# Cloudflare WAF: how AI models rank it, November 2026

Gane Index, November 2026 Edition. Named in 71 judge labels across 2 categories by 14 of 14 models. Page: https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/cloudflare-waf

## Standing by category

| Category | Share | Rank | Negative rate | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [Web application firewalls](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/network/web-application-firewalls/index.md) | 85% | 1 | 6% | 70 |
| [Client-side protection](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/security/client-side-protection/index.md) | 0% | 71 | 0% | 1 |

## What the models said for it

- "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, WAF)
- "Cloudflare WAF with Bot Manager is the best overall choice due to its strong security, ease of deployment, and cost-effective pricing" (Mistral Small, WAF)
- "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, WAF)
- "For most budget-conscious businesses, starting with Cloudflare Pro ($20/month) yields the highest return on investment." (Gemini 3.5 Flash, WAF)

## And against it

- "Popular and low-latency, but criticized for outdated ModSecurity rules, support delays (e.g., 48+ hours), latency in some cases, false negatives, and bypasses" (Grok 4.20, WAF)
- "A significant 2024 vulnerability (discovered by Zafran) revealed a pervasive misconfiguration bug affecting these major WAF providers" (Kimi K2, WAF)
- "These avoid high licensing costs (often $5K–$50K+/year for commercial tools like Cloudflare Enterprise, AWS WAF, or Imperva)" (Grok 4.20, WAF)
- "their effectiveness against advanced web application attacks is sometimes questioned" (Mistral Small, WAF)

## By model

| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Warning | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 4 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 6 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 4 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 6 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Grok 4.20 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 6 |
| Mistral Small | 4 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 4 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 3 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 6 |
| Kimi K2 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 5 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 5 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 5 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 |

## Sources returned with these answers

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Cloudflare WAF, from 185 of the 219 answers that named it (only the models that return a source list).

### Domains cited

- cloudflare.com: 73 (its own site)
- imperva.com: 72
- geekflare.com: 70
- g2.com: 66
- wafplanet.com: 59
- developers.cloudflare.com: 52 (its own site)
- openappsec.io: 44
- checkpoint.com: 43
- fastly.com: 40
- gane.ai/index: 34

### Pages cited

- https://geekflare.com/guides/best-web-application-firewall: 70
- https://cloudflare.com/products/waf: 40
- https://g2.com/categories/web-application-firewall-waf/small-business: 40
- https://openappsec.io/post/best-waf-solutions-in-2024-2025-real-world-comparison: 37
- https://checkpoint.com/cyber-hub/cloud-security/what-is-web-application-firewall/the-top-5-waf-providers: 36
- https://softwaretestinghelp.com/web-application-firewall-waf: 34
- https://wafplanet.com/: 34
- https://expertinsights.com/network-security/the-top-web-application-firewalls: 31

## In its own words

What Cloudflare WAF's own pages state, read 2026-09-28. Stated by the vendor, not checked by the index.

- Positioning: complement managed rulesets (such as OWASP and Cloudflare Managed) with a new tool aimed at identifying bypasses and malicious payloads without human involvement, and before they are exploited (https://blog.cloudflare.com/waf-ml)
- For: Enterprise, Pro and Biz customers (https://blog.cloudflare.com/waf-ml)
- Price stated: More information on pricing and packaging will be released when the feature will be generally available. (https://blog.cloudflare.com/waf-ml)
- Free plan or trial: Available on all plans (https://developers.cloudflare.com/waf)

## Record

- Method: https://www.gane.ai/index/it/methodology
- License: CC BY 4.0. Cite as Gane Index, November 2026 Edition, www.gane.ai/index/it.