IT AI Index

Index › Vendors › Imperva WAF · September 2026 Edition

1 category · Named, not ranked

Imperva WAF

15Judge labels

0First choices

4Negative labels

8 of 12Models named it

1Category

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

Standing

6 labels, too few to rank

A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. Imperva WAF was named 6 times in WAF, 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 business56 of 77

under the label threshold

Mid-market31 of 87

under the label threshold

Enterprise20 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 Imperva 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%	31 of 87	33%	6	under 10 labels · led by Cloudflare at 55%

Movement

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

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	0	0	0	0
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	0	0	0
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	0	0	2	2
Mistral Small	0	0	0	0	0
DeepSeek V4 Flash	1	0	0	0	1
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	1	0	1
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	0	0	0	0
Kimi K2	0	0	0	0	0
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	0	0	0	0
MiniMax M2.5	0	1	0	0	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

Direct4 labelsNone

Paraphrase0 labelsNone

Comparative5 labels1not counted in share

Budget-constrained4 labelsNone

Scale-constrained1 labelNone

Negative1 labelNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative15 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.

“Imperva and Akamai are the detection accuracy and enterprise-depth leaders” DeepSeek V4 Flash · WAF · comparative prompt · first choice

“Consider Imperva if you have: Strict compliance requirements” MiniMax M2.5 · WAF · direct 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.

“Complex setup/UI; licensing costs scale poorly; mixed detection (low TPR in some tests ~12%).” Grok 4.1 Fast · WAF · negative prompt · soft negative

“willing to pay for managed rules/proven efficacy; less ideal for budget-focused” Grok 4.1 Fast · WAF · direct prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Imperva WAF, over the 15 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Imperva WAF was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

AWS WAF15 of 152Not in the top three

Cloudflare WAF10 of 157Not in the top three

Akamai4 of 150Not in the top three

Akamai App & API Protector4 of 150Not in the top three

Cloudflare3 of 151Not in the top three

Azure WAF3 of 150Not in the top three

Fastly Next-Gen WAF3 of 150Not in the top three

Fortinet FortiWeb3 of 150Not in the top three

Google Cloud Armor3 of 150Not in the top three

Azure Web Application Firewall2 of 150Not 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 Imperva 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 13 of the 15 answers that named Imperva WAF and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

expertinsights.com8

imperva.comYour site8

wafplanet.com8

cybersecuritynews.com7

guideflow.com7

openappsec.io7

cloudflare.com4

radware.com4

vendr.com4

wafpricing.com4

Fifty-three of the sixty-one domain citations in answers naming Imperva WAF came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

expertinsights.com/network-security/the-top-web-application-firewalls8

guideflow.com/blog/web-application-firewall-software7

cybersecuritynews.com/best-web-application-firewall-solutions/amp6

openappsec.io/post/best-waf-solutions-in-2024-2025-real-world-comparison6

imperva.com/blog/best-waap-solutions4

wafplanet.com/4

aws.amazon.com/waf/pricing3

blog.blazingcdn.com/en-us/exploring-cloudflares-enterprise-plan-features-and-pricing3

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Imperva WAF

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

Akamai/Imperva WAF 1Imperva WAF (now Thales) 1Imperva WAF (part of Thales) 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 Imperva 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 Imperva 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 imperva.com 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.