Imperva vs Cloudflare WAF
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Imperva and Cloudflare WAF.
Quick Verdict
3.2/5
Imperva
0 reviews
4.2/5
Cloudflare WAF
0 reviews
Cloudflare WAF is rated higher (4.2 vs 3.2). Imperva provides enterprise WAF, DDoS protection, bot management, and API security, now part of Thales. 13 Tbps DDoS scrubbing capacity across 61 data centers. Quote-based pricing. 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.
Imperva Enterprise WAF and DDoS protection | Cloudflare WAF Web Application Firewall protecting millions of sites | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.2 (0 reviews) | 4.2 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | paid | freemium |
| Starting price | Free tier available | Free tier available |
| Best for | Enterprises in financial services, large e-commerce, and regulated industries needing proven WAF, bot management, and volumetric DDoS protection with contractual SLAs | 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. |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ✓ | |
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ||
| Free tier | ✓ | |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | ddos protectionteam featuressso | free tierddos protectionapi accesseu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenter |
| Visit Imperva → | Visit Cloudflare WAF → | |
Imperva
Pros
- + 13 Tbps scrubbing capacity across 61 DDoS-resilient data centers with full security stack at every PoP
- + Contractual 3-second mitigation SLA for Layer 3 and 4 DDoS attacks
- + Deep portfolio: WAF, bot management, API security, client-side protection, and data-security analytics
- + Thales ownership and a 20+ year track record suit regulated industries and long procurement cycles
- + 260+ built-in integrations with SIEM, Splunk, CMDB, and SOAR tooling
Cons
- - Quote-only pricing with no free tier or public price list
- - Configuration complexity requires real security-engineering effort to tune
- - Console sprawl and legacy/current branding overlap after years of product accretion
- - Module-by-module packaging makes full-platform cost hard to predict
- - Overkill for small deployments that a CDN-tier WAF would cover
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
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