Every category where a model named Azure WAF for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
Web application firewalls	Network and edge	0%	18 of 87	22%	9	under 10 labels · led by Cloudflare at 55%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Azure WAF yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Azure WAF across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	1	0	0	1
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	1	3	0	4
Perplexity Sonar	1	0	0	1
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	0	1	1
Mistral Small	0	1	0	1
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	0	0	0
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	0	0	0
Kimi K2	0	0	1	1
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	0	0	0
MiniMax M2.5	0	0	0	0

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct7 labelsNone

Paraphrase3 labelsNone

Comparative5 labelsNone

Budget-constrained5 labelsNone

Scale-constrained7 labelsNone

Negative8 labels1not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative35 labels in all, every segment counted; 0 of the 1 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“AWS WAF or Azure WAF: Best if your infrastructure is concentrated entirely in one public cloud” Gemini 3.5 Flash · WAF · scale prompt · alternative

“strongest for single-cloud-native stacks rather than general-purpose mid-market use” Perplexity Sonar · WAF · direct prompt · alternative

“AWS WAF or Azure WAF win for single-cloud native stacks” Claude Haiku 4.5 · WAF · comparative prompt · alternative

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“Extreme false positives (54%+), blocks legit traffic; struggles with balance despite good detection (~97%).” Grok 4.1 Fast · WAF · negative prompt · soft negative

“Azure WAF | ✅ Vulnerable” Kimi K2 · WAF · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Azure WAF, over the 35 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Azure WAF was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

AWS WAF32 of 350Not in the top three

Cloudflare25 of 3515Not in the top three

Imperva14 of 351Not in the top three

Akamai14 of 350Not in the top three

Fastly8 of 351Not in the top three

ModSecurity8 of 350Not in the top three

Cloudflare WAF7 of 355Not in the top three

F57 of 350Not in the top three

Sucuri7 of 350Not in the top three

Fastly Next-Gen WAF5 of 350Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Azure WAF. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 21 of the 35 answers that named Azure WAF and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

wafplanet.com13

cybersecuritynews.com12

cyberpress.org10

expertinsights.com9

comparitech.com8

g2.com8

openappsec.io8

imperva.com7

fastly.com6

geekflare.com6

Eighty-seven of the eighty-seven domain citations in answers naming Azure WAF came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

cyberpress.org/waf-solutions-by-business-size10

expertinsights.com/network-security/the-top-web-application-firewalls9

comparitech.com/net-admin/best-web-application-firewall8

cybersecuritynews.com/best-web-application-firewall-waf8

cybersecuritynews.com/best-web-application-firewall-solutions/amp7

wafplanet.com/7

geekflare.com/cybersecurity/best-web-application-firewall6

imperva.com/blog/best-waap-solutions6

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

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It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at azure.cn is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

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