NAXSI vs Tempesta FW

NAXSI

Model: Free (Open Source, GPLv3)

Free Tier Available View full pricing →

Tempesta FW

Model: Free (open source) + professional services

Free Tier Available View full pricing →

NAXSI

• Scoring-Based Detection

  Assigns scores to suspicious patterns in requests. Blocks when the cumulative score exceeds a threshold, rather than relying on exact signature matches.

• Learning Mode

  Monitors traffic and automatically generates whitelist rules for legitimate application behavior, reducing manual tuning effort during initial deployment.

• Virtual Patching

  Apply custom rules to block specific vulnerabilities without modifying application code. Rules target raw requests or specific fields like headers, args, and body.

• Deny-by-Default

  Operates like a DROP firewall. Common attack characters and patterns are blocked unless explicitly whitelisted for the target application.

• Lightweight Footprint

  Written in C with only libpcre as a dependency. Adds minimal overhead to NGINX request processing.

• Dynamic Module Support

  Can be compiled as a dynamic NGINX module, allowing it to be loaded without recompiling NGINX from source.

Tempesta FW

• Kernel-Level Performance

  Built directly into Linux TCP/IP stack, processing up to 1.8M HTTP requests per second - 3x faster than Nginx or HAProxy.

• Multi-Layer DDoS Protection

  Integrated protection against volumetric and application-layer DDoS attacks with rate limiting, JavaScript challenges, and adaptive QoS.

• HTTP Tables

  Extends Linux iptables/nftables for application-layer filtering, enabling rules that combine IP addresses with HTTP headers and content.

• Intelligent Load Balancing

  Machine learning-powered load balancing with persistent sessions, weighted round-robin, and rendezvous hashing strategies.

• Web Acceleration

  Built-in caching using Tempesta DB, an ultra-fast in-memory database with NUMA-aware distribution and SIMD optimizations.

• High-Performance TLS

  Tempesta TLS is 40-80% faster than Nginx/OpenSSL with 4x lower latency for TLS handshakes.

• Bot Protection (WebShield)

  Open-source automated bot protection via WebShield — detects and blocks DDoS bots, scrapers, shopping bots, and booking bots using TLS and HTTP fingerprint analysis on access logs stored in ClickHouse.

• Volumetric DDoS Protection

  Upcoming open-source volumetric DDoS protection solution, completing a full L3-L7 DDoS and bot mitigation stack when combined with Tempesta FW's application-layer defences and WebShield.

• Native XDP Integration

  Uses Linux XDP (eXpress Data Path) for early packet dropping, enabling efficient mitigation of volumetric attacks.