Every category where a model named Cloudflare 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	34%	2 of 87	11%	27	endorsed leader

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Cloudflare 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 Cloudflare WAF across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	First choice	Alternative	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	2	0	0	2
GPT-5.4 mini	3	0	0	3
Gemini 3.5 Flash	2	0	0	2
Perplexity Sonar	2	0	0	2
Grok 4.1 Fast	3	0	1	4
Mistral Small	1	1	0	2
DeepSeek V4 Flash	2	0	1	3
Llama 4 Maverick	1	0	0	1
Qwen 3.7 Flash	1	0	0	1
Kimi K2	2	0	1	3
GLM 4.7 FlashX	2	0	0	2
MiniMax M2.5	2	0	0	2

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

Direct20 labels18

Paraphrase1 labelNone

Comparative21 labels19not counted in share

Budget-constrained10 labels10

Scale-constrained1 labelNone

Negative8 labels2not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative61 labels in all, every segment counted; 28 of the 49 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.

“The best web application firewall for a company with a limited budget is Cloudflare WAF, which offers strong protection with a generous free tier and easy setup.” Llama 4 Maverick · WAF · budget prompt · first choice

“the best default choice is usually Cloudflare WAF if you want the fastest deployment, strong protection, and low operational overhead” Perplexity Sonar · WAF · direct prompt · first choice

“Cloudflare WAF (free tier) is widely regarded as the best web application firewall for companies with a limited budget” Grok 4.1 Fast · WAF · budget prompt · first choice

“Choose Cloudflare if you want top-tier performance, global scale, and an intuitive, developer-friendly interface.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · WAF · comparative prompt · first choice

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.

“Cloudflare's WAF scored the *lowest* Security Quality (True Positive Rate) of any major vendor — around 67%” DeepSeek V4 Flash · WAF · negative prompt · soft negative

“Evasion via parsing/content-type tricks; not top in padding/large payload tests.” Grok 4.1 Fast · WAF · negative prompt · soft negative

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

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Cloudflare WAF, over the 61 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Cloudflare WAF was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

AWS WAF50 of 610Compare →

Imperva19 of 610Not in the top three

Akamai App & API Protector17 of 611Not in the top three

Akamai14 of 610Not in the top three

Fastly Next-Gen WAF13 of 610Not in the top three

ModSecurity13 of 610Not in the top three

Sucuri12 of 610Not in the top three

Fortinet FortiWeb11 of 610Not in the top three

Imperva WAF10 of 610Not in the top three

Google Cloud Armor9 of 610Not 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 Cloudflare 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 54 of the 61 answers that named Cloudflare WAF and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

wafplanet.com35

cyberpress.org32

expertinsights.com31

openappsec.io31

cybersecuritynews.com26

geekflare.com21

imperva.com20

radware.com19

worldmetrics.org14

aimultiple.com12

241 of the 241 domain citations in answers naming Cloudflare WAF came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

cyberpress.org/waf-solutions-by-business-size31

expertinsights.com/network-security/the-top-web-application-firewalls31

openappsec.io/post/best-waf-solutions-in-2024-2025-real-world-comparison28

wafplanet.com/23

geekflare.com/cybersecurity/best-web-application-firewall21

cybersecuritynews.com/best-web-application-firewall-solutions/amp20

cybersecuritynews.com/best-web-application-firewall-waf15

worldmetrics.org/best/web-application-firewall-software14

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Cloudflare WAF

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Cloudflare WAF; a claim can dispute any of them.

Cloudflare WAF (Cloudflare Application Security) 1Cloudflare WAF (WAAP) 1Cloudflare WAF (free tier) 1

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 Cloudflare 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 Cloudflare WAF, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

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 cloudflare.com is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

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