Index › Vendors › F5 Advanced WAF · September 2026 Edition

2 categories · Named, not ranked

F5 Advanced WAF

9Judge labels

0First choices

4Negative labels

7 of 12Models named it

2Categories

September 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table vv2026-09.2, every buyer segment counted.

Standing

4 labels, too few to rank

A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. F5 Advanced WAF was named 4 times in WAF and 1 other category, where Cloudflare led with 55%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small business64 of 77

under the label threshold

Mid-market23 of 87

under the label threshold

Enterprise74 of 94

under the label threshold

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 F5 Advanced 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%	23 of 87	0%	3	under 10 labels · led by Cloudflare at 55%
Next-generation firewalls	Network and edge	0%	76 of 100	100%	1	under 10 labels · led by Fortinet FortiGate at 61%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for F5 Advanced 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 F5 Advanced 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	0	0	0	0
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	0	0	0
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	0	0
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	0	0	0
Mistral Small	0	1	0	1
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	0	0	0
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	2	0	1	3
Kimi K2	0	0	0	0
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

Direct0 labelsNone

Paraphrase2 labelsNone

Comparative3 labelsNone

Budget-constrained1 labelNone

Scale-constrained0 labelsNone

Negative3 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative9 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.

“Best For: Companies with strict compliance requirements or heavy, complex API traffic.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · WAF · paraphrase prompt · alternative

“Best for: Complex on-premise networks and DevSecOps.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · 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.

“Using F5 strictly as a layer 3/4 firewall is generally considered an anti-pattern” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Firewalls · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as F5 Advanced WAF, over the 9 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and F5 Advanced WAF was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

AWS WAF5 of 90Not in the top three

Cloudflare4 of 92Not in the top three

Akamai App & API Protector4 of 90Not in the top three

Imperva4 of 90Not in the top three

Fortinet FortiWeb3 of 90Not in the top three

Azure WAF2 of 90Not in the top three

ModSecurity2 of 90Not in the top three

Sucuri2 of 90Not in the top three

Akamaya App & API Protector1 of 91Not in the top three

Cloudflare Enterprise WAF1 of 91Not 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 F5 Advanced 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 5 of the 9 answers that named F5 Advanced WAF and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

cybersecuritynews.com5

expertinsights.com4

cyberpress.org3

guideflow.com3

wafplanet.com3

aws.amazon.com2

checkpoint.com2

esecurityplanet.com2

fortinet.com2

g2.com2

No domain is on file for F5 Advanced WAF, so its own site is not marked.

Pages cited

expertinsights.com/network-security/the-top-web-application-firewalls4

cyberpress.org/waf-solutions-by-business-size3

cybersecuritynews.com/best-web-application-firewall-waf3

guideflow.com/blog/web-application-firewall-software3

cybersecuritynews.com/best-web-application-firewall-solutions2

cybersecuritynews.com/best-web-application-firewall-solutions/amp2

esecurityplanet.com/products/top-web-application-firewall-waf-vendors2

openappsec.io/post/best-waf-solutions-in-2026-real-world-comparison2

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

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 F5 Advanced 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 F5 Advanced 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 the vendor's own domain is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.