Vendor deep-dive

Azure WAF Pricing 2026: Front Door, Application Gateway, and the Two Pricing Models

Azure splits WAF across two products with two different pricing models. On Front Door, WAF is bundled into the tier price: Standard ($35/mo) includes custom rules only, Premium ($330/mo) bundles the managed rule set with no separate per-policy WAF charge. Application Gateway WAF v2 is per-gateway-hour plus per-capacity-unit-hour, suited to per-VNet ingress. Picking the wrong one for your traffic profile can double the monthly bill.

Last verified June 2026

Cloud-native WAF, tier-bundled on Front Door

Azure WAF (Front Door)

From

$35/mo

Rate position

Azure WAF sits in the middle third of the 6 vendors that publish a starting WAF rate.

What it costs

Azure WAF (Front Door) prices on a bundled into the front door standard/premium tier price, or per-hour on application gateway basis. The cheapest published entry point is $35.00 per month (Front Door Standard, custom WAF rules included). Full tier list below, taken from the live vendor pricing page.

Azure WAF (Front Door) pricing tiers

Tier 1Front Door Standard
$35 per month base, custom WAF rules included, no managed rule set, plus ~$0.009 per 10K requests
Tier 2Front Door Premium
$330 per month base, managed and custom WAF rules included (no separate WAF charge), plus ~$0.015 per 10K requests
Tier 3Application Gateway WAF v2
$0.443 per gateway-hour + $0.0144 per capacity-unit-hour
Tier 4Front Door (classic), retiring
$5 per policy per month + managed rules $20 per month + $1 per million requests; no new classic profiles since Apr 2025, retires 31 Mar 2027

Source: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/web-application-firewall/ - retrieved 2026-06-26

What this vendor is best for

Azure-hosted apps that need WAF at the edge (Front Door) or per-VNet (Application Gateway).

Azure-hosted apps fronted by Azure Front Door (global edge).
Per-VNet workloads where Application Gateway is already the chosen ingress.
Teams wanting the managed rule set bundled into Front Door Premium rather than billed as an add-on.
Estates standardised on Azure for delivery and security on one bill.

Hidden costs to watch

The line items most buyers miss

On Front Door Standard and Premium, WAF is bundled into the tier price, not billed per policy: Standard ($35/mo) includes custom rules only, Premium ($330/mo) includes the managed rule set as well. The old $5-per-policy WAF line applies only to Front Door (classic), which can no longer be newly provisioned and retires 31 March 2027. Application Gateway WAF v2 bills by gateway-hour and capacity-units, not per request.

Application Gateway WAF v2 bills by gateway-hour and capacity-units, which can run more expensive than per-request at low traffic.
The managed rule set requires Front Door Premium ($330/mo); Front Door Standard ($35/mo) covers custom rules only.
The old $5-per-policy WAF billing applies only to Front Door (classic), which can no longer be newly provisioned and retires 31 March 2027.
Log Analytics ingestion for WAF logs carries the standard Azure Log Analytics rate, billed per-GB.
Cross-region traffic between Front Door edge and origin is billed by Azure egress, not the WAF SKU.

Direct answer

What does Azure WAF (Front Door) actually cost at 100M requests per month?

Use the cost calculator on the homepage to assemble a realistic monthly bill across all published-rate vendors. The default profile (100M req/mo, 1 protected app, 10 custom rules, bot management on) is labelled as an illustrative example so it can be re-run with your own numbers.

Source: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/web-application-firewall/, retrieved 2026-06-26

Worked example at 100M requests per month, Front Door Premium

Azure Front Door Premium with the managed rule set, 100M requests per month. Illustrative example, not a real company. On Premium the WAF rules are bundled into the tier price, so there is no separate per-policy or per-rule WAF line.

Azure Front Door Premium bill, 100M req/mo with managed rules

1.Front Door Premium base fee$330.00
2.100M requests at ~$0.015 / 10K (~$1.50 / million)~$150.00
3.Managed rule set + custom rules (included)$0.00
4.Bot Manager rule set (included)$0.00

Estimated monthly total~$480.00

Front Door Premium bundles a premium CDN with the WAF, so this is not a like-for-like rate against a WAF-only product such as AWS WAF. If you only need custom rules, Front Door Standard is $35/mo base plus ~$0.009/10K requests. Egress, Log Analytics ingestion, and Application Gateway gateway-hour fees are separate bills.

Front Door vs Application Gateway: which to pick

Front Door is the right pick for global apps that need an edge tier in front of an Azure origin. Application Gateway is the right pick for per-VNet ingress, especially when the app already terminates at an Application Gateway for path-based routing or session affinity. Running both is normal in larger estates; running both with WAF on both doubles the bill.

Closest alternatives

Two published-rate vendors with the most similar pricing model and product fit.

AWS WAF

Per web-ACL + per rule + per million requests

$5.00 per web-ACL per month

→

Google Cloud Armor

Standard (per policy + per rule + per request) or Enterprise subscription

$5.00 per policy per month (Standard)

→

Source

Every number on this page is taken from https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/web-application-firewall/, retrieved 2026-06-26. Re-check before signing a contract; vendors change pricing without notice.

Last verified June 2026