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F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF vs. F5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall) vs. HAProxy Community Edition

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    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

    F5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)

    Score9.2 out of 10
    N/AF5 Distributed Cloud WAF leverages F5's Advanced WAF technology, delivering WAF-as-a-Service and combining signature- and behavior-based protection for web applications. It acts as an intermediate proxy to inspect application requests and responses to block and mitigate a broad spectrum of risks stemming from the OW ASP Top 10, persistent and coordinated threat campaigns, bots, and layer 7 DoS.N/A

    HAProxy Community Edition

    Score9.3 out of 10
    N/AHAProxy Community Edition is a free, open source reverse-proxy offering high availability, load balancing, and proxying for TCP and HTTP-based applications. It is presented as suited for very high traffic web sites.

    $0

    Pricing
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFF5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)HAProxy Community Edition
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFF5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)HAProxy Community Edition
    Free Trial
    NoYesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional Details———
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFF5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)HAProxy Community Edition
    Considered Multiple Products
    F5
    Chose F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF
    -Stable data path equals to less crashes
    -Almost all the features working as expected
    -Provides more granular controls in allowing false positives
    Incentivized
    F5
    Chose F5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)
    Much simpler to enable and apply. No concerns of resource usage on hardware appliances
    Incentivized
    Chose F5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)
    A lot of companies already use the BIG-IP and this is the most seen combination.
    Incentivized
    Chose F5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)
    F5 Distributed Cloud WAF IS ALREADY ESTABLISHED WITH SOLUTIONS LIKE BIG IP SO IT IS EASIER FOR ANY VENDOR TO PUT THEIR TRUST ON F5 SOLUTIONS
    Incentivized
    Open Source
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    20 Answers
    98%
    Would buy again
    178 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    18 Answers
    95%
    Delivers good value for the price
    158 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    20 Answers
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    174 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    14 Answers
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    129 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    17 Answers
    95%
    Implementation went as expected
    142 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Best Alternatives
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFF5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)HAProxy Community Edition
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    F5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)
    Score9.2 out of 10
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF
    Score9.4 out of 10
    F5 BIG-IP
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    F5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)
    Score9.2 out of 10
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF
    Score9.4 out of 10
    F5 BIG-IP
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFF5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)HAProxy Community Edition
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.6
    (21 ratings)
    9.2
    (180 ratings)
    9.0
    (7 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    7.7
    (11 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    8.4
    (10 ratings)
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    9.7
    (2 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.6
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFF5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)HAProxy Community Edition
    Likelihood to Recommend
    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
    F5
    It is doing its job effectively, and its scalability is superb. So, if you have a mixed environment with cloud and on-premise systems to protect this product, provide a solution to the challenge. However, its management is more suited to DevOps teams rather than to the ones responsible for on-premise systems, making the management a bit more complex.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    It prevents a single server failure from being a downtime event by adding redundancy to every layer of your architecture. A load balancer facilitates redundancy for the backend layer (web/app servers), but for a true high availability setup, you need to have redundant load balancers as well. So it is well suited for all production related servers and less suited for individual servers that do not require redundancy.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    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
    F5
    • Layer seven attacks are becoming far more common. Traditionally it was always layered three, layer four, where you get an additional firewall, but with the application layer attacks become more frequent, more popular, et cetera. So having the web application firewall protecting us, and then with the recent Log4j, that's the most recent use case when it gave us that instant level of protection whilst we remediated the Log4j that we had that and the F5 Distributed Cloud WAF was protecting us.
    • I have a great relationship with the account manager, my account manager, and I think he drives the best price possible, um, for me, and I'm happy with that price.
    • F5 Distributed Cloud WAF is always innovating and evolving.
    • We run a very competitive proof value where we run numerous competitors against each other, and then we evaluate from that and then make the selection, and F5 Distributed Cloud WAF was the winner.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    • Low-Cost Load Balancer
    • Intelligent Request Routing based on URL and/or URI
    • Extremely flexible load balancing and healthchecks, can do almost anything including HTTP, HTTPS, PostgreSQL, etc.
    • SSL Termination
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    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
    F5
    • Lack of warnings, currently the console does not provide a warning when deleting key-value entry.
    • The web GUI could use some tweaking, currently no undo option when removing exclusion rules.
    • Configuration complexity, currently menus and options are hidden, making it hard to configure vs on prem.
    Read full review
    Open Source
    • A few, rare times each year, HAProxy CPU utilization spikes to 100% and server has to be rebooted - this may be related to HAProxy OR it could be an external factor causing this.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    F5
    We just love work with f5
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    We gave it an 8 because it protects our web apps well and is reliable. The WAF is flexible and meets most of our needs. It could improve in user interface and make integrations easier, but overall, it’s a solid and effective security tool for us.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    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
    F5
    I believe is a solution that was designed from the start to be simple and easy to use. Coming from Imperva, it simply eased the burden and complexity of managing and securing our apps on different environments (cloud and on-prem). It easy to scale and very quick to deploy (as a cloud waf should be), provide us with DevOps integrations, visibility and automatic insights from multiple events that guarantee peace of mind for us analysts and opp managers.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    It is very easy to use. I was able to find a lot of documents for it on the internet. Very good community support. There are lots of examples available to try. We mostly use a command-line user interface to interact with it. The CLI is also super easy to use and very easy to interact with
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    F5
    No answers on this topic
    F5
    Seems no issue
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    F5
    No answers on this topic
    F5
    Unnoticed slowness
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    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
    Read full review
    F5
    I never contacted support for this product.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    We haven't used customer support. We mostly used the community version. We build a multi-node HAProxy cluster with HA to the proxy itself using opensource plugins available. With the support available on the internet and the documents available we don't need to use much customer support.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    F5
    No answers on this topic
    F5
    Online training saves me lots of time
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    F5
    No answers on this topic
    F5
    Just make sure you origin servers have F5 IPs allowed.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    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
    F5
    The other one that I've used in the past, they're very similar and I haven't used it recently, so I can't do a side-by-side comparison today. But I can say that F5 does everything we want it to do consistent with what this other product did do and it's got enhanced features and of course we have a long history with F5 as a product set in general.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    We chose HA Proxy because it is cheaper than a hardware balancer, it is an open-source solution with a large community behind it and with constant updates. It also allows custom scripts according to needs.HA Proxy is a solution used in many internet sites like GitHub, Reddit, Twitter, and Tuenti.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    F5
    No answers on this topic
    F5
    Dont see any issue so far
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    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
    F5
    • The biggest gain for us was speed. Before F5 Distributed Cloud WAF, onboarding a new app to our WAF stack meant manual rule tuning, traffic sampling and regression testing. Right now, we spin up a service, tag it with the right policy and its ready (production ready) within hours
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    • Significantly lower investment vs competitors. In the case of F5s we have Virtual Editions so we're paying for the hardware to run it on top of the several thousand dollar licenses that are required for each pair and we currently have a pair of F5s per client so there's a huge potential for cost savings there.
    • Requires our network engineers to learn a new skill or our Systems engineers to take on the responsibility of managing the load balancers. It's not a huge difference either way, but it does impact the way we have done business in the past.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    F5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall) Screenshots

    Product screenshotProduct screenshot