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NGINX App Protect vs Wallarm NG WAF comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

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 ...
Sponsored
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
6th
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)
19th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (28th), API Security (9th)
Wallarm NG WAF
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
39th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
API Security (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 3.8%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX App Protect is 2.1%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Wallarm NG WAF is 1.0%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall3.8%
NGINX App Protect2.1%
Wallarm NG WAF1.0%
Other93.1%
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.
it_user796242 - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Helps us to monitor attacks to our sites and prevents a lot of them
Set up Wallarm as a reverse proxy. Do not replace your web server. Use Wallarm first in monitoring mode, then learn from Wallarm which type of request is false positive and which type of request is not. This process takes a couple of weeks for very highly-loaded web applications (few millions of unique visitors in one month). Then you can turn Wallarm into blocking mode and everything will be fine. Do not forget to build a monitoring system, the wave, and API for it. Before we started using Wallarm, I already knew Ivan (CEO) and Stepan (COO) from a couple of years before. Ivan had his own security company and Stepan was working on a Russian security magazine called Xakep. They told us that they wanted to create a new WAF and already had a working version of it. They asked me to test it. We did tests, and it was really good. After few month after testing, we signed an agreement. Our choice was made not because we knew these guys for a long time, but because the product was really cool and we were glad to start using it as one of the first on the market!

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudflare WAF provides protection through rules and functionalities like Cloudflare's SDRAP."
"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."
"I'm highly satisfied. It's remarkably user-friendly, enabling me to quickly identify issues, and deploy solutions, and it offers the necessary features."
"The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10."
"The rate limiting features and customizations in terms of URL match and applying policies are valuable to me."
"The impact of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's integration with existing web technologies on our site's performance and security measures is quite great, actually."
"We extensively use the solution every day. The solution is very stable; we haven’t seen any glitches."
"The product has improved our security posture by blocking bad actors."
"The stability of the product is very impressive since it handles 60,000 to 70,000 requests or transactions per second."
"The most valuable feature of NGINX App Protect is the reverse proxy."
"The tool is not complex and is very user-friendly."
"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 policies are flexible based on the technologies you use."
"NGINX is very scalable, which is a great advantage of this product."
"It has the best documentation features."
"Overall, I rate NGINX App Protect between eight and nine."
"Helps us to monitor situation in regards to attacks to our sites and prevents a lot of them."
"The most powerful feature is the ability to first learn what type of query to make to your web application when it is attacked and what type of query creates a false positive to your app."
"They are the only solution that fits our success criteria and business objectives: WAF must have a low (<5%) false negative rate and be ready to protect from all well-known web attacks."
"With active threat detection, we are no longer over-swamped with tons of useless events."
"Vulnerability scanner and WAF are valuable features."
"Perimeter control and active vulnerability scanner are the most valuable features."
 

Cons

"The platform's control features related to real-time authentication and response time need improvement."
"We have noticed some latency when the call goes through the firewall. That could be improved."
"I have experienced some difficulties with Cloudflare's support as a customer based in India."
"They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long."
"If they add logs history within the Cloudflare offering, that would be a great benefit."
"We don't even use Cloudflare Bot Management because it's too expensive; you need to pay per request, and it's much cheaper to get one or two additional machines."
"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well."
"They could provide a better user interface."
"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 implementation."
"Areas for improvement would be if NGINX could scan for vulnerabilities and learn and update the signatures of DoS attacks."
"The setup of NGINX App Protect is complex. The full process took one week to complete. Additionally, we had to change the network infrastructure platform which took one month."
"The integration of NGINX App Protect could improve."
"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."
"As far as scalability, it takes a long time for deployment."
"It doesn't have more advanced features like no false-positive security, which you can configure in Advanced WAF."
"Technical support is 6 or 7 out of 10. Sometimes we have had trouble with communication and understanding."
"There were several stability issues during the first pilot."
"Wallarm uses a learning mechanism to detect attacks and to avoid false positives. If Wallarm blocks some illegitimate request, then you can go to the management console and mark this request as false positive, but sometimes this does not work properly."
"The biggest problem for us was the stability and speed using the first version of Wallarm. Now, it is fine."
"It needs more customization in PDF reports."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"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."
"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's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"It is not too pricey."
"The product's price is high."
"NGINX App Protect is expensive."
"The price of NGINX App Protect is not much different from the products that fall under the leader category of Gartner Magic Quadrant."
"NGINX is not expensive."
"There is a monthly or annual subscription to use NGINX App Protect. There are not any additional costs to the subscription."
"The price of NGINX App Protect is approximately $3,000 annually. All of our licenses are observed by a managed service partner."
"Really understand the licensing model, because we underestimated that."
"There are no additional fees."
"​Pricing must be cheaper than the competition and the licensing must be good.​"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Government
11%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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 Enterprise7
Large Enterprise14
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 did not face any issues with NGINX App Protect. The only issue that we had is that someone was trying to install th...
What is your primary use case for NGINX App Protect?
I have been dealing with NGINX App Protect and the WAF policy. I usually recommend NGINX App Protect for banking and ...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
NGINX WAF, NGINX Web Application Firewall
Wallarm NG-WAF
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Information Not Available
Panasonic. Miro. Rappi. Wargaming. Gannett. Omio. Acronis. Workforce Software. Tipalti. SEMRush.
Find out what your peers are saying about NGINX App Protect vs. Wallarm NG WAF and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,153 professionals have used our research since 2012.