Cloudflare WAF vs AWS WAF
Thirteen of fourteen models named Cloudflare WAF first on the direct prompt; zero named AWS WAF. Both were named by all fourteen models and Cloudflare WAF carries 70 labels and AWS WAF 56, so the shares are not directly comparable.
Named in two categories this edition.
Named in four categories this edition.
Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts over all fourteen models, for a mid-market B2B company; rank is within the category; every quote names the model and the prompt it came from. Both figures come from the web application firewalls page.
By framing
Cloudflare WAFFirst choices, of fourteen modelsAWS WAF
Across every category in the November 2026 Edition, Cloudflare WAF and AWS WAF were named in the same answer 162 times, of the 219 answers naming Cloudflare WAF and the 198 naming AWS WAF. In those answers AWS WAF took the first choice zero times and Cloudflare WAF 113.
Every model, every framing
| Model | Direct | Paraphrase | Comparative | Budget-constrained | Scale-constrained | Negative |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | | | | | ||
| GPT-5.4 mini | | | | | ||
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | | | | | | |
| Perplexity Sonar | | | | | ||
| Grok 4.20 | | | | | | |
| Mistral Small | | | | | | |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | | | | | | |
| Llama 4 Maverick | | | | |||
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | | | | | ||
| Kimi K2 | | | | | ||
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | | | | | ||
| MiniMax M2.5 | | | | |||
| GPT-6 Luna | | | | | ||
| Muse Glimmer 30B | | | | |
Cloudflare WAF AWS WAF first choice named as an alternative argued againstblank: not namedEach cell is one answer, Cloudflare WAF on the left and AWS WAF on the right.The direct prompt
Cloudflare WAF first, AWS WAF an alternative
13 of 14 modelsAWS WAF was named in the answer but not as the choice, or not at all.Neither was the first choice, one was named
1 of 14 modelsThe answer put something else first and named one of the two as an alternative.Bold names in an answer are the products the judge labeled a first choice; a model naming several gives each of them that label. The full answer text for every row is in the record.
By buyer segment
Cloudflare WAF94%#1 of 9AWS WAF0%#3 of 9Cloudflare WAF85%#1 of 12AWS WAF2%#3 of 12Cloudflare WAF60%#1 of 9AWS WAF0%#8 of 9What the models said about Cloudflare WAF
Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. Six of eight in this category shown.
“Popular and low-latency, but criticized for outdated ModSecurity rules, support delays (e.g., 48+ hours), latency in some cases, false negatives, and bypasses” Grok 4.20 · negative prompt · soft negative
“A significant 2024 vulnerability (discovered by Zafran) revealed a pervasive misconfiguration bug affecting these major WAF providers” Kimi K2 · negative prompt · soft negative
“These avoid high licensing costs (often $5K–$50K+/year for commercial tools like Cloudflare Enterprise, AWS WAF, or Imperva)” Grok 4.20 · budget prompt · soft negative
“For most mid‑market B2B companies the Cloudflare WAF is the easiest, most cost‑effective way to get enterprise‑grade protection today.” MiniMax M2.5 · direct prompt · first choice
“Cloudflare WAF with Bot Manager is the best overall choice due to its strong security, ease of deployment, and cost-effective pricing” Mistral Small · paraphrase prompt · first choice
“For most small‑to‑midsize companies on a tight budget, Cloudflare’s free or low‑cost WAF tier is the best starting point.” GLM 4.7 FlashX · budget prompt · first choice
What the models said about AWS WAF
Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. Five of six in this category shown.
“Out-of-the-box cloud WAF rules (e.g., basic default AWS WAF or Azure WAF rules) without fine-tuning either block legitimate traffic or miss application-specific flaws.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · negative prompt · soft negative
“avoid high licensing costs (often $5K–$50K+/year for commercial tools like Cloudflare Enterprise, AWS WAF, or Imperva)” Grok 4.20 · budget prompt · soft negative
“Cloudflare or AWS WAF tend to offer the best value with solid protection” Claude Haiku 4.5 · paraphrase prompt · first choice
“If your company's infrastructure is already hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), using AWS WAF is likely the most cost-effective path.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · budget prompt · alternative
“Strong integration with CloudFront and other AWS services; cost-efficient if the application is already deeply invested in AWS.” Perplexity Sonar · direct prompt · alternative
Comparisons are drawn for the top eight products in each category, each against each. The output is the models' output; nothing here is a recommendation by the index.