Small business=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
0%from 0% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 11 pointsRank 5 → 7 of 62
Azure · 2 categories · RankedAzure WAF
50Judge labels
0First choices
18Negative labels
14 / 14Models named it
2Categories
October 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table v2026-10.8, every buyer segment counted.
Best standing
0% in WAF for mid-market buyers
Rank 21 of 82 in the mid-market standingcriticized challenger
0 of 14 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 31% of its 16 labels there were negative.
What the models named instead of Azure WAF →By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.
Small business9 of 75
0%15 labels
accepted challenger
Mid-market21 of 82
0%16 labels
criticized challenger
Enterprise89 of 90
0%17 labels
criticized challenger
In waf · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading
Standing by category
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 | Since September 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Web application firewalls | Network and edge | 0% | 21 of 82 | 31% | 16 | criticized challenger | =heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. |
| Client-side protection | Security operations | 0% | 73 of 120 | 0% | 1 | under 10 labels · led by cside at 13% |
Movement
Since September 2026, Azure WAF held within the floor in all two categories: no change cleared 11 points.
Best category · WAF · by segment
Mid-market=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
0%from 0% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 11 pointsRank 15 → 19 of 80
Enterprise=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
0%from 0% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 11 pointsRank 51 → 76 of 77
All categories · Mid-market
| Category | September 2026 | Now | Change | Reading | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WAF | 0% | 0% | =heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. | Within noise | Rank 15 → 21 of 82 |
| Client-side protection | 0% | 0% | newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now. | New this edition | Rank 73 of 120, unchanged |
Shares here are read over the models both editions asked, so they can differ by a point or two from the standing above, which counts every model in this edition.
The floor is 11 points of share, measured: how far the models move a leader on their own when the same questions are asked twice with nothing changed. A larger change is movement; a smaller one is noise, and both are shown. Movement is read over the twelve models both editions asked; GPT-6 Luna, Muse Glimmer 30B joined this edition and are in the standing but not yet in the comparison. How the floor is measured · The editions
By model
How each model treated Azure WAF across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.ShowHide
By model
How each model treated Azure WAF across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.
ShowHide| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Negative | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Grok 4.20 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Mistral Small | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Kimi K2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
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
Paraphrase4 labelsNone
Comparative7 labelsNone
Budget-constrained13 labelsNone
Scale-constrained8 labelsNone
Negative11 labelsNone
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative50 labels in all, every segment counted; 0 of the 0 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.
“Ideal if your infrastructure lives in Microsoft Azure and you want a managed WAF with built-in bot detection.” MiniMax M2.5 · WAF · paraphrase prompt · alternative
“Deploy AWS/Azure WAF. The pay-as-you-go pricing will keep your monthly bill in the single or double digits” Gemini 3.5 Flash · WAF · budget prompt · alternative
“Consider managed WAF services (AWS WAF, Azure WAF, Cloudflare) for better maintenance and faster patching” Kimi K2 · WAF · negative prompt · alternative
“best if you already use Microsoft Azure and want minimal added cost and easy compliance support” Perplexity Sonar · WAF · budget 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.
“1,207 bypasses across AWS WAF, Azure WAF, Google Cloud Armor, Cloudflare, and ModSecurity” DeepSeek V4 Flash · WAF · negative prompt · soft negative
“such as AWS WAF or Azure WAF ... they come with two major pitfalls if left unconfigured” Gemini 3.5 Flash · WAF · negative prompt · soft negative
“parsing discrepancies affect AWS, Azure, Cloud Armor, Cloudflare and ModSecurity alike” Muse Glimmer 30B · WAF · negative prompt · soft negative
“Poor visibility compared to competitors; debugging challenging; only works in Azure” Qwen 3.7 Flash · WAF · negative prompt · soft negative
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Azure WAF, over the 50 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.ShowHide
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Azure WAF, over the 50 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.
ShowHideProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head
A head-to-head page exists where both products are among a category's top eight. 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, five of the fourteen in this edition, so these counts come from 44 of the 50 answers that named Azure WAF and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
radware.com23
comparitech.com17
wafplanet.com16
geekflare.com15
indusface.com13
openappsec.io13
cybersecuritynews.com12
imperva.com12
fastly.com11
aws.amazon.com10
142 of the 142 domain citations in answers naming Azure WAF came from somebody else's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
Search and answers
Where Azure WAF stands in Google search beside where it stands in the models' answers.ShowHide
Search and answers
Where Azure WAF stands in Google search beside where it stands in the models' answers.
ShowHideIn search
Google, US estimates- Searches for its name, Google
- 880 a month (“azure waf”)
- AI search demand for its name, est.
- 57 a month
- Its own site
- It sits on Azure's site (azure.cn), so there are no site figures for it alone
In answers
This editionShare of first choices
0%
rank 21 of 82 in WAF
Segment leader
69%
Cloudflare WAF
- First choices
- 0 across its categories
- Named in
- 50 answers
- Its own site cited
- in 44 of the answers that named it
Search figures are US estimates from DataForSEO, read September 28, 2026; AI search demand is its modeled, directional estimate, not a count of queries to any assistant. The answers are this edition's. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
Names read as Azure WAF
What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Azure WAF; a claim can dispute any of them.
Azure WAF (App Gateway) 1Azure WAF (Application Gateway & Front Door) 1Azure WAF (Microsoft) 1Azure WAF (with Azure Bot Protection) 1Azure WAF + DDoS 1
Follow Azure WAF
An email the morning each edition publishes: where this product moved, where it held, and by how much against the noise floor. One address, confirmed by a click; a stop link in every email.
Already following? Everything you follow, with a stop for each.
The company
Azure is the company behind Azure WAF.ShowHide
The company
Azure is the company behind Azure WAF.
ShowHideOn record
Company records- Also from Azure
- Azure ACR, Azure AD Conditional Access, Azure AD Graph API, Azure AI Document Intelligence, Azure AI Foundry, Azure AI Gateway, Azure AI Search, Azure API Management and 79 more
Is this your product?
Claim this page
Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Azure WAF's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Azure WAF, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.
What a new claim receivesHide what a new claim receives
A new claim receives the current edition's vendor brief for Azure WAF by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:
- where Azure WAF is named, by buyer and by framing, and which cells hold its first choices;
- the claims the models make when they name it, ranked, with the strongest and the weakest quoted;
- its vocabulary against the segment leader's, and the pages the models cited;
- who was chosen in the answers that did not name Azure WAF, and every reason the record gives;
- a battlecard for each top rival: the head-to-head split, why they win, and the reservation quoted against them;
- one page of published figures cleared to show a buyer.