🛡️ Free Firewall & DDoS Protection Tools 2026
7 firewall & ddos protection tools you can use for free — no credit card required. Includes fully free tools and freemium tiers with generous limits.
- 1
Hetzner's DDoS Protection filters volumetric and application-layer attacks at network edge. Designed for cloud users and hosting providers managing large traffic volumes.
Best for: Organizations running high-traffic applications on Hetzner infrastructure who need native, straightforward DDoS mitigation without multi-vendor complexity.
- 2
Gcore is a European CDN and cloud provider with 150+ PoPs including strong coverage in Russia, CIS, Middle East, and Africa. CDN, cloud compute, streaming, and DDoS protection.
Best for: Applications needing CDN coverage in CIS, Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa beyond Cloudflare's footprint
- 3
Cloudflare provides distributed content delivery, DDoS mitigation, and R2 object storage. Designed for developers and enterprises needing reliable infrastructure with minimal latency.
Best for: Teams building web applications requiring global distribution, DDoS protection, and cost-efficient object storage without egress fees.
- 4
ModSecurity is a free WAF engine that detects and blocks malicious HTTP requests. Operates as a module for major web servers to protect against OWASP Top 10 attacks and custom threats.
Best for: DevOps teams and system administrators running self-managed web servers who need application-layer protection without managed WAF costs.
- 5
StackPath provides CDN, WAF, DDoS protection, and edge compute with 50+ PoPs globally. Simple pricing model and strong integration with serverless edge workers.
Best for: Developers wanting CDN, WAF, and edge compute in one platform at predictable pricing
- 6
Bunny Shield is a DDoS mitigation and WAF service integrated with Bunny CDN. It protects against layer 3-7 attacks and provides real-time threat detection for websites and APIs.
Best for: Content publishers and API providers already using Bunny CDN who need straightforward DDoS and application layer attack protection.
- 7
Cloudflare's Web Application Firewall protects against OWASP Top 10, zero-day vulnerabilities, and DDoS. 300+ global PoPs absorb attacks. Free plan blocks basic threats; Pro adds OWASP managed rules.
Best for: Every website — Cloudflare WAF is the standard baseline for web application firewall protection
What counts as a free firewall & ddos protection tool
Two flavors of free make it onto this page. The first is genuinely free — perpetual, no card required, with usage caps that real teams can fit inside. The second is freemium: a paid product with a free tier that's either time-limited, feature-limited, or capacity-limited. Both have their place, but they fail differently. Free tiers tend to disappear or get throttled when the vendor changes strategy; freemium tiers are usually stable but designed to push you toward upgrade. We label which is which on every card.
The 7 firewall & ddos protectiontools below are filtered to pricing_model ∈ (free, freemium) and then sorted by community rating and review count — same ranking signal we use everywhere else, just applied to a narrower slice. Every tool here has been used in production by real teams, not just demoed during a Hacker News launch.
Two things to check before committing:the free-tier limits (we list them on each tool's detail page so you know exactly what's included) and the upgrade path. A free tier that hard-caps at 1 GB of storage and 100 monthly active users is different from one that meters by request count or seat. Click through to the tool page to see the full plan table, real pricing for the upgrade tier, and the last community reviews — those usually surface the surprise restrictions vendor docs gloss over.
How we maintain this list
This page refreshes hourly as new ratings, reviews, and pricing changes land in our catalog. The free/freemiumordering is recomputed automatically on every rebuild — we don't freeze rankings or grandfather in providers whose ratings have decayed. Last refreshed: 13 May 2026 (UTC).
Our full ranking methodology, including how we weight ratings vs. review count and how we handle disputed entries, is documented on the methodology page. If you spot a missing provider, an outdated price, or a placement that doesn't match your experience, submit a correction — we read every report and update within 48 hours.
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