AWS WAF blocks web attacks on your infrastructure — PageGuard monitors what users actually experience: accessibility compliance, Core Web Vitals, and SEO health.
Scan Your Website Free →💡 Tip: Use both — AWS WAF for infrastructure security, PageGuard for front-end quality and ADA compliance. They solve entirely different problems.
PageGuard vs AWS WAF — what each tool actually does
| Feature | PageGuard | AWS WAF |
|---|---|---|
| What is it? | External website health monitor — scans any deployed URL for performance, accessibility, SEO, and best practices | AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) is a managed security service from Amazon Web Services that filters and monitors HTTP/HTTPS requests reaching web applications protected by Amazon CloudFront, Application Load Balancer (ALB), Amazon API Gateway, AWS AppSync, or AWS Cognito; AWS WAF uses customizable Web ACL rules, managed rule groups (AWS Managed Rules, AWS Marketplace managed rules), rate-based rules, and IP reputation lists to block OWASP Top 10 threats (SQL injection, XSS, LFI, RFI, RCE), bad bots, credential stuffing, and volumetric requests; AWS WAF integrates with AWS Shield (DDoS protection), Amazon GuardDuty, AWS Security Hub, and AWS Firewall Manager for centralized multi-account policy management; AWS WAF has no WCAG accessibility auditing, Core Web Vitals measurement, or SEO checking capabilities |
| Free tier | Yes — unlimited one-off scans, no signup required | No free tier — AWS WAF is priced per Web ACL ($5/month), per rule ($1/month per rule), per 1 million requests ($0.60), and per managed rule group subscription (typically $20–$25/month per group); a typical production WAF deployment protecting CloudFront + ALB costs $50–$200/month depending on traffic and rule complexity; AWS provides an Always Free tier for many services but AWS WAF is not included; none of AWS WAF's features include accessibility auditing, Core Web Vitals scoring, or technical SEO analysis |
| Accessibility audit (WCAG / ADA) | Yes — WCAG 2.1 AA scored 0–100 with specific issue list | No — AWS WAF is a security firewall with no WCAG compliance checking capability; AWS WAF inspects incoming HTTP requests for attack patterns and policy violations at the network/application layer — it does not analyze the HTML content returned to end users; a website fully protected by AWS WAF can still fail WCAG 2.1 AA requirements with missing alt text (WCAG 1.1.1), insufficient color contrast (WCAG 1.4.3), broken keyboard navigation (WCAG 2.1.1), missing form labels (WCAG 1.3.1), and improperly implemented ARIA roles — none of these are detectable or reportable by AWS WAF's inspection layer |
| Core Web Vitals | Yes — LCP, CLS, FCP, TBT, Speed Index, TTI measured per scan | No — AWS WAF does not expose Core Web Vitals measurements; AWS WAF's CloudWatch metrics track AllowedRequests, BlockedRequests, CountedRequests, PassedRequests, and rule-level match counts — there is no LCP, CLS, FCP, or Lighthouse performance score; enabling AWS WAF on CloudFront may add marginally to origin response latency in edge cases, but AWS WAF provides no dashboard showing whether LCP meets the 2.5-second threshold or whether CLS is below 0.1; without these measurements you cannot know if your WAF configuration is inadvertently degrading frontend performance |
| SEO audit | Yes — meta tags, Open Graph, canonical URLs, structured data, hreflang, robots.txt compliance checked | No — AWS WAF does not perform SEO audits; a risk specific to AWS WAF is that overly aggressive bot management rules or misconfigured IP-based blocking can inadvertently block Googlebot and Bingbot, causing indexation failures and organic ranking drops; AWS WAF does not proactively audit or report on meta title length, duplicate canonical tags, missing Open Graph images, structured data validity, or hreflang correctness; PageGuard checks crawlability signals and SEO health on every scan, helping detect if a WAF misconfiguration is harming search visibility |
| Performance score (0–100) | Yes — Lighthouse-powered composite score updated on every scan | No — AWS WAF provides no Lighthouse-style performance score; AWS WAF's CloudWatch dashboard shows security event metrics, blocked request counts, and rule match rates; it does not provide a 0–100 performance score, Time to Interactive, First Contentful Paint, or any Lighthouse audit category breakdown |
