Fortinet vs Palo Alto next generation firewalls

Fortinet and Palo Alto next generation firewalls are both highly rated by analysts, users and in independent tests. But which one is right for your business?

While Palo Alto is frequently evaluated highly because of its features, Fortinet is as yet unbeatable on price / performance value.

NSS Labs rated Fortinet top value of the next generation firewalls tested, with $2 TCO per protected Mbps, while still delivering strong security and performance.

Palo Alto is far more expensive at $20 TCO, placing 10th out of the twelve solutions tested.

Fortinet users also report ease of use as one of its perks, as opposed to Palo's complexity, despite the latter's rich feature set.

Overall, both products are considered leaders by Gartner and deliver excellent results as part of an overarching cyber resilience strategy. Here's a like for like comparison to help you select the right option for your business.

Next Generation Firewalls: Key considerations

• What is the forecast ROI based on performance, cost and scalability?
• Does it identify users, services and validate data?
• How well does it perform when running full threat protection?
• Does it enable secure remote access - IPsec VPN, SSL inspection capacity etc - with minimal degradation in throughput?
  
• Does it have easy, single-pane-of-glass management?
• What do other customers say about it?

Comparison of NGFWs (NSS Labs testing results)

Industry and Peer Reviews

Gartner Peer Insights

Fortigate NGFW	PA-Series

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Network Firewalls

Independent Testing

	TESTING BODY
High NGFW/SSL Performance Low TCO		High NGFW/SSL Performance High TCO
Certified		Certified
Advanced Threat Defence IPSEC with IKEv@ Criteria 3.1 SSL-TLS VPN Firewall Network Intrusion Prevention Systems Web Application Firewall		Advanced Threat Defence Modular Firewall Criteria 4.2x (General purpose network firewalls) A Firmware Upgrade was required to become Certified.

Pricing

Get detailed FortiGate pricing