IT AI Index

Index › Vendors › Microsoft Azure WAF · September 2026 Edition

Microsoft · 1 category · Named, not ranked

Microsoft Azure WAF

10Judge labels

0First choices

2Negative labels

5 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. Microsoft Azure 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 business31 of 77

under the label threshold

Mid-market24 of 87

under the label threshold

Enterprise72 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 Microsoft 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%	24 of 87	17%	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 Microsoft 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 Microsoft 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	0	0	0	0
GPT-5.4 mini	1	0	0	1
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	0	0	0
Perplexity Sonar	1	0	0	1
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	1	0	1
Mistral Small	0	0	0	0
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	1	1	2
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	0	0	0
Kimi K2	0	0	0	0
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	0	0	0
MiniMax M2.5	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

Direct0 labelsNone

Paraphrase0 labelsNone

Comparative7 labelsNone

Budget-constrained1 labelNone

Scale-constrained0 labelsNone

Negative2 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative10 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 when your stack is centered on Azure Application Gateway or Front Door” GPT-5.4 mini · WAF · comparative prompt · alternative

“Best for Azure workloads: Microsoft Azure WAF” Perplexity Sonar · WAF · comparative prompt · alternative

“Best for: Azure-native infrastructure” MiniMax M2.5 · 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.

“Avoid using Azure WAF in "block" mode on critical production apps unless you have dedicated resources” DeepSeek V4 Flash · WAF · negative prompt · hard negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Microsoft Azure WAF, over the 10 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Microsoft Azure WAF was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

AWS WAF8 of 100Not in the top three

Cloudflare WAF7 of 106Not in the top three

Akamai App & API Protector5 of 101Not in the top three

Fortinet FortiWeb5 of 100Not in the top three

Imperva4 of 101Not in the top three

Akamai4 of 100Not in the top three

Fastly Next-Gen WAF4 of 100Not in the top three

Google Cloud Armor4 of 100Not in the top three

Radware Cloud WAF4 of 100Not in the top three

Cloudflare3 of 102Not 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 Microsoft 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 10 of the 10 answers that named Microsoft Azure WAF and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

openappsec.io9

expertinsights.com7

wafplanet.com7

cybersecuritynews.com5

imperva.com5

radware.com5

aimultiple.com4

cyberpress.org4

akamai.com3

dev.to3

Fifty-two of the fifty-two domain citations in answers naming Microsoft Azure WAF came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

expertinsights.com/network-security/the-top-web-application-firewalls7

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

wafplanet.com/6

cybersecuritynews.com/best-web-application-firewall-solutions/amp5

openappsec.io/post/best-waf-solutions-in-2026-real-world-comparison5

aimultiple.com/waf-solutions4

cyberpress.org/waf-solutions-by-business-size4

cybersecuritynews.com/best-web-application-firewall-waf4

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 Microsoft 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 Microsoft Azure 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 microsoft.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.