Global Tool Radar

Evidence-led software shortlist

Best Web Application Firewall (WAF) Software

Compare 9 products that meet the research threshold. Ranking uses category-specific buying scores and keeps fit conditions, limitations, and evidence confidence visible.

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Build a shortlist by buyer condition

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Software

Filter by fit first, then compare cost, capability depth, and buying constraints. Rank is a starting point, not the decision.

#1

Fortinet FortiWeb

Fortinet FortiWeb is a self-managed web application and API firewall delivered as hardware, virtual, container, and public-cloud appliances, with machine-learning detection, API discovery and schema controls, bot mitigation, and Fortinet Security Fabric integrations.

81Category score
Pricing
  • Custom quote required for some paid plans
Best for
  • Enterprise
  • Mid-market
  • Small business
Strong fit for
  • Mid-market and enterprise teams protecting web applications and APIs across hybrid infrastructure.
  • Organizations that need hardware acceleration or self-managed VM deployment with explicit throughput sizing.
Check before buying
  • Buyers requiring public numeric prices for every edition and model.
  • Teams seeking a permanent free WAF edition.
#2

Fastly Next-Gen WAF

Fastly Next-Gen WAF is a hybrid web application and API firewall that uses contextual request detection, shared threat intelligence, signals, rules, thresholds, and centralized visibility across edge, Fastly-hosted cloud, and customer-managed deployments.

79Category score
Pricing
  • Custom quote required for some paid plans
Best for
  • Enterprise
  • Mid-market
Strong fit for
  • Mid-market and enterprise application-security teams protecting mixed web, API, and microservice estates
  • Organizations requiring edge, Fastly-hosted cloud, Kubernetes, PaaS, reverse-proxy, or on-premises deployment flexibility
Check before buying
  • Buyers requiring transparent public numeric pricing or self-service checkout
  • Small teams without engineering ownership for deployment, policy, privacy, and monitoring
#3

Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Barracuda Web Application Firewall is a customer-operated web application and API firewall available as a physical appliance or virtual appliance for on-premises, private-cloud, AWS, and Azure deployment.

79Category score
Pricing
  • Custom quote required for some paid plans
Best for
  • Enterprise
  • Mid-market
Strong fit for
  • Mid-market and enterprise teams needing a customer-operated appliance WAF
  • Hybrid estates that need consistent hardware, virtual, AWS, and Azure deployment
Check before buying
  • Buyers seeking the separate vendor-operated WAF-as-a-Service experience
  • Teams requiring public all-in appliance pricing before configuration
#4

Azure Web Application Firewall

Azure Web Application Firewall provides managed and custom web-traffic protection through Application Gateway WAF v2, Application Gateway for Containers WAF, and Azure Front Door WAF deployment routes, with deployment-specific rules, scaling, monitoring, and pricing meters.

78Category score
Pricing
  • Some paid plan amounts are unverified — check official pricing
Best for
  • Enterprise
Strong fit for
  • Azure-centered organizations protecting regional web applications and REST APIs through Application Gateway WAF v2
  • Kubernetes platform teams using Application Gateway for Containers and Gateway API resources
Check before buying
  • Buyers requiring a standalone flat-price WAF with one public monthly amount
  • Teams seeking a full API discovery, posture, schema-governance, and testing platform
#5

Google Cloud Armor

Google Cloud Armor is Google Cloud's edge security service for applying WAF, access-control, rate-limiting, and DDoS protections to supported load-balanced applications, APIs, CDN origins, and selected network endpoints.

77Category score
Pricing
  • Paid · Cloud Armor Standard · $0.006849315 USD · per security policy · per hour · Standard security-policy usage · usage based · no commitment
  • Paid · Cloud Armor Standard · $0.001369863 USD · per rule · per hour · Standard rule usage · usage based · no commitment
Best for
  • Enterprise
  • Mid-market
Strong fit for
  • Google Cloud application teams protecting supported external or regional load-balanced services
  • Hybrid and multicloud workloads that can be fronted by Google Cloud load balancing
Check before buying
  • Origins that cannot use a supported Google Cloud load-balancer or Cloud Armor attachment point
  • Buyers requiring a full API discovery, posture, testing, and runtime-security lifecycle in one product
#6

F5 Distributed Cloud WAF

F5 Distributed Cloud WAF is a SaaS-delivered web application firewall that combines attack signatures, behavioral analysis, threat campaigns, signature-based bot controls, AI risk scoring, automatic signature tuning, policy controls, and centralized observability.

