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NGINX App Protect vs StackPath WAF comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

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
NGINX App Protect
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
15th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (27th), API Security (7th)
StackPath WAF
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
48th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 NGINX App Protect is 2.2%, up from 1.7% 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
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall5.4%
NGINX App Protect2.2%
StackPath WAF0.4%
Other92.0%
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.
Valerio Guaglianone - PeerSpot reviewer
Dev Ops Engineer at adesso AG
Long-term web protection has supported reliable traffic management but needs a simpler interface
NGINX App Protect is a good product. I have used both versions from F5 -also the free version- (I mean the NGINX/NGINX One/App Protect free trial period), and I think it is a good product. It's stable, affordable, and easy to manage. NGINX App Protect is a comprehensive security solution that combines advanced WAF, DoS protection, API security, and DevSecOps automation in a lightweight, scalable package ideal for modern cloud-native architectures. The adaptive machine learning capabilities are truly commendable, as the solution can establish traffic baselines and detect anomalies in real time. It automatically adjusts security policies, minimizing the need for manual intervention and reducing false positives. Additionally, it supports scalable deployment across diverse environments, including on-premises, cloud, Kubernetes, and containers, offering both flexibility and scalability I have experience with the web server, F5 load balancer, and similar products provided by Ergon, for eg. the web application firewall and the Microgateway for K8S. I'm also familiar with F5 BIG-IP products.
FC
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…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support has a very fast response time and they are helpful."
"The setup process is very simple for me."
"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."
"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."
"Does a good job preventing web application attacks."
"The security features are valuable. The particular feature we use is called OWASP."
"The rate limiting features and customizations in terms of URL match and applying policies are valuable to me."
"The most valuable feature of NGINX App Protect is the reverse proxy."
"This solution is very much stable."
"WAF is useful to track mitigation, inclusion, prevention, and the parametric firewall."
"It's very easy to deploy."
"Overall, I rate NGINX App Protect between eight and nine."
"It is a very good tool for load balancing."
"I really love NGINX App Protect; I love the functionality, the ease of implementation, the very user-friendly Instance Manager, and its integration with DevOps, and as an NGINX Ingress controller using the Plus certificate it is working perfectly and making things a lot easier than the regular one while successfully stopping threats like injection, running scripts, and SQL injections."
"NGINX App Protect's best features are auto-learning, which creates a profile of applications that are deployed, bot protection, and force protection, which lets you configure your brute force policy and alert for and prevent brute force attacks."
"The product’s most valuable is WAF. The authentication feature helps us protect WordPress sites."
 

Cons

"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."
"Its stability could be better."
"The rate limiting functionality could be enhanced, as we find it somewhat limited."
"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."
"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."
"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."
"Cloudflare should update the version of the ModSecurity core rule set that they run on."
"I think NGINX App Protect could be improved by having it come out of the box with NGINX."
"Right now, the tool doesn't provide an option revolving around update feeds, specifically the signature update option in the UI."
"They could provide a better user interface."
"This solution is not really scalable. Both the virtual appliance and the physical appliance are limited in terms of how much traffic they can handle."
"The integration of NGINX App Protect could improve."
"NGINX's technical support is good, but sometimes their response time is delayed, or they don't have the technical skills to resolve issues."
"Areas for improvement would be if NGINX could scan for vulnerabilities and learn and update the signatures of DoS attacks."
"The product's price is high, making it an area of concern where improvements are required. The tool's licensing model is also not good."
"The product’s performance for caching feature needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"The solution is expensive."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"There is a license needed to use NGINX App Protect."
"The solution's price is reasonable."
"Really understand the licensing model, because we underestimated that."
"The pricing is reasonable because NGINX operates on an instance basis."
"The price of NGINX App Protect is not much different from the products that fall under the leader category of Gartner Magic Quadrant."
"Our licensing costs are about $40,000 a year."
"NGINX App Protect is expensive."
"There are no additional fees."
"The product is affordable."
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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%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
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 Business9
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise12
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX App Protect?
I will not be able to answer about my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for NGINX App Protect, as so...
What needs improvement with NGINX App Protect?
I think NGINX App Protect could be improved by having it come out of the box with NGINX.
What is your primary use case for NGINX App Protect?
My main use case for NGINX App Protect is primarily in our infrastructure layer with Kubernetes, as I am using it to ...
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Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
NGINX WAF, NGINX Web Application Firewall
StackPath Web Application Firewall
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Information Not Available
Robotics Cats, Jewlr
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, F5, Imperva and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: March 2026.
884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.