ApiTraffic vs Cloudflare WAF for Node.js APIs
Cloudflare decides whether a request gets in. We record what happened after it did. Those are different jobs, and the gap between them is where most API incidents live.
Which one fits
Choose Cloudflare WAF if
- Volumetric DDoS: by the time a request reaches middleware it has already cost you a connection, so an edge is the place to absorb a flood.
- Telling browsers from bots with JavaScript and CAPTCHA challenges, which an in-app firewall cannot issue.
- Strangers: unknown IPs, bad signatures and known-bad patterns, stopped before they reach your servers.
Choose ApiTraffic if
- A legitimate key behaving unlike itself: enumerating IDs one at a time, pulling fifty times its normal volume on a Sunday, or walking endpoints it has never touched. That traffic passes every edge check, because it is a customer.
- The parsed request your handler is about to see, inspected as middleware, with OWASP managed rules, rate limits, IP and country lists and behavioral protection.
- Every verdict on the same record as the trace, so you can find every other request from that caller in one click and decide whether the block was right.
- Monitor first, enforce when ready: see exactly what a rule would have blocked before it blocks anything.
How each one bills
Cloudflare’s WAF comes with Cloudflare’s own plans; compare the current numbers there.
ApiTraffic’s firewall is part of the same product as its logging, APM and alerting; the published pricing page shows what each plan includes.
Running both, or moving over from Cloudflare WAF
Keep Cloudflare. We’re the layer inside your app where the caller has a name, a history, and a bill.
Turn the ApiTraffic firewall on in monitor mode, read what it would have blocked for a week, then enforce the rules you agree with.
Know what your API did - before your customers tell you.
One npm install and one line of code. Your first requests arrive in minutes, with their queries, their firewall verdict and a baseline for every endpoint already building.
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