Application Gateway vs AWS Firewall Manager: 2026 Comparison
Application Gateway is a free next-generation firewalls tool. AWS Firewall Manager is a free next-generation firewalls tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best next-generation firewalls fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of available product data, here is our conclusion:
Teams running multi-region cloud applications on Azure will get the most from Application Gateway because its native integration with Azure infrastructure eliminates the latency and complexity of bolted-on WAF solutions. It handles Layer 7 load balancing with built-in DDoS protection across Microsoft's global backbone, and the free tier removes budget friction for teams testing WAF capabilities before scaling. Skip this if you need a vendor-agnostic WAF that ports easily to AWS or GCP; Application Gateway is tightly coupled to Azure and doesn't play well outside that ecosystem.
AWS security teams managing multiple accounts and regions will get the most from AWS Firewall Manager because it eliminates the operational nightmare of applying firewall rules across dispersed infrastructure from a single console. It integrates directly with AWS WAF and Network Firewall, letting you enforce consistent policies across accounts without the sync delays that plague third-party SIEM-based approaches. Skip this if you need fine-grained threat intelligence feeds or egress filtering for on-premises traffic; Firewall Manager is AWS-native only and prioritizes policy consistency over advanced threat detection.
