the UI could be improved to be more user-friend...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Radware Cloud WAF Service?

My use cases for Radware Cloud WAF Service in my current organization, where I serve as a Cyber Security expert and S...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Myra Security DDoS Protection vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Azure Front Door vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 12% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 9% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 7% of the time

AWS WAF vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 6% of the time

More NGINX App Protect Competitors

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Radware Cloud WAF Service

Compared 14% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Radware Cloud WAF Service

Compared 14% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Radware Cloud WAF Service

Compared 10% of the time

F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs Radware Cloud WAF Service

Compared 9% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Radware Cloud WAF Service

Compared 8% of the time

More Radware Cloud WAF Service Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

January 2026

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

NGINX App Protect

December 2025

Download NGINX App Protect product report

Buyer's Guide

Radware Cloud WAF Service

December 2025

Download Radware Cloud WAF Service product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

NGINX WAF, NGINX Web Application Firewall

No data available

Overview

Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.

Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.

What are Cloudflare's key features?

CDN Caching: Enhances website speed through content delivery network caching.
Web Application Firewall: Protects websites from online threats.
DDoS Mitigation: Shields against distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DNS Management: Offers easy-to-use and flexible domain management.
SSL Certificates: Ensures secure connections between users and servers.
Analytics: Provides insights with robust analytics tools.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Enhanced Security: Strengthening web security with DDoS and firewall protection.
Speed Improvement: Faster content delivery with CDN caching.
Operational Simplicity: Simplifies website optimization through a user-friendly interface.
Scalable Solutions: Scales with global reach, lowering latency for improved performance.
Cost Efficiency: Offers layers of valuable functionality with pricing options.

Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.

Cloudflare

NGINX App Protect application security solution combines the efficacy of advanced F5 web application firewall (WAF) technology with the agility and performance of NGINX Plus. The solution runs natively on NGINX Plus and addresses some of the most difficult challenges facing modern DevOps environments:

Integrating security controls directly into the development automation pipeline
Applying and managing security for modern and distributed application environments such as containers and microservices
Providing the right level of security controls without impacting release and go-to-market velocity
Complying with security and regulatory requirements

NGINX App Protect offers:

Expanded security beyond basic signatures to ensure adequate controls
F5 app‑security technology for efficacy superior to ModSecurity and other WAFs
Confidently run in “blocking” mode in production with proven F5 expertise
High‑confidence signatures for extremely low false positives
Increases visibility, integrating with third‑party analytics solutions
Integrates security and WAF natively into the CI/CD pipeline
Deploys as a lightweight software package that is agnostic of underlying infrastructure
Facilitates declarative policies for “security as code” and integration with DevOps tools
Decreases developer burden and provides feedback loop for quick security remediation
Accelerates time to market and reduces costs with DevSecOps‑automated security

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.

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

NGINX App Protect vs. Radware Cloud WAF Service

December 2025

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Find out what your peers are saying about NGINX App Protect vs. Radware Cloud WAF Service and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

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