Imperva vs ModSecurity
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Imperva and ModSecurity.
Quick Verdict
3.2/5
Imperva
0 reviews
3.7/5
ModSecurity
0 reviews
ModSecurity is rated higher (3.7 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. ModSecurity is a free WAF engine that detects and blocks malicious HTTP requests. Operates as a module for major web servers to protect against OWASP Top 10 attacks and custom threats.
Imperva Enterprise WAF and DDoS protection | ModSecurity Open-source web application firewall for Apache, Nginx, and IIS | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.2 (0 reviews) | 3.7 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | paid | free |
| Starting price | Free tier available | Free |
| Best for | Enterprises in financial services, large e-commerce, and regulated industries needing proven WAF, bot management, and volumetric DDoS protection with contractual SLAs | Sysadmins and DevOps teams running self-managed web servers who need auditable, on-premises application-layer filtering and have the capacity to tune rules. |
| 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 tieropen sourceself hostable |
| Visit Imperva → | Visit ModSecurity → | |
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
ModSecurity
Pros
- + Free Apache-2.0 WAF engine with 23 years of production deployments behind it
- + OWASP Core Rule Set covers OWASP Top 10 attack classes without application-specific knowledge
- + Actively maintained under OWASP governance with LTS rule branches and coordinated security releases
- + Full control and visibility: custom rules, blocking or detection-only modes, everything on your own servers
- + Broad deployment surface: Apache, nginx, IIS, containers, Debian/Ubuntu packages
Cons
- - Engine alone provides almost no protection — CRS tuning is mandatory skilled work
- - False positives are guaranteed without a detection-only tuning period; not a deploy-and-forget tool
- - libmodsecurity 3.x connector path (nginx/IIS) has matured more slowly than the Apache module
- - No volumetric DDoS protection, no managed option, no SLA, community-only support
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