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Azure Application Gateway vs. F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Azure Application Gateway

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft's Azure Application Gateway is a platform-managed, scalable, and highly available application delivery controller as a service with integrated web application firewall.N/A

    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF

    Score9.4 out of 10
    N/AF5 Networks offers the Advanced Web Application Firewall (WAF) to provide bot defense, advanced application protection, anti-bot SDK, and other features.N/A
    Pricing
    Azure Application GatewayF5 Big-IP Advanced WAF
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Azure Application GatewayF5 Big-IP Advanced WAF
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Azure Application GatewayF5 Big-IP Advanced WAF
    Considered Both Products
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    F5
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    9 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    20 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    8 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    18 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    9 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    20 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    7 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    14 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    9 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    17 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    Azure Application GatewayF5 Big-IP Advanced WAF
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    NetScaler
    Score8 out of 10
    F5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    NetScaler
    Score8 out of 10
    F5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Azure Application GatewayF5 Big-IP Advanced WAF
    Likelihood to Recommend
    10.0
    (9 ratings)
    9.6
    (21 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.4
    (10 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Azure Application GatewayF5 Big-IP Advanced WAF
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Microsoft
    For building scalable and highly available applications, Azure Application Gateway does most of the job on behalf of you; automatically load-balancing traffic from a number of users to a number of back-end servers. This ensure scalability and availability. The in-built security is great as can be expected from Microsoft, and user has a variety of tools for monitoring the health of the load-balancing function as well as the health of back end servers behind it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    I believe that in industrial environments like ours where we have to have bare metal devices near the production environment combined with hybrid cloud, that is a good platform. That's a good use case. It optimizes traffic. It helps us stay more secure in our data centers. Now with regards to that are fully operating in the cloud, I'm not really sure if we would make the same decision considering the option that I said to have something that is self-provision to avoid too much management of virtual machines on the cloud. So that's an area of improvement.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Microsoft
    • Easy integration with Load Balancer and Azure Scale Set to provide a full solution for traffic management.
    • With rich routing rule, we could use one Application Gateway as the central point for all internal applications to expose to the external network.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    • So the product definitely is helping us for sudden attacks through DDOS, some injection ingestion into UI URLs, and definitely it's capturing those and I definitely see that as an advantage for us. They can stop the hackers from using our endpoints.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Microsoft
    • More cost-effective pricing plans are welcome for the future, especially for WAF
    • Ability to automate the TLS certificate renewal procedure
    • Ability to manage non-HTTP traffic
    Incentivized
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    F5
    • The UI for events. E.g., clicking the "Accept" button does nothing.
    • Traffic learning suggestions are often very incorrect. We were originally suggested to use "Automatic" learning, and had to completely scrap the policy due to the suggestions.
    • "All in one" dashboard for viewing application URL/parameter overrides per policy.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    F5
    We just love work with f5
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Microsoft
    Most of the Application Gateway's features and services can be managed and re-configured via either the Azure Portal GUI or via the Azure Cloud Shell, thus allowing both CLI modes, i.e. Azure CLI (Bash) and Azure Powershell. The v2 version of Application Gateway has significantly improved performance during initial configuration or during re-configuration changes, thus making it much more usable for IT admins, as compared to v1.
    Incentivized
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    F5
    Most* of it is very intuitive and easy to use. The "Help" section is fairly fantastic. See some of my other comments about things like the "Traffic Learning" section being wildly wrong sometimes, and also the event logs with UI buttons that don't do anything. Overall though, it's an excellent product.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Microsoft
    I don’t like that it's part of the Microsoft brand. In general, I am not a fan of Microsoft products but Azure gets it right.
    Incentivized
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    F5
    Highly knowledgeable engineers who understand complex networking and application-delivery issues.


    Strong escalation paths — once a case reaches senior engineers, resolutions are fast and accurate.


    Comprehensive documentation and many self-service resources for troubleshooting.


    Clear communication with well-structured updates throughout the ticket lifecycle.


    Excellent for critical incidents, with reliable guidance during high-severity outages.


    Deep product expertise across BIG-IP, ASM/Advanced WAF, GTM/DNS, and modern F5 services.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Microsoft
    Other load balancing tools in Azure (Azure LB and Azure Traffic Manager) are limited in their functionality in comparison with the Azure Application Gateway, and also, they don't provide security features. Azure Firewall, although it has security features, is more expensive, and most importantly, it's not a load balancer at all.
    Incentivized
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    F5
    -Stable data path equals to less crashes -Almost all the features working as expected -Provides more granular controls in allowing false positives -Request evaluation is accurate -Irules feature is a plus
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Microsoft
    • Positive : Improved performance and scalability
    • Positive : Better and enhanced Security
    • Positive : Efficiency
    • Negative: Cost
    • Negative: More resources to manage.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    • One impact F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF has on our organization's overall business objectives is that F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF is security sensitive
    • Another impact F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF has on our organization's overall business objectives is the F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF blocking feature
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots