Cloudflare WAF vs Hetzner DDoS Protection
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Cloudflare WAF and Hetzner DDoS Protection.
Quick Verdict
4.2/5
Cloudflare WAF
0 reviews
4.0/5
Hetzner DDoS Protection
0 reviews
Cloudflare WAF is rated higher (4.2 vs 4.0). Cloudflare's Web Application Firewall protects against OWASP Top 10, zero-day vulnerabilities, and DDoS. 300+ global PoPs absorb attacks. Free plan blocks basic threats; Pro adds OWASP managed rules. Free automatic DDoS mitigation included with every Hetzner product. Arbor/Juniper scrubbing plus Nokia Deepfield Defender edge filtering (2026), with no per-gigabit charges and no configurable thresholds.
Cloudflare WAF Web Application Firewall protecting millions of sites | Hetzner DDoS Protection Hardware-backed DDoS mitigation for high-traffic infrastructure | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.2 (0 reviews)✓ | 4.0 (0 reviews) |
| Pricing model | freemium | free |
| Starting price | Free tier available | Free |
| Best for | Any website behind Cloudflare that wants a maintained application firewall and DDoS absorption as a baseline — from hobby projects on the free tier to compliance-bound businesses on Business or Enterprise. | Hetzner customers who want a credible zero-cost first line of volumetric defense and will layer external L7 filtering on top only where attack risk justifies paying for it. |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ✓ | |
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ||
| Free tier | ||
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tierddos protectionapi accesseu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenter | free tierddos protectioneu datacenter |
| Visit Cloudflare WAF → | Visit Hetzner DDoS Protection → | |
Cloudflare WAF
Pros
- + WAF engine and managed ruleset included on every plan, including Free
- + Unmetered DDoS absorption at the edge on all tiers
- + Central rules maintenance — no appliances, agents or rule deployments to manage
- + Attack-score and bot-management layers available as needs grow
- + Flat plan pricing; no per-request or per-rule metering
Cons
- - Advanced rate limiting, attack-score rules and full log export are plan-gated
- - Managed rules can block legitimate traffic; tuning requires a logging-first workflow
- - Free plan limits request body inspection to 1 MB
- - Only applies to proxied records — DNS-only traffic is not filtered
- - A compensating control, not a substitute for fixing application vulnerabilities
Hetzner DDoS Protection
Pros
- + Free and automatic for every Hetzner customer, with no scrubbing or per-gigabit charges during attacks
- + Nokia Deepfield Defender edge mitigation (since March 2026) filters most attack traffic before it enters the backbone
- + Distinguishes attack types (e.g. UDP flood vs SYN flood) instead of reacting to raw volume alone
- + Filtering stays inside Hetzner's own German/Finnish network, supporting GDPR data-sovereignty requirements
- + Covers all Hetzner products at once: cloud servers, dedicated root servers, web hosting, load balancers
Cons
- - Protects Hetzner infrastructure only; useless for non-Hetzner origins
- - Zero user control: no configurable thresholds, no dashboard, no WAF rules
- - No published mitigation capacity, detection SLA, or uptime credits tied to the service
- - Non-EU locations (Ashburn, Hillsboro, Singapore) not confirmed to run the same mitigation stack
- - Historic community reports of null-routing attacked dedicated servers could not be confirmed against current policy
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