F5 WAF for NGINX vs Tempesta FW

F5 WAF for NGINX

Model: Per-instance annual subscription

View full pricing →

Tempesta FW

Model: Free (open source) + professional services

Free Tier Available View full pricing →

F5 WAF for NGINX

• 7,800+ Attack Signatures

  F5's comprehensive threat signature database with continuous updates from F5's threat research team. Covers OWASP Top 10, CVE-specific signatures, and application-specific attack patterns.

• Declarative Security Policies

  WAF policies defined in JSON or YAML, designed for version control and CI/CD integration. Security-as-code approach where policies deploy alongside application code through the same pipelines.

• API Security

  Import OpenAPI/Swagger specifications to automatically enforce API contracts. Schema validation, parameter type checking, and rate limiting for REST, GraphQL, and gRPC APIs. Blocks requests that violate the API specification.

• ML-Powered DoS Protection

  Behavioral analytics using machine learning to detect and mitigate Layer 7 denial-of-service attacks. Learns normal traffic patterns and automatically identifies anomalous request rates, slow POST attacks, and resource exhaustion attempts.

• Bot Protection

  Multi-layered bot detection combining signature matching, anomaly detection, and behavioral analysis. Identifies credential stuffing bots, web scrapers, and automated vulnerability scanners.

• Kubernetes Ingress WAF

  Native WAF support in the NGINX Ingress Controller. Attach WAF policies to specific ingress resources for per-service or per-route security. Policies managed through Kubernetes CRDs and annotations.

• NGINX One Visual Editor

  The NGINX One console provides a GUI-based WAF policy editor, replacing the original CLI-only configuration. Security teams can create, modify, and monitor WAF policies through a web interface without writing JSON.

• Request and Response Inspection

  Inspects both incoming requests and outgoing responses. Response inspection catches data leakage, error messages that reveal application internals, and sensitive data exposure.

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.