Cloudflare WAF vs ModSecurity
Eleven of fourteen models named Cloudflare WAF first on the direct prompt; zero named ModSecurity. Cloudflare WAF was named by fourteen of the fourteen models and ModSecurity by twelve and Cloudflare WAF carries 67 labels and ModSecurity 26, so the shares are not directly comparable.
Named in one category this edition.
Named in one category 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 modelsModSecurity
Across every category in the October 2026 Edition, Cloudflare WAF and ModSecurity were named in the same answer forty-seven times, of the 203 answers naming Cloudflare WAF and the 58 naming ModSecurity. In those answers ModSecurity took the first choice zero times and Cloudflare WAF twenty-nine.
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 4.1 Fast | | | | | | |
| 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 ModSecurity first choice named as an alternative argued againstblank: not namedEach cell is one answer, Cloudflare WAF on the left and ModSecurity on the right.The direct prompt
Cloudflare WAF first, ModSecurity not the choice
11 of 14 modelsModSecurity was named in the answer but not as the choice, or not at all.Neither was the first choice, one was named
2 of 14 modelsThe answer put something else first and named one of the two as an alternative.Neither was named
1 of 14 modelsThe answer made no first choice from these two in this category.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 WAF79%#1 of 9ModSecurity0%#9 of 9Cloudflare WAF69%#1 of 11ModSecurity8%#2 of 11Cloudflare WAF59%#1 of 9ModSecurity0%#– 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.
“Misconfigured "Big Three" WAFs (Cloudflare, Akamai, Imperva)... you have effectively bypassed the WAF. ... Do not avoid these vendors, but avoid the configuration” GLM 4.7 FlashX · negative prompt · soft negative
“Cloudflare's managed-rule body limit varies by plan, and content beyond it may not be fully analyzed.” GPT-6 Luna · negative prompt · soft negative
“Free tiers of popular cloud WAFs (e.g., Cloudflare Free) offer very limited protection” DeepSeek V4 Flash · negative prompt · soft negative
“Cloudflare WAF (Best All-Rounder & Cloud-First B2B)... widely considered the most accessible and comprehensive WAF for small-to-mid-market businesses” Gemini 3.5 Flash · direct prompt · first choice
“Massive global scale, edge programmability, OWASP Core Rule Set-based rules, and easy self-serve setup. Consistently named a Forrester Wave Leader.” DeepSeek V4 Flash · comparative prompt · first choice
“1. Cloudflare WAF - Strengths: Global threat intelligence, machine learning, and a massive CDN for low latency and high performance.” Mistral Small · comparative prompt · first choice
What the models said about ModSecurity
Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. Six of eight in this category shown.
“ModSecurity, the classic open-source WAF engine, has reached End-of-Life (EOL).” Gemini 3.5 Flash · budget prompt · hard negative
“Avoid/Be cautious with: Unpatched ModSecurity v3 versions” Kimi K2 · negative prompt · hard negative
“A critical vulnerability (CVE-2025-47947) in ModSecurity, a widely deployed open-source WAF, allows attackers to crash systems through denial of service attacks” Claude Haiku 4.5 · negative prompt · soft negative
“If you want the absolute lowest cost and have internal sysadmin skills: go with ModSecurity (free) + OWASP CRS.” MiniMax M2.5 · budget prompt · first choice
“best-value WAF is usually an open-source stack: ModSecurity + OWASP Core Rule Set (CRS)” GPT-5.4 mini · budget prompt · first choice
“ModSecurity with OWASP CRS is the de-facto standard free engine.” Muse Glimmer 30B · budget prompt · first choice
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.