75Category score
Pricing
  • Custom quote required for some paid plans
Best for
  • Enterprise
Strong fit for
  • Enterprise security teams protecting distributed web applications across public cloud, on-premises, and edge locations
  • Organizations that want SaaS WAF enforcement with central policy, observability, API automation, Terraform, and SIEM-oriented integrations
Check before buying
  • Buyers requiring a public fixed WAF-only amount and fully specified contract terms before contacting F5
  • Teams requiring an appliance, virtual appliance, or Kubernetes-native WAF rather than the Distributed Cloud SaaS service
#7

Akamai App & API Protector

Akamai App & API Protector is a cloud-delivered web application and API protection service that combines an adaptive WAF, Layer 7 DDoS defense, API discovery, basic bot controls, security analytics, and DevOps automation at Akamai's edge.

74Category score
Pricing
  • Custom quote required for some paid plans
Best for
  • Enterprise
  • Mid-market
Strong fit for
  • Mid-market and enterprise web and API estates using Akamai edge delivery
  • Security teams seeking managed updates, adaptive detections, and self-tuning recommendations
Check before buying
  • Buyers requiring public self-service pricing or a permanent free edition
  • Customer-hosted or multi-CDN enforcement without separately scoped App & API Protector Hybrid
#8

AWS WAF

AWS WAF is a cloud-native web application firewall for CloudFront and supported regional AWS resources, priced by web ACLs, rules or attached rule groups, and inspected requests, with separately charged intelligent threat-mitigation features.

73Category score
Pricing
  • Paid · AWS WAF pay-as-you-go · $5.00 USD · per web ACL · per month · Web ACL monthly component · usage based · no commitment
  • Paid · AWS WAF pay-as-you-go · $1.00 USD · per rule or attached rule group · per month · Rule and rule-group monthly component · usage based · no commitment · Rules inside customer-created rule groups are also charged individually
Best for
  • Enterprise
  • Mid-market
  • Small business
Strong fit for
  • AWS-centered application and platform teams protecting supported web and API entry points
  • Teams needing global CloudFront-edge and regional AWS-native WAF deployment
Check before buying
  • Buyers needing hardware, virtual-appliance, or Kubernetes-ingress deployment
  • Teams seeking a complete API discovery, posture, testing, and runtime security lifecycle product
#9

Imperva Web Application Firewall

Imperva Web Application Firewall is a WAF product family with SaaS Cloud WAF, locally managed WAF Gateway, and Kubernetes-based Elastic WAF deployment offers for protecting web applications and API traffic.

72Category score
Pricing
  • Custom quote required for some paid plans
Best for
  • Enterprise
Strong fit for
  • Application-security teams needing WAF protection for web applications and APIs
  • Enterprise environments requiring cloud, on-premises, hybrid, or Kubernetes-based deployment choices
Check before buying
  • Buyers who require full API discovery, posture assessment, verification, and business-logic protection as an included core WAF entitlement without a separate API Security purchase decision

How this list is produced

How this list is produced

A product is included only when it is published, has a complete fact package, supported fit and non-fit conclusions, stored dimension rationales, and no blocking commercial conflict.

  1. Confirm that every product belongs to the same purchasable software category.
  2. Use official evidence for pricing, capabilities, limits, and commercial scope.
  3. Rank with the stored category dimensions and buyer-facing rationales.
  4. Keep unknowns and purchase checks visible; model output is not evidence by itself.

Frequently asked questions

Frequently asked questions

Is the highest-scoring product right for every buyer?

No. Scores use a shared Web Application Firewall (WAF) Software framework, while the right choice still depends on team size, budget, ecosystem, security requirements, and required capabilities.

Does this list change when products change?

Pages change when newly verified research is published. Check each product’s evidence date; prices are not live.

Are these scores user ratings?

No. They are editorial buying scores built from structured facts and category dimensions. Third-party user ratings are shown separately with their sources.

This page compares published products in Web Application Firewall (WAF) Software. Scores are editorial fit assessments for this buying category, not user ratings or a claim that one product is universally superior.

This is public-evidence buying research, not an account-based hands-on test. Interface quality, implementation effort, support response, and negotiated terms still require buyer verification.