8 Best Imperva Alternatives for WAF and API Security

Imperva stays in the list because it is still a real option for large teams. Thales completed its acquisition of Imperva in December 2023. The platform includes Cloud WAF, WAF Gateway for your own infrastructure, and Elastic WAF for Kubernetes environments.

• Imperva publishes no prices, and a Cloud WAF trial is offered without a stated length.
• A quote will depend on protected applications, traffic volume and modules.
• Choose Imperva if you already run it, or if you need on-premises and cloud cover in one contract.

Visit Imperva →

Cloudflare is the closest self-serve replacement for Imperva for most sites. The Free plan costs $0 per month per domain and includes CDN, DNS, SSL, DDoS protection and a basic managed WAF ruleset. Pro costs $20 per month per domain when billed annually, or $25 per month when billed monthly, and adds image optimisation and 20 custom WAF rules.

• Business costs $200 per month per domain when billed annually, or $250 per month when billed monthly, and adds 100 custom rules, advanced WAF and a 10
• Cloudflare charges per zone, so each domain needs its own plan.
• Ten domains on Pro cost $200 per month, and ten domains on Business cost $2,000 per month.
• Choose Cloudflare to start without a sales call, or to get CDN and WAF in one account.

Visit Cloudflare →

AWS WAF is the natural Imperva alternative inside AWS. A web ACL costs $5 per month, each rule or rule group costs $1 per month, and request inspection costs $0.60 per million requests. A setup with one web ACL and five rules that inspects one million requests in a month costs $10.60 before add-ons.

• The base price includes up to 1,500 Web ACL Capacity Units, and AWS charges $0.20 per million requests for each extra 500 units.
• Bot Control is a separate managed rule group.
• Common Bot Control costs $10 per month per web ACL plus $1 per million requests after the first 10 million free each month.
• Shield Advanced costs $3,000 per month per account and needs a one-year commitment.

Visit AWS WAF →

Akamai App and API Protector is the enterprise edge alternative that most closely matches Imperva on scale. It runs on Akamai edge platform, detects and blocks application threats in HTTP and HTTPS traffic, and pairs WAF rules with bot management, Layer 7 DDoS controls and inline API protection. The Hybrid edition extends the same WAF rules to applications that do not run on Akamai delivery.

• Akamai also sells Prolexic for network layer DDoS scrubbing and Bot Manager for transactional pages.
• Akamai does not publish a self-serve price.
• Contracts are annual subscriptions with usage bands based on traffic volume, protected properties and edition, Standard or Hybrid.
• Choose Akamai if you already use Akamai for delivery, or if you want WAF, bot and API cover in one policy.

Visit Akamai App and API Protector →

Fastly is a developer-led alternative to Imperva, built around programmable edge delivery rather than a bundled security suite. The first 100 GB per month is free in every region. In North America and Europe, bandwidth from 100 GB to 10 TB costs $0.12 per GB, and request charges apply separately per 10,000 requests.

• In some regions, the entry rate rises to $0.28 per GB.
• Security is not bundled into the base CDN price.
• Next-Gen WAF, formerly Signal Sciences, is a separate product, and DDoS protection, bot mitigation and custom TLS can add further charges.
• Fastly is known for instant cache purge, often cited at about 150 ms globally.

Visit Fastly →

F5 Distributed Cloud WAF is the SaaS WAF from F5, and it suits teams that already run F5 BIG-IP, NGINX or F5 load balancing. The product combines signature and behaviour-based protection, with AI-powered risk scoring for each request and a self-learning anomaly detection engine that builds a baseline for each application. It can protect workloads in public clouds, on F5 global points of presence, and in on-premises environments.

• F5 does not publish a price.
• Term subscriptions, a Flex Consumption Plan and perpetual licences are sold through sales or a reseller, with prices on request.
• Bot Defense adds its own metered items, with extra transaction capacity metered in units of 500,000 transactions per day per month.
• Choose F5 if you already use F5, or if you need WAF across cloud and on-premises in one console.

Visit F5 Distributed Cloud WAF →

Sucuri is the best Imperva alternative for a small site that worries about getting hacked and cleaned up, not just blocked. The standalone Firewall with CDN starts at $9.99 per month for Basic, or $19.98 per month for Pro, per site. The Platform plans add monitoring, scanning and malware removal: Basic costs $229 per year, Pro costs $339 per year, and Business costs $549 per year, each for one site.

• Junior Dev costs $999.98 per year and covers 2 to 5 sites.
• Basic scans every 12 hours with a 30-hour malware removal response window, Pro scans every 6 hours with a 12-hour response window, and Business scans
• All platform plans include unlimited manual cleanups.
• Choose Sucuri if you run WordPress or another CMS, or if you want a team to remove malware.

Visit Sucuri →

Radware Cloud WAF Service is a managed cloud WAF for teams that want vendor tuning rather than self-serve rules. The product page offers a 30-day free trial, which lets a team test the service for one month before a contract. Radware positions the service around adaptive security, with policies that adjust to traffic and aim to limit false positives, plus DDoS protection and bot mitigation in its wider set.

• Radware does not publish a price, so the cost depends on traffic, protected applications and the modules you add.
• Some advanced functions need extra modules.
• Choose Radware if you want a managed cloud WAF, or if you value a 30-day trial before a quote.

Visit Radware Cloud WAF →