Cloudflare WAF
2 alternatives — 1 easy, 1 medium
Why people leave Cloudflare WAF
- Free tier is limited
- All traffic passes through Cloudflare servers
- Can break legitimate requests
- Enterprise pricing is opaque
Comparison
Detailed Look
CrowdSec Top Pick
Collaborative intrusion prevention system that analyzes logs and shares threat intelligence.
Pros
- + Crowd-sourced threat intelligence
- + Lightweight Go binary
- + Works with many bouncers for different services
- + Active community sharing blocklists
Cons
- - Cloud console required for full features
- - Bouncer setup adds complexity
- - Can generate false positives
- - Some features require paid tier
Fail2ban
Log-parsing daemon that bans IPs showing malicious signs like repeated authentication failures.
Pros
- + Battle-tested and widely used
- + Very lightweight
- + Extensive filter library for many services
- + Easy to configure for common use cases
Cons
- - Regex-based filters can be fragile
- - No web UI
- - IPv6 support is limited
- - Cannot share threat intel like CrowdSec
Can't decide? Compare CrowdSec, Fail2ban side by side →