Cloudflare WAF

Cloudflare WAF has achieved the highest WAF rating by practitioners on PeerSpot, 9.0 out of 10, by delivering something the enterprise WAF market has historically failed to provide: genuine accessibility at every organisation size without sacrificing capability. The free tier, the transparent per-zone pricing, the 300 plus PoP global edge for minimal latency, and the sub-day deployment time make it the default evaluation starting point for any organisation that does not have an existing WAF vendor relationship. The 0.062% false positive rate in independent testing confirms that accessibility does not come at the cost of accuracy.

The Thanksgiving 2023 nation-state attack on Cloudflare's own infrastructure, contained through their own Zero Trust implementation, is worth reviewing for its lessons about identity provider dependency risk.

The verdict: Cloudflare WAF is right for organisations of any size wanting the fastest WAF deployment on a global edge with the most transparent pricing. Organisations requiring on-premises deployment or the lowest possible false positive rate should evaluate Imperva.

Last reviewed: May 2026

Strongest: OWASP Top 10 coverage

Watch out for: Rule management

Best for

Organisations of any size wanting the fastest global WAF network with a free tier for basic protection.

Not suitable for: Organisations requiring on-premises WAF deployment — Cloudflare is cloud/CDN only.