Application Gateway vs AWS Network Firewall: 2026 Comparison
Application Gateway is a free next-generation firewalls tool. AWS Network Firewall 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 teams deploying multi-VPC or hybrid architectures will find AWS Network Firewall most useful because it eliminates the operational friction of managing third-party appliances across availability zones; the managed service handles failover and scaling without extra engineering. Stateful inspection and IPS-grade threat prevention are baked in at the VPC boundary, which matters for teams that can't afford the latency tax of inline third-party solutions. Skip this if your organization standardizes on a single firewall vendor across cloud and on-premises environments, since AWS Network Firewall won't integrate with your existing SIEM dashboards or policy framework without custom plumbing.
