ZeroBot vs AWS WAF Bot Control
Bot rules for AWS workloads — powerful, metered, and config-heavy.
Who is AWS WAF Bot Control?
AWS WAF Bot Control is a managed rule group for AWS WAF, attached to CloudFront, an Application Load Balancer, or API Gateway. It labels and filters common and targeted bots, is configured through web ACLs, and is billed per rule group plus per million requests inspected on top of standard AWS WAF charges.
Pricing: Metered: monthly fee per web ACL using Bot Control plus a charge per million requests inspected (higher for targeted-bot mode), on top of base AWS WAF pricing. Costs scale with traffic.
Feature comparison
Side-by-side on the things customers actually ask about.
| Feature | ZeroBot | AWS WAF Bot Control |
|---|---|---|
| Works outside AWS | ✓ | — |
| Flat, predictable pricing | ✓ | — |
| Free tier | ✓ | Partial |
| WordPress plugin | ✓ | — |
| No CDN / load-balancer required | ✓ | — |
| Setup without WAF expertise | ✓ | — |
| ML / fingerprint scoring | ✓ | ✓ |
| Country / ASN filters | ✓ | ✓ |
| Per-request visibility in one dashboard | ✓ | Partial |
| Redirect generator | ✓ | — |
| Telegram alerts | ✓ | — |
Why teams choose ZeroBot over AWS WAF Bot Control
Not welded to one cloud
Bot Control only protects workloads behind CloudFront, ALB or API Gateway. ZeroBot protects any site on any host — shared cPanel, a VPS, or AWS itself.
Predictable bills
Metered per-million-request pricing means a bot flood raises the bill for inspecting the flood. ZeroBot's flat plan costs the same in a quiet month and a bad one.
No web-ACL engineering
Getting Bot Control right means web ACLs, scope-down statements, label matching and CloudWatch dashboards. ZeroBot is a plugin or an include plus a dashboard a non-AWS-expert can read.
Application-level context
ZeroBot runs inside your app, so verdicts, logs and rules live next to the domains they protect — with fingerprint scores and per-IP export in one place.
Verdict: If your stack already lives behind CloudFront or an ALB and you have AWS expertise in-house, Bot Control is a capable native option. For everyone else — and for anyone who wants flat pricing and a five-minute setup — ZeroBot is the simpler, cheaper path to the same protection.
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