AWS Firewall Manager vs AWS Network Firewall: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
AWS Firewall Manager 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:
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.
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.