| Best practices check | Yes — HTTPS, HTTP/2, deprecated APIs, console errors, safe browsing flagged | Partial — AWS WAF enforces HTTPS when deployed in front of CloudFront or ALB (HTTP → HTTPS redirect configured at the distribution level), and AWS Shield provides DDoS-level protection; however AWS WAF does not report on deprecated JavaScript APIs, browser console errors, HTTP/2 adoption (handled at CloudFront/ALB level, not WAF), mixed content warnings in HTML, or any Lighthouse Best Practices audit items |
| Web Application Firewall (WAF) | No — PageGuard is a monitoring tool, not a security layer | Yes — AWS WAF is a fully managed WAF service deeply integrated into the AWS ecosystem; AWS Managed Rules (AMR) provide pre-built protections for common threats including AWSManagedRulesCommonRuleSet (OWASP Top 10), AWSManagedRulesSQLiRuleSet, AWSManagedRulesKnownBadInputsRuleSet, AWSManagedRulesAmazonIpReputationList, and AWSManagedRulesBotControlRuleSet; custom rules support string matching, regex patterns, geo-blocking, rate limiting, and JSON body inspection; AWS WAF supports Web ACL logging to S3, CloudWatch, and Kinesis Firehose for SIEM integration |
| DDoS protection | No | Partial — AWS WAF rate-based rules can block high-volume request floods from a single IP source; full DDoS protection requires AWS Shield Standard (free, covers L3/L4) or AWS Shield Advanced ($3,000/month, covers L3/L4/L7 with SLA guarantees and AWS DDoS Response Team (DRT) access); AWS WAF alone without Shield does not mitigate large-scale volumetric DDoS attacks |
| Bot management | No | Yes — AWS WAF Bot Control managed rule group uses machine learning to identify and categorize web scraping bots, vulnerability scanners, and other automated clients; Bot Control Common protection blocks obvious bots; Bot Control Targeted protection detects sophisticated bots that rotate user agents, use residential proxies, and simulate human behavior; both tiers require separate subscription fees ($10/month + $1 per 1M requests for Common; $30/month + $1 per 1M requests for Targeted) |
| AWS ecosystem integration | No — PageGuard is a standalone external scanner, not an AWS service | Yes — AWS WAF is deeply integrated with the AWS ecosystem: attaches to CloudFront distributions, ALBs, API Gateways, and AppSync APIs with a few clicks; managed centrally via AWS Firewall Manager across hundreds of AWS accounts; logs to Amazon S3, CloudWatch Logs, and Kinesis Data Firehose; integrates with AWS Security Hub for centralized security findings; uses AWS IAM for access control; can trigger Lambda functions via CloudWatch alarms on WAF metrics |
| ADA compliance alerts | Yes — automated alerts when accessibility score drops below threshold; ADA Title II urgency tracking | No — AWS WAF has no capability to monitor or alert on WCAG accessibility score changes; AWS WAF CloudWatch alarms cover security events such as blocked request rate spikes, specific rule match rates, and bot detection events — it cannot detect ADA compliance degradation caused by CMS updates, theme changes, or new content introducing accessibility regressions |
| Googlebot crawlability risk | PageGuard SEO audit checks crawlability signals and robots.txt compliance to detect indexation issues | Risk — AWS WAF Bot Control rules can inadvertently block or challenge Googlebot if misconfigured; AWS WAF's AWSManagedRulesBotControlRuleSet distinguishes verified bots (GoogleBot, Bingbot) from unverified bots, but custom rate-based rules or geo-blocking rules can catch legitimate crawlers; AWS WAF does not alert you when Googlebot access drops — PageGuard's SEO monitoring can surface unexpected crawlability degradation after WAF rule changes |
| Primary use case | Monitor and improve website quality — accessibility compliance, performance, SEO health, best practices | Protect AWS-hosted web applications and APIs from OWASP Top 10 attacks, bad bots, credential stuffing, and SQL injection with managed firewall rules integrated into the AWS ecosystem |
